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My heart nearly burst for him, but we had to keep moving.
We went down the hall until we reached a double metal door. Ryker pushed it open, and we found cells lining the prison inside. Some luck had made me keep the keychain from the guard, and I looked in every cell until I found my kings.
I couldn’t believe it was them at first because they were so ghostly, like apparitions instead of men. I had to blink twice to convince myself that they were real.
“Our little queen!” Kingston called out as I unlocked the cell door. “Our beautiful perfect fucking queen.”
He stood on shaky legs and reached for me, pulled me into his arms, and pressed my face against his chest. His heart was beating so loud I could feel it throbbing there, and it lulled me into love and peace with each thud. Archer and Valen joined us in a group hug, resting their heads on me and whispering about how much they loved me and missed me when I was apart from them.
“Have you seen Amara?” I asked. “Or Ivan?”
“No, neither of them have been down here,” Valen replied. “We haven’t heard anyone talk about them, either.”
“We have to go,” Ryker said from the cell door where he stood guard. “I can hear them coming!”
“Can you all walk?” I asked, assessing them one by one as I stood back. “Are you okay?”
“I’m pretty sure we can walk, but I don’t know if we’re okay,” Archer said, and for once, there was zero trace of sexual innuendo present in his words. He was dull, his shine had been scratched and scuffed, and his personality had been dimmed by the torture in here.
“Let’s go. We’ll find a way to get out of here once we’re back in cell range,” I said. “That is if any of you still have your cell phone.”
Mine had been taken when we’d been separated, Maksim claiming I could look up too many things about his family if I kept it in my possession. In reality, I would have used it to ask for help, but Maksim was so self-centered he couldn’t see that.
“I don’t think they left us with ours,” Kingston said with a shrug. “We’ll make do. We’ll steal a car and get back to civilization.”
We left the cell and heard voices coming from one direction, so we went in the other. I heard voices calling out to us, and I began to unlock the doors of prisoners around us. There were so many, though, and we didn’t have time for each one of them. I handed the keys to the nearest woman and said, “Please help these people.”
She smiled and nodded and set straight to work, releasing other prisoners with us. The crowd and confusion would help us escape, I was practical more than altruistic, but it still felt good to help them out of there.
We ran ahead of everyone else, winding through hallways under the villa. We thought we were lost when the woman from the cells caught up to us.
“This way,” she said in a French accent. “Follow me. We can escape together.”
We didn’t have much of a choice, so we did. She led us down one last, long, narrow corridor that had barely any lights illuminating the way. She could have been leading us right back into a trap for all we knew, but I had faith. I had to. It was all that was left at this point.
With luck or the blessings of whatever god or goddess I’d prayed to earlier, we found our escape. The woman opened a final hatch at the end of the corridor, and we found ourselves emerging from a staircase in the middle of a forested area.
“These used to be used for illicit activities if you know what I mean,” she said and raised her brows. “Only then they were sneaking bawdy women into the villa to entertain the lords.”
“Thank god for horny old-timey men!” I exclaimed. “We should still move, though. More prisoners and guards are going to pop up, and they’ll be combing the countryside looking for us.”
“You can follow me,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. My name is Selene, and I run one of the most successful foundations in Europe. I’ve been working to dismantle Ilya’s trafficking ring for years, but he caught me about a week ago and brought me here.”
“You’re with the government?” I asked.
“No, we have money,” she smiled and began to move through the trees. “Enough money to have a team on standby, although if you hadn’t shown up, they would be invading the villa in the next three days. That would have spooked Ilya’s clients and lost us very valuable information.”
“Do you know who I am?” I asked as we walked.
“I do,” she said with a warm smile. She had chestnut hair that hung down her back in a thick braid. It was streaked with silver grey, and she had kind eyes. She was older, beautiful, and elegant. Somebody who was best suited to sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe in Paris. “You’re Ivan Popolov’s biological daughter, and you are impressive, you know. Your work with The Organization in your town was most amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, not feeling very amazing at the moment. Every time I secretly celebrated being free and being with my Kings, the horrible thing I’d done with Avery flashed through my head like a neon sign telling everyone the truth of who I was. A deprived, disgusting creature who would let her own sister—
I couldn’t even finish my thought. It filled me with such shame.
We walked for a few more minutes, and I could hear people yelling at each other in the woods behind us. They were tracking us now, but hopefully, the other prisoners were obscuring our footprints as we all spread out.
Finally, we reached a clearing in the woods with a small tent and a large military-style helicopter sitting in the center.
