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My phone buzzes. I don’t want to answer it, but I have a feeling this one is important.
I glance over my shoulder to check on Clara again before I press the phone to my ear. “The hell do you want?”
“You have five minutes to bring her back.”
I scoff. “Right. What makes you think I have her?”
“Don’t play your fucking games with me, boy!” Oleg’s voice roars over the phone. I catch Clara wincing in the corner of my eye. “Bring! The bitch! Back!”
I take a deep, slow breath, then click my tongue. “Tsk tsk,Otets. Such language. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Ty mertvyy sukin syn?—”
“You’re breaking up. Try again later.” I hang up and drop the phone back into the center console.
Pavel steals a quick glance at me, then at the rearview mirror. “Do youhaveto poke the bear?”
“I’d prefer to choke him, but I do what I can with what I’ve got.”
He whips a hard left to avoid a pile of boulders; the last-second move successfully lures another Hummer into the rocks and forces the two flanking it to risk rolling with even sharper turns.
More bullets pepper the backside of the Rezvani.
I’m ready to risk leaning back out again and shooting out the remaining Hummers, when we’re suddenly surrounded by a blinding flash of dozens of headlights. Other Rezvanis, more Hummers, and a few Jeeps roll into view and start circling the chase to slow everyone down. By the time the full ring forms, both Pavel and our pursuers have no choice but to skid to a stop.
My Bratva has arrived.
I don’t jump out of the vehicle just yet. I simply sit here and enjoy the sounds of my men shouting commands and aiming their weapons at what’s left of Oleg’s crew. Metal screeches and doors slam, and it’s the sound of fists hitting flesh that cues me to go ahead and join the fray.
“Stay here,” I tell Clara. She nods.
I haven’t put the gun away this whole time, and I don’t plan to until we’re safe back at the villa. It feels heavy in my hand as I step out and calmly saunter over to the cluster of Zakrevsky Senior men who are now on their knees with hands on top of their heads, staring down dozens of barrels aimed at them. My men clear a spot for me, and I cock a brow at our new captives.
“Gentlemen.” I survey them, their downcast heads, their sullen grimaces. “I have only one question to ask you. Which of you helped Oleg hurt my woman?”
No one answers. Everyone just stares at the dirt.
I cock my gun for good measure and casually aim it at the ground right in front of them. “I won’t ask again. Who here stood by and allowed that bastard to injure andscarClara Everett?”
“We had nothing to do with that!” One man, older and probably in his fifties, spits at the dirt and snarls at me. “She was branded, nothing else.Pakhanrefused to let us touch her.”
That answers a lot of questions at once.
Unfortunately for these bastards, no answer would have saved them.
I nod to one of myvors, who grabs the man who spoke by the back of his shirt and yanks him up to face me.
“And you just stood by?” I growl. “Let him brand her like an animal?”
The man’s face twists in a lewd smirk. “No. I held the bitch down while he did it. Only way I figured he’d let me get a feel. Why not? That’s what slaves are good for.”
I return his smirk. “You know what you’re good for?”
The blast of my gun is muted only by his skull and the wet splattering of blood and brains on the sand.
“Fertilizer.”
When I slowly turn, I’m met with a few more fearful gazes from Oleg’s men who didn’t count on me being so cruel. Prisoners of war are to be kept safe, right?
