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NATASHA
Bang! Pop!
I scream, the sound muffled by the duct tape slapped over my mouth. Luka is here. He came to save us.
But I couldn’t save him.
I jerk back and forth in my chair, a swirl of frustration, panic, and fear winding around my heart. My chest shudders from the pent-up sobs that are unable to erupt just as another gunshot fires. I catch Tori’s hard stare and she shakes her head.
That makes my stomach plummet into my shoes. She’s quite possibly one of the most badass bitches I’ve ever met, and if she feels helpless, then we must really be fucked.
The man standing between us smacks me across the face with his gun. A sharp pain explodes down the side of my face, my cheek feeling as if someone lit a match and set my flesh ablaze. “Enough,” he yells. “Or I’ll do to you what I did to Boris.”
Tears sting my eyes when my gaze drops to the floor where Boris lies. Dmitri was in the middle of beating him senseless when Tori and I were dragged in here earlier.
I blink fast to hold them at bay but it’s useless. I cry in tortured silence. My nose clogs, and it’s hard for me to breathe. Tears flow over the duct tape slapped across my lips that keeps my tormented thoughts silenced.
How ironic.
I’d been blind for so long, viewing my world through rose-colored glasses that camouflaged the darkness lurking in all corners. I had the ability to speak but never knew the questions to ask.
Now I can finally see. My new normal is to live with the knowledge and fear that evil hovers over me at every turn, and at this moment, I can’t utter a single word that will tell me who, what, where, and when…and most importantly, why.
Before, I never asked the questions because I didn’t know they needed to be answered. Now I am buried by questions, what-ifs, and threats, and I can’t articulate a single one.
I’m taped to a chair, powerless to stop what happens outside of this room, helpless against whatever danger is about to be hurled at me and Tori. I am sick to death of being a damsel!
Death.
Dammit.
I can’t think like that. I won’t.
I dig my fingernails into the sides of the wooden chair, short, sharp gasps of air expelling through my nose. My ankles are taped together, and so are my wrists behind the back of the chair.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been completely out of control of my life. Today is shaping up to be the climax of my struggle.
Run off the road by that crazy bastard Dmitri, knocked unconscious, kidnapped, restrained, threatened…and all because my father made moves without thinking…or caring…about consequences that might hurt his family.
He is the reason why I am strapped to this damn chair, the reason why I could end up dead by lunchtime.
He’s also the reason why I fell in love with Luka.
A pang assaults my chest.
Luka.
A war wages in my mind as I sit here, trapped. I am torn between hating my father for ruining my life as I knew it, and forgiving him for opening my eyes and my heart to a new life I never thought I wanted or needed.
But those gunshots tell me my new life might well be over. Gone so fast, it’s like it was more a figment of my twisted imagination rather than any sliver of reality.
I count to ten, grasping for calm.
We never got to Valentina. We couldn’t save her.
I can’t save Luka.
And I can’t save myself.
