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“Thank you.” My throat was parched, so I took the drink and downed it in one go. “What is this place?” I couldn’t imagine Kolev going around kidnapping this many women to strong-arm his competitors into business deals.
She sat next to me on the cold concrete floor. “Pokol.”
“What?”
“Hell. This is hell.”
Just as I was about to ask her to elaborate, the door opened. Like mice, all the girls scattered toward the farthest end of the room. Given the small space, there wasn’t really anywhere they could hide.
Baldy, the man I’d seen with Kolev, entered. His predatory eyes roamed over us as if he was choosing from a shelf of canned soup.
I felt like throwing up, but this was not the time to draw attention to myself.
His eyes landed on a shivering redhead. He barked something in a language I didn’t understand. It was Slavic, though, some words resembling Russian. The girls surrounding the redhead moved away from her as if she had the plague.
“No!” the girl screamed, while frantically shaking her head.
He beckoned her to come to him, but she didn’t move from her spot.
My inner rebel awoke, seething. I pushed myself up onto my wobbly feet.
“Hey, Dickhead!” I yelled. “Let her go.”
I made my way to the girl while thinking of some plan to haul her back. Before I could make a move, Baldy raised some kind of stick he’d been holding.
My heart dropped. A cattle prod? The asshole actually walked around with that thing? The crackling sound coming from the device didn’t deter me, however. Viking had trained me to disarm assholes like Baldy, who believed they were superior to a woman just because they were bigger.
The redhead jumped behind me. Now if I could only get my hands on the cattle prod. Two more men stormed in and surrounded me. Crap. I should’ve seen that coming.
When they tried to pass me to get to the girl, I took down the first one with a kick. My eyes stayed glued to the other one. I realized my mistake the moment the electric current zapped through me. I dropped to the floor, arms flailing, trying to keep my breakfast in my stomach. Baldy towered over me with a stupid grin on his face.
“You’re next,” he snarled.
The man who was dragging away the crying girl frowned at him. “She’s Romanov’s. Kolev said not to touch her.”
Baldy scoffed. “Yet,” he said. “He said not to touch her yet.” He gave me one more leering look before he left.
The moment the men were gone, a hush fell over the room. I gritted my teeth and slowly tried to get to my feet.
An arm wrapped around me to help me up. It was Freckles.
“That was stupid,” she chided me.
“I’m starting to get that.” She pulled me up and propped me against the wall.
“You can’t save her,” she said. “No one can.”
The despair in her voice tugged at my heart. Not all that long ago, I’d felt as lost and alone as she sounded.
“I’m Katya,” I introduced myself.
“Anna.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from around here.” I heard faint English accents and foreign languages all around me.
“I’m from Hungary. All the girls here are from Eastern Europe.” Her eyes turned steely. “I came to the U.S. to work as a nanny. That was two weeks ago.”
She didn’t say more, nor did she have to. I was actually glad she didn’t expand. I didn’t want the mental picture of what was about to happen to me and these girls.
