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Chapter Twenty-Four
Ariella
I had hours until Jaxson flew back from Chicago and arrived in Breckenridge. He wouldn’t turn over Hazel to Nikolai in exchange for his daughter and my safety.
Nikolai wasn’t an idiot. He had to suspect the same which meant there had to be another power play he had. I just wasn’t sure what he planned.
He had snatched my phone along with his cell phone, burying both in his pocket. Not that I was anticipating my captor would allow me another phone call.
“Why are you here?” I asked, staring him down. While he was quite a bit taller than me, I didn’t give the illusion that I was afraid of him.
Big mistake.
He smashed the barrel of the gun against my cheek and pushed me backward, stumbling over the toys on the living room floor. I caught myself, but not before Nikolai lurched forward and shoved me onto the sofa. “Sit,” he commanded—a single word with the authority to send shivers down my spine.
Izzie came running toward me. His tone must have frightened her. “Come here,” I said, holding out my arms as she climbed into my lap.
She clung tight against me, and while she hadn’t been bothered earlier by the stranger, unaware of the danger, it seemed now she understood that we were in trouble.
Izzie’s arms clung around my neck. I shifted her weight, having her sit on my lap, my arms wrapped around her, protective and comforting.
“Would you put that away?” I gestured toward the gun that he’d assaulted me with moments earlier. “All you’re doing is scaring her.” I didn’t want to admit that I was scared too. He probably got off on frightening women.
Nikolai huffed under his breath and shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he said. His eyes tightened, and he glanced Izzie and me over from head to toe.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, the fear pulsing through my veins, pumping like oxygen to my heart. He wasn’t going to let us go, and given his history of bloodshed at the compound, I needed a plan.
Think.
I clung to Izzie, but that didn’t settle the terror that rotted in my stomach like spoiled meat. A thin sheen of sweat coated my forehead. I wiped my brow and stared down at the floor. The last thing I wanted was to appear threatening.
Nikolai was in charge.
I needed to make myself small and insignificant. Not so much so that he’d kill me, but that he wouldn’t find me threatening. What had all my training at the C.I.A. taught me?
I could disarm him, but that assumed there weren’t others ready to shoot me the minute I opened the front door. Or worse, what if he discharged his gun and shot Izzie? I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her. Jaxson would never forgive me either.
Get inside his head.
What made him tick? What was his agenda? Without a doubt, he didn’t just want to strut out with Hazel at his side and return to Chicago. No. He was a mobster with a thirst for blood.
If I asked him why he was doing this, he’d shut me out. I needed to dig deeper. I glanced at the clock. We had at least a few hours together. Could I get him to talk?
My mouth was dry, and my words came out raspy. “We’re going to be here awhile. Can I get up and grab a book to read to Izzie?” I asked. While I didn’t budge from my position on the sofa, I pointed toward the bookshelf in the dining room, just behind us.
“You don’t move,” Nikolai said. He strode across the room in earnest and stood there for a fraction of a second before he yanked a book from the shelf. He shuffled back to the living room and towered above us. “Here.” He tossed a soft lavender paperback book at me.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I was shocked that it was a children’s book he found. He’d been so quick that I thought he had pulled the first book he’d found on the shelf.
“Thank you,” I said and opened the book, starting with the first page. “Have you read this before?” I asked Izzie. Hopefully, it wasn’t too old for her, but it was a classic.
She shook her head no.
“She’ll like it.” Nikolai paced the length of the room several times over before standing in the corner of the room, just a few feet away, watching us. He folded his arms across his chest. “Read it to her.”
I flipped past the title page and opened to chapter one.
