AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fuck.
My body jolts into motion instinctively, and I start hustling down the street in the opposite direction, digging into my bag again for my knife. Footsteps ring out behind me, and my skin chills. I have to work to keep my brain from racing ahead of itself, spinning horrible scenarios of what this man might want.
I start walking faster, ducking down an alley to try to lose whoever the hell this is, but he keeps following me.
Now I’m panicking, and I break into a full run, darting around dumpsters and stumbling over small bits of trash scattered over the ground. I can hear his feet pounding on the pavement behind me over the galloping of my heart, and it spurs me to run even faster, clutching the knife in one hand and my phone in the other.
When I burst out of the alley and onto another street, I turn left without pausing, my breath coming in choppy gasps as I scan my surroundings. Up ahead, a cab pulls to a stop at an intersection, and I practically scream at it to wait.
I run toward it, yanking the door open and practically throwing myself into the seat before the driver can pull away.
“What the—” The guy behind the wheel looks up in surprise as I slam the door shut behind me.
“Go, go!”
The urgency in my voice gets him moving, and he pulls away from the curb as I turn to peer out the window, catching sight of the man in the distance as we start to drive down the street. I shove the knife back into my bag, fear twisting in my stomach. I have no idea who was following me, or why.
Was it random? Just some asshole looking to prey on a woman alone at night? But then why follow me for so long?
It was almost like he was waiting for me at the bus stop. Like he was… targeting me.
I have a sudden vivid memory of asking Ransom how long it would take for him and his brothers to be satisfied that no one is probing into Nikolai’s death, and the way he basically confirmed that that day might never come.
So was my pursuer poking around, looking for information? Did he somehow manage to figure out I was at the whorehouse the night Nikolai died?
Ever since the first night I met them, the Voronin brothers have terrified me. They’ve loomed over my life like shadows, leaving me constantly looking over my shoulders. But for the first time, it occurs to me that maybe there’s someone out there I should be more afraid of than the three of them.
“You okay, lady?”
The cab driver cranes his neck to look at me, his thick brows scrunched together.
“Yeah,” I mutter, glancing out the back window of the car again.
“Where to?”
I hesitate for a second, then give him the names of the cross streets I remember seeing near the large building Ransom went into the day I followed him. The idea of going home right now terrifies me, and if there really is someone following me in connection with Nikolai’s death, the brothers are the only ones who can help.
Soft music plays from the speaker, and the driver doesn’t make any attempt to chat me up as he navigates his way down Detroit’s darkened streets. He probably didn’t believe me when I said I was okay, and he’s clearly decided to leave me alone.
We pull to a stop at the curb after a while, and as soon as I get out, the cabbie drives away, leaving me alone on the street in front of the building.
My heart is still beating faster than normal, and a voice in my head is screaming at me that this is crazy. It’s late in the evening, and I shouldn’t be going to these men for protection when they’ve already threatened to kill me. I shouldn’t be going to them for anything at all.
But I don’t know where else to go.
So I square my shoulders and walk up to the building, finding a door with no windows in it. There’s no doorbell that I can see, and when I knock lightly on the heavy wood, the door swings open a crack.
I frown, reaching down to test the knob. It’s locked, but the door must not have been fully latched because when I give it a little push, it swings open easily.
Beckoning me inside.
17
WILLOW
I creep inside,still not quite sure what kind of place this is. What do the brothers even do here? My mind can fill in all kinds of blanks for that, from the mundane to the terrifying, but I shove it all back, glancing around before I let my imagination run away with me.
The more I see of the space around me, the more it just looks like the place where they live. As I creep forward through the shadowy, darkened space, I pass by a kitchen with a large table and chairs in the middle, and when I hear a sound coming from a room up ahead, I move to follow it.
