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I pulled my legs up and kicked him in the chest, knocking him onto his ass on the ancient linoleum floor. He stood up swearing, trying to stanch the blood from his broken nose. At least I hoped it was broken.
I expected fierce retaliation and tensed to fight until he killed me, because I would have rather died than have him do what he wanted. Instead, he backed toward the door, that smile that frightening smile on his face. It was all the worse now with blood dripping down his chin like he’d just torn a living creature apart with his teeth.
“You might change your mind if you get a little hungrier,” he said, reaching behind him for the door handle.
As angry and, heartbroken and scared as I was, my traitorous stomach growled at the mere mention of food. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. Was it before the explosion? Maybe a few crackers in the hospital? Was Demian really planning to starve me if I didn’t give in to his sick demands?
With a laugh, he left the room, slamming the door shut after he was out.
My head fell back, and I kicked futilely at the lumpy mattress. I might just end up starving to death because no one was coming to save me. I was nothing to anyone. My usefulness had run its course. Closing my eyes tight against the tears that threatened to flow, I imagined Roman meeting up with the Morozovs to try to salvage the mission to bring down my father.
Was any of our time together real? Were any of the sweet words he’d spoken the truth?
Chapter 27 - Roman
A day went by that felt like ten. I was surprised I had any hair left on my head from tearing out the short strands from worry and the maddening lack of news. The new hotel I had chosen on the outskirts of Miami should have had a path worn in the carpet from all my restless pacing.
Waiting sucked, and it felt like it was killing me slowly, by inches. Every minute that went without any new information was like a razor cut. I didn’t want to sit in this desolate room and stair out over the highway, wondering if anyone in any of the other highrise buildings was as desperate as I was to act. I needed to do something. But what?
I still had no idea where Karine was or if she’d even take kindly to seeing me again if I did.
If she knew the truth by now, and she must, would it be selfish to want to apologize to her? There was no use in explaining because I had gone into our marriage with eyes wide open. I’d reveled in the idea of crushing her heart, gone out of my way to make her fall in love with me.
And in the end, she’d made me fall in love with her, by her simple kindness, her unwavering spirit. I could have come up with a thousand good qualities to describe my wife, and I had been doing just that in the twenty-four hours since she went missing.
I had ignored the last few calls from Oleg, mostly because I didn’t know what to say. The mission as we’d set forth was over. I had failed. Perhaps I should have cared more, since all I’d wanted from such a young age was a father to be proud of me. All I could think about was Karine.
She’d somehow broken down every last one of my barriers. From viewing her as no different than her father and wanting to toss her on the pyre of my revenge, to pacing back and forth in a lonely hotel room with an ache in my chest that only she could heal.
My phone rang from the desk near the window and I jumped for it, all the while steeling myself for disappointment. Evelina had been calling me with updates every hour or so, and they were all the same. No news, no leads, no sightings. Karine had disappeared off the face of the earth.
“I think we have a location,” Evelina said.
I was so prepared for it to be nothing that it took me a second to register the words. “You do?” I asked, my heart hammering double time. So much for not getting my hopes up.
“There’s a house about an hour northwest of the city,” she said. “I think it’s one of their safe houses. Which means she’s with the Drygas, Roman.”
This made my stomach twist, but I still didn’t care who she was with. I needed to know she was all right. That was the minimum. Getting her to speak to me again was more than I could hope for but I still did.
“I’ll tell you where to meet us,” Evelina continued. “We can set up a perimeter and devise a plan. Once we know if she’s really there we can figure out what to do next.” She paused. “If anything.”
I could tell she was still confused about why I wanted to find Karine, more so now that she might be with her family. But she was still helping out and I was grateful. Even if Oleg didn’t want anything to do with me after this, I had made some true friends in my half-siblings.
“Text me the address and I’ll meet you there.”
“Not until you promise you’re going to wait for us. By that I mean, promise you won’t do anything stupid,” she said.
“I won’t,” I lied. I had no time for perimeters or plans. I had acquired a new gun. That was all I needed.
With a sigh, Evelina ended the call. I held my breath, wondering if she’d force my hand to do things their way. But a few seconds later, the address came through. I grabbed the car keys and my gun and headed out, not bothering to check out of the hotel. Every moment counted and the long drive out through the middle of nowhere seemed to take ages.
It was a nightmare not letting my foot press the gas pedal to the floor, not daring to tempt fate and get pulled over when I was so close. When I got near the address Evelina sent me, my original plan of casing the neighborhood went out the window.
There was no neighborhood, just a loose cluster of old houses on big, poorly maintained lots in the middle of the semi-rural area. I parked the car about half a mile from the house Karine was supposedly in and cut through the big, overgrown yard of the closest neighbor.
I double-checked the map on my phone to make sure I was behind the right place, then stood behind a tall privacy fence, deciding what to do. The house was a squat rectangle, almost like its architectural inspiration had been a trailer. Four tiny windows lined up in a row along the back wall, the dirty beige stucco stained near the bushes that looked like they were hanging on for dear life from lack of watering. It was clear no one lived in the place full time, and I kept watching, looking for any sign of life now to prove that Evelina’s intel was correct.
Curtains hung in every window, all of them half open, but not a single person walked past for the ten minutes I stood there, my patience running out. Then I noticed the air conditioning unit in one of the windows was chugging along at high speed. Someone was there. Didn’t mean it was Karine, but if the place was vacant, the air wouldn’t be running.
