AllFreeNovel
Share Us
To my surprise, he freed my hands, then retaped them behind my back. When he sliced through the tape holding my feet to the chair, I kicked out. I wasn’t about to lose an opportunity to get free. It was like kicking a goddamned tree. The man just grunted, then hauled me up by my hands, yanking them up painfully behind my back.
“Bathroom. Now,” he said, pushing me forward. I stumbled, unable to see through the hood covering my face. The path he led me on twisted and turned until he shoved me through a swinging door. I could feel the change in the floor, from the echoing concrete of a warehouse to the tiles of a bathroom. He shoved me backward until I hit the toilet with the backs of my knees, then yanked my skirt up and my panties down. I swore at him and struggled, but he just put his hands on my shoulders and bore down on me until I sat.
“Piss,” he instructed.
To my mortification, I did exactly that, desperate to relieve the pressure in my bladder, despite my fury. When the debasing stream finished, he yanked me upwards, pulled my panties back up, then straightened my dress. I was humiliated by how grateful I was that his touch was workmanlike—brusque instead of sexual.
His rough shove forward snapped me out of my thoughts. He led me back to the chair, the fluorescent light over my seat barely visible through the hood. More gently than I expected, he pushed me back down on the chair and retaped me, my legs spread and my hands behind my back.
This time, he didn’t take the hood off. He left me sitting in the darkness again, hyperventilating as memories of my captivity a decade ago swept through me.
No. I was tougher than my fear, stronger than my terror.
Deep breaths, I reminded myself, working through the mental exercises I’d developed with my therapist, steadying me over the last decade of panic attacks. Did I ever expect to use them again in an actual kidnapping situation? Fuck no. Were they still useful? Hell yeah. I needed to get my shit under control if I were going to find a way out of here.Calm down, Ginevra.As I focused on my breathing, I searched my heart for a peaceful memory, and was shocked to find my happy space had changed from the cool breeze on the beach to the comfort of my men's arms.
I held tight to the memory of their care and their love, steadying myself enough to pay attention to my surroundings, listening to the quiet of traffic outside, the sound of trash cans rattling as the city awoke, and the quiet scrapes and scratches of footsteps against concrete as people walked through the warehouse.I wasn’t alone.
Men’s voices, low and indecipherable, murmured around me.How many were there?At least two, possibly three.
The stench of onions and garlic washed over me, and then a man yanked the hood off. Yuri Semenov stared at me, his beady brown eyes boring into mine. Behind him was Alexi Marino, the fucking traitor.
“Beautiful Ginevra,” Yuri whispered. “How are you feeling?”
I didn’t bother to answer, turning my head away from him.
He slapped me, the hard metal of his rings cutting into my cheekbone. “Don’t be disrespectful, Ginevra.”
When I glared at him, he smiled. “I’m going to break you, you know. By the time I’m done, you’ll be begging me to kill you.”
He traced a finger down my face, digging into the bruise blooming where he’d slapped me earlier. “Shall we start?”
I looked around the warehouse. Daylight slipped in through giant skylights on the roof, foggy with dirt and grime. Wooden crates filled the warehouse, stacked in haphazard piles, making it impossible for me to see much further than the corner where they’d placed me.
Yuri stood before me, his scarred face looming heavily as I waited for his next move. The hulking giant who’d taken me to the restroom before stood to his left, and two smaller men to his right. All wore tattoos with sigils of Russian gangs on their hands.
I was so fucked.
“You know they’ll pay good money to get me back.”
Yuri laughed. “I don’t give a shit. Your men will waste days fighting with Nikolai, searching his warehouses and fighting with his soldiers, before they realize this has nothing to do with him. I want you to suffer, Ginevra, and then I want you to die.”
Yep, completely fucked.
“After your father interrupted that auction, I paid the price in blood. Nikolai doesn’t tolerate failure. I’ve worked for years to earn my place by his side so I could annihilate him. Your father is going to declare war on him, and they’re going to destroy each other while I cut you to ribbons.”
Alexi smiled and stepped forward, running a finger down my cheek. “You took off for a goddamned decade, and the moment you showed your face again, you started sticking your nose in shit that’s none of your business.”
Alexi, too, had paid a heavy price when I was kidnapped—kidnapped the first time,I corrected myself. Twice in a lifetime was enough. I was so fucking done with this bullshit. I allowed myself a moment to admire the plan.
While my father was distracted, Alexi and Yuri would exact their revenge. The streets would run with both Italian and Russian blood, costing my father and the Bratva money and loyalty. A gang war in Yorkfield would be bad for everyone, bad for business, and bad for all of the innocent bystanders who’d get caught up in it. It’d allow some of the smaller groups, the Nigerians and the Chinese, to gain a foothold as Papà and Nikolai burned each other to the ground.
Yuri slapped my face again. “No daydreaming, bitch. I want you present for every moment of this.” He unrolled a cloth toolholder, revealing knives, pliers, and a number of other devices I recognized from watching interrogations as a child. He rubbed his hands together, maniacal glee rolling off of his shoulders as he contemplated the best way to torture me. “Don’t worry, sweet Ginevra. I’ll keep you alive for the next few days, at least. I find that sliver of hope, as a prisoner prays for rescue, for escape, makes the pain that much more delicious.”
He drew out a slender knife, and I couldn’t hold back the visceral fear that shot through me. Interrogations go two ways: the first is brutal, for the weakest prisoners—sharp pain to scare the shit out of them until they’re willing to tell you what you want to stop their suffering or save their lives. The second way is slow and drawn out. The pain isn’t about extracting information. It’s about slowly tearing down the walls we all build around ourselves, carefully removing the bricks in our defenses, until the interrogator holds us in the palm of their hand.
The latter style, that’s where Yuri was going. He was going to take this slow and easy, until there was nothing left of me, nothing left of the strong and powerful Ginevra I’d spent the last ten years building. A decade of therapy had built defenses to protect me from the aftermath of kidnapping, but not the defiance and strength to face it again.
Yuri’s face was almost kind as he lovingly stroked my face with the dull side of the blade. He traced it down my neck and across my collarbone before pushing the sleeves of my dress down, baring my shoulders and my breasts to his gaze. His eyes roamed over me, thoughtful and reflective. I shivered, terror streaking through me as I imagined what he was about to do to me, along with fierce determination not to let him know I was ready to piss my pants in fear.
