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“I don’t want you to touch me, though.” I tugged at my hand he held again, and his fingers squeezed mine, his thumb rubbing small circles inside the palm of my hand.
“Might not, but I’m not letting go.”
“Let go,” Stone and I said at the same time.
“You suck at parties, the both of ya.” Mordy released my hand, shoving his fingers in the pockets of his dress pants. He nodded in the distance. A glossy black SUV pulled just in sight and the door swung open.
“Fuck! It’s a set up! Get her to the car, Mordicus!” Stone ordered, dashing behind a nearby parked car before he drew his guns.
This time I willingly held my hand out for Mordy, and he shook his head. “No time for it, lass, but later,” he said in a hurried manner, stepping in front of me and pulled his gun out. “Stay behind me at all costs and if they shoot my arse, fecking run as fast as you can.”
My heartbeat pounded in my head as I nodded frantically, bolting behind him, and then he led us to our hiding spot, a truck parked broadside.
“Andrei, what brings you so far away from home?” Stone shouted, but somehow even with such volume, his voice seemed calm.
“You have something of ours.” An almost familiar voice called to him.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You do and you wanted Mikahlov to turn into akrysa. He isn’t a rat, he kills them just as any of us should.” The man’s voice answered him. “If you wanted answers, you should have come to us.”
“Now why would we do that?” Stone asked.
Mordy pulled me against his back and although I didn’t want to touch him, I didn’t protest. This might be my first standoff, but I was pretty sure you didn’t piss off the person keeping you safe.
“Because if you would have come to us, we could have made a deal.”
“We already have a deal, Andrei.”
“That we do, Stone, but mydvoyurodnyy bratis no rat and he would never sell out family.”
“We didn’t want your cousin to sell you out, we needed info. So, maybe you want to tell me yourself why they want the girl?”
“Eh. We were going to wait until we found her, but…yeah, we’ll still wait.”
“We’ll give you a ten percent pay increase for the next two shipments.” Mordy stood after shoving me behind a tire and then he walked out into the open, his gun pointed in the direction of the voice. He was going to get himself killed, which shouldn’t bother me, but somewhere deep inside, it did. Maybe it was the stress of the situation or the fact he was the only one near to keep me alive, but it was important to me if he died right now.
“Ah, Mordicus, I wasn’t aware you were with us.”
“Aye, someone has to be the voice of reason.” Mordy took a step forward. A small giggle escaped my lips and my hands shot up lightning fast to cover my mouth. I prayed no one heard me. If they did, all three of us might die here today.
“You’re a lot of things, Mordicus, but the voice of reason is not one of them,” Stone shouted in our direction.
“That’s where you’re wrong today, Stone. I’ll take his offer, and you all better be good for it.”
“We’re good for it.” Mordy took another step away from me and then another, until I wasn’t able to see him anymore.Shit!My eyes erratically scanned the area for the next safe place to run, but there weren’t many choices. Mordy hadn’t told me to run if he left me, but only to do so if he was being shot at. His crazy ass leaving me behind was enough for me to kick it into high gear and get the fuck out of dodge, but my feet didn’t move. It was so incredibly dumb to stay where I was, but I needed to hear what the man had to say. There was something so familiar about his almost nonexistent accent.
"She’s?????.” My mind raced trying to figure out what the word he said meant. Shit, I knew I should have taken on a second language as a minor. Technically to keep up with all of these men’s languages I would have needed to learn a third, but who was counting?
Mordy scoffed. “Prove it.”
“I don’t have to, she’ll come out on her own soon.” His voice leveled out and there was very little trace of the accent left in his words. My throat was suddenly drier than it was after I woke up from a five-day drinking binge. Sweat beaded down my temples and panic thrummed through every cell in my body. “C’mon out, Regina.”
“Andy?” I whispered to myself. It couldn’t be him. Could it? Andy was the only cousin on my dad’s side I was ever allowed to meet or at least he was the only one I remembered. I hadn’t seen him for a good six years, but the Andy I knew wouldn’t hurt a flea; much less be at a meeting that required guns and hiding from said guns. The two of us had lost touch at some point, but I didn’t think anything of it. I figured he was just as busy with schoolwork as I was.
“Regina Gene Angeloff, it’s time you knew the truth. I know you’re here, I watched Stone finger bang you last night until I figured out that was what he was doing. You can do better than him. You deserve more.” Heat climbed up my face and to say I was confused would be the biggest understatement of the century.
Mom’s last name was Wright, same as all my siblings and my own. She’d given me her maiden name at birth and Dad hanging around wasn’t a high possibility, so I didn’t mind not having the last name of a man I never knew. This was a fact I never questioned a whole lot because Mom was a fountain of knowledge. She was notorious for broadcasting everything she knew. She was the oversharer of the family and spewed what she knew to any of us kids any chance when we would listen. Now more than ever I wished I’d paid her more mind.
