Page 21 of Sinful Claim


Font Size:  

I hardly rememberanything after we arrived at the hotel. I collapsed into the first bed I saw, still in my clothes from the flight. Usually, this is a practice I would find disgusting and unhygienic, but there’s nobody here who is about to criticize me for it.

Faye and I both sleep for the next eight hours, waking up in the middle of the day. The sun shines through the tiny slits between the blackout blinds, which wouldn’t bother me if I were back in my own bed at home. Something about the faintest bit of sunlight makes me feel infringed upon this morning, and it doesn’t take long for me to remember why.

I never thought I’d waste a city like Tokyo on business only. So far, it’s the only reason I’ve come here. I always planned on taking my future wife to a city like this, sparing no expense on her happiness and refusing to worry about work just for a little while. If I had a wife, she sure as hell wouldn’t come on a business trip with me, no matter where I was going. It’s far too dangerous. If Faye was my wife and not a fugitive, I would be far more concerned for her safety. Just the fact that she might have been seen with me already has me concerned about her but leaving her at home wasn’t an option.

I wake up before she does, and I watch her for a little while as she lies motionless on the other side of the bed. She didn’t want to come under the blankets with me, but she chose to sleep next to me even when she had other options. This strikes me as a strange choice, and it’s been hard to read her since I met her.

If she wanted to fuck me, she more than could have by now. Me inviting her into the bed was more of a courtesy – she wouldn’t ever need an invitation for such a thing, and I’m certain that most men would agree. Why would she choose to share space with me without getting the full benefit? Is she just testing the waters?

Wondering about her motivations feels stupid and irresponsible when I know that my brother could be anywhere within ten miles of us. Adam has been making appearances in all of my dreams since the day he went missing. Waking up to find him gone feels just as disorienting as waking up in the US for the first time. I feel like I should be fighting harder for him, but I’ve already flown to another country at a moment’s notice on theassumptionthat he’s here. I’m doing as much as I can with the information that I have, but I won’t feel like I’ve done enough until he’s back safe at home.

Whether I can accomplish that is another story, and every hour that goes by without new information feels like wasted time. I’m frustrated with my men for not being able to locate Grisha or Adam without uncertainty, and I’m certain that they’d be upset to know that I’m dissatisfied with them.

I open the blinds to look down at the city below us, watching all the people scurrying to their jobs and obligations. For a moment, I wonder what kinds of horrible things could be weighing ontheirminds. Do they have missing siblings? Do they owe money to someone who wants to kill them? Do they have no direction in life while they wander these streets? I try to be open-minded and empathetic, but it’s hard to do when I could lose my only brother. I doubt anybody that I can see right now is worrying about anything that scary.

Faye begins to turn over when I receive a phone call.

The number belongs to Adam’s phone, but I’m no longer naïve to the reality that the person on the other line will not be my brother. I need to view it as a step toward finding him, but Grisha would probably only be bold enough to call if he knew he was ahead of the game again.

“What the fuck do you want, Grisha?”

He chuckles on the other end, his nasal tone overtaking any credibility he had before. “You think you’re going to get what you want by following me?”

How the fuck does he already know we’re here? We just landed a handful of hours ago!

“It doesn’t matter what I think until I have your head on a spike out in my front yard,” I reply, my voice deepening with anger.

I see Faye’s eyes pop open when she hears my tone, and she curls up into herself as she listens intently for more details.

“You need to leave the country before sunset, or I’ll take his entire arm. Tell him, Adam!” Grisha says, shouting back at my brother who I can hear crying in the background.

Any shred of doubt that I had that Grisha was torturing my brother dissolves as soon as I hear his voice. I’ve never heard him cry like that before, but I know it’s him.

Now I have a choice to make, and I have very little time to make it. I can’t trust Grisha not to hurt my brother, but he’s clearly nervous about having me so close to him. If I can buy us more time to pinpoint his location, we might have a better shot at saving Adam.

After coming all this way on such a long flight, I’m angry to be told to leave so quickly. However, I have to make sure I transcend all of Grisha’s attempts to exhaust and frustrate me. If he gets me to the brink of insanity by playing these games, he’ll know the second it happens that he’s won.

12

Faye

“Get up, we’re leaving.”

My heart sinks into my stomach as I scan his face for sarcasm and find none.

“What do you mean? Where are we going? We just got here!” I whine, dragging myself up out of bed and toward the clothes I packed.

“The guy who kidnapped my brother knows we’re here, and he’s threatening to hurt him if we don’t leave immediately,” Aleksander replies angrily. He hadn’t unpacked anything since we arrived, so he just picks up his suitcase and begins to haul it towards the door.

I see him pick up the pace, and I can recognize his disposition as something I don’t want to fuck with. I’ve seen men angry like this before. “But how does he even know you’re here? How is he going to know if you’ve left?”

“I have no idea, but we don’t have time to figure it out yet. He said we have to be gone by sunset, and if he already knows that we’re here, then he’ll know for damn sure if we don’t leave on his terms. I have no fucking clue how he does it, but he’s managed to get ahead of me multiple times now. It’s making me fucking insane.”

I don’t want to talk to him when he’s like this. I hate the way men get when they’re enraged, and it seems like Aleksander is moments away from enragement. The wrong question from me could set him off, and I would have no idea how to navigate such an event.

Cody was a pussy whenever he was upset about something. He’d cry a lot, and at first, I found it endearing. After a year of seeing him cry over nothing, it became a lot more difficult to want to see him connect to his “emotional side”. I suppose I’d rather see Aleksander angry than crying about this. If he were crying, I would be terrified. I would be positive that he had no idea what to do and could take no responsibility for the situation.

“I need to call for another plane. I think we might have to fly commercial if it takes too long to get a private plane ready. I can’t risk leaving after dark. I don’t know how closely he’s watching us.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like