“Lyubimaya,” I say as I answer the phone. “Is everything okay?” Emma doesn’t usually call me. She’d rather send a text message.
“Mr. Kiselyov, I’m glad you picked up the phone.” It’s a man’s voice and immediately I’m on alert and my anger is rising.Why is a man calling from Emma’s phone?
“Who the fuck is this? Where’s Emma?” I yell into the phone.
“Ivan!” I can hear Emma scream in the background. I can hear a slap through the phone, and Emma whimpers.
“I’m calling with a message, Mr. Kiselyov. I was sent to collect payment on a debt that was owed to my boss,” the man answered.
“You're a dead man when I get my hands on you!” I yell at him.
“Emma is now the property of Callaghan Enterprises.”
“Ivan! Help me!” Emma cries.
“Listen heremudak,” I say, lowering my voice to a growl. “You tell your boss that I am coming for Emma, and I will get her back. She does not belong to him.”
“Good luck with that, Mr. Kiselyov,” is the last thing I hear before the line goes dead.
“FUCK!” I rage. I’ve been gone long enough that my brother Dmitri has come to find me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, closing my office door.
“Callaghan has Emma,” I say angrily. I’m seeing red as I pull up the tracking app on my phone. “Get those assholes out of here. Meetings are over for today.”
Dmitri leaves to clear the conference room while I try to track Emma. Her location pops up on the screen. She’s still in the city and it looks like she’s headed northward out of Boston.
My brothers come barreling into the office, concern on their faces and phones at the ready to start making calls. Remaining calm has flown out the window. Callaghan has messed with what’s mine for the last time, and he’s going to pay for it. I look at my phone again and notice that her tracking dot has stopped in the middle of the Charles River.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” I yell as I throw my phone towards the wall.
“What happened?” Dmitri asks.
“Emma’s tracking disappeared over the Charles River,” I answer him. “Which car did she take this morning?”
“She took the 7-series,” Maksim replies.
“Get someone following them now. Where the fuck is Igor? He’s supposed to be with her and two other guards,” I demand.
“Igor’s location is pinging in William Carmen Park,” Maksim says. “I’ll send someone to pick him up.”
“Good. Bring him to me. He better have a damn good explanation as to why he’s not with Emma,” I say.
“Dmitri, what about the other two body guards? Where the hell are they? They were supposed to be with Igor and protecting Emma.”
“Not sure, but we’ll find them, Ivan,” Dmitri says.
“Dmitri, work with Maksim to find those assholes. When you find them, stick them in the basement and I’ll deal with them later,” I tell my brother.
“You got it,” Dmitri replies.
“Grigory, call Lidiya. Tell her she needs to come home immediately and stay at the estate. If this is part of a coordinated attack from Callaghan and father’s former associates, then it stands to reason they may want to take all of us out, and that includes our sister,” I say.
“I’ll have her at the estate by the end of the day,” he replies.
Within an hour, everything is in place to get Emma back. Grigory picked up Igor in the park. I’ll deal with him when we locate Emma. I rush back to the estate and bring up all the tracking devices in play on my home office computer screens.
Emma’s phone has disappeared, but she still has the bracelet with the tracker inside. That’s the dot I’m currently looking at moving down the highway and north out of Boston. It’s on top of another dot moving at the same speed. It’s the 7-series that Emma is in. I made sure it had a small tracking device on it before Igor took Emma into the city. I felt the extra monitoring was necessary, considering what happened the last time Emma was supposed to be protected.
