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“What?”
Maximoff sighed, and I wondered if he was frustrated by the fact that neither Marcel nor I knew what the hell we were doing.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out his self-phone. He shot off a text without taking his eyes off me. “Ever since the O’Connors took his wife, Marco Blanchi has been flushing them out. I suspect that that is why Patty decided to run for mayor. Much harder to kill someone with the trappings of public office.”
I swallowed at the Blanchi name.
“I suspect that Blanchi will know where he is holding Annie.”
“Aren’t you mortal enemies? What makes you think that he will help?”
Maximoff snorted. “That was the old Bratva. Besides,” he said, turning his attention back to his phone, “Marco owes me.”
I wondered what Maximoff had done that had put Marco Blanchi in his back pocket. It didn’t matter. If I had to align myself with these devils to get Annie back, I would.
“What do we do in the meantime?” Marcel asked.
I jumped in more worried about Annie than what my role was supposed to be in all of this. “How long is this going to take?” I asked. There was a tinge of desperation in my voice as I spoke. “I don’t want to get her other ear in the mail.” The thought nearly made me lose the little bit of breakfast that I had eaten.
Maximoff turned his attention to Marcel, ignoring my words. “I’m assuming that you have some sort of connection to the media?”
Marcel nodded. His face had paled at my last remark, and I knew that he was seconds away from breaking down. But he kept it together, which I appreciated. My relationship with Marcel had been strained in recent months, but I would never forget that when shit hit the fan, he stuck by my side. “What do you need?” he asked Maximoff.
He’d slipped into his business mode, which made me feel better.
“Call a press conference,” Maximoff ordered. He turned his attention to me. “You are going to pretend to concede.”
“I am going to concede.” If I did, it was an all but assured victory for O’Connor. There would be no one left to challenge him.
Maximoff shook his head. “You aren’t going to concede. You are just going to make it seem like you are.”
“And why is that?” The idea of playing this game when there was so much on the line made me wonder if it was the smartest move they could be making. I was not a gambler by nature. I was too methodical for that. I made things happen. I didn’t rely on luck. But now, I was even more nervous because if this goes wrong, I had no doubt that O’Connors will kill Annie.
Maximoff reached out and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. His eyes, which reminded me of Annie, were stern as he looked at me. “I need you to buy us enough time to find Annie. Can you do that?”
He was talking to me like I was a small child, but it was oddly comforting. The idea of having a plan helped me to focus my mind. “Do whatever you need to,” I said. “And I’ll buy us the time we need.”
Maximoff nodded, and for a moment, I felt an odd connection with him.
We were going to get Annie back. We had to.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
My mouth was as dry as sand, and the throbbing in my ear had turned to a burning pain. I worried that the cut was going to get infected. Patty O’Connor had left me alone in the room, tied to a chair, for what had to be hours.
The sun that had been streaming in through one of the dirty windows had set long ago, and I tried not to shiver as I thought about the darkness.
After Patty O’Connor had sliced off a piece of my ear, he’d left me tied to the chair. He hadn’t been back since, which I found insulting, but was also grateful for. If he had known who I really was, who my father was, he wouldn’t have left me alone.
After all, Maximoff Ivanov would never not teach his daughter how to get out of a sticky situation. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy to escape my bindings as it had been in my training.
Hours had passed since O’Connor had left me, and in that time, I’d tried to get out of the handcuffs around my wrists, but I hadn’t been able to slip free. Now, the skin on my wrists was raw, and blood had made them slick.
“Come on,” I muttered to myself pulling against the handcuffs. They were still too tight around me to allow me to pull my wrists out, and I nearly cried out of the pain and sheer exhaustion. “Keep it together,” I told myself.
From a young age, my father had taught me how to survive a situation like this, and I knew that what came next was going to be immensely painful, but it was the only way that I was going to be able to escape.
And I needed to escape. There was no telling what O’Connor was going to do to me when he came back. He’d already cut me, and something told me that he would do worse if he didn’t get what he wanted. I didn’t want him to get anything he wanted.
