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Sergei’s eyes flashed as he stalked up to stand beside Gregor, holding up a thumb drive. “I have a copy of your email correspondences on the subject. Including who you had the porn made for.”
Panic flooded Vasily’s expression and he lunged up, one hand under his jacket as he clawed for the thumb drive with the other. “Give me that! Give me—”
“They kept records of everything,” Sergei growled, sounding sick with disgust. “You didn’t want them taken out because they were filming child porn. You wanted them taken out because they tried to blackmail you.”
Vasily was still trying to get at the thumb drive. He pulled out his pistol and pointed it at Sergei. “Give that to me now!”
“It’s too late,” Sergei replied flatly, staring him down. “I already forwarded what I found to every single brother. You arefinished, Vasily. No one will accept your leadership after this.”
I glanced down to where Gregor was still picking the lock on his manacles. They were almost off. One side finally clicked open and he slipped his wrist free, then latched both sides onto one wrist. The clicking of metal was hidden under Vasily’s shouting.
“This is mutiny!” Vasily screeched. He pointed the gun at Gregor, at Sergei, then waved it around at the others, who were checking their phones and starting to respond to what they found. “You owe me obedience.”
Then it hit me what Vasily had been blackmailed with. What had made Sergei so disgusted, and the old man so afraid. I was so furious and disgusted myself that I found my voice. “They found out that they were making those films foryou, didn’t they?”
He screamed and pointed his pistol at me.
Gregor moved like lightning. He grabbed the slide and yanked the pistol out of his boss’s bony fingers entirely. His other fist slammed straight into Vasily’s face.
He fell back into his chair with blood streaming from his nose and his eyes wide with shock. “Kill him…he’s loose…kill him!” he gurgled.
Nobody around us fired. I realized after a second that there weren’t any guns trained on us anymore. The gunmen were checking their phones too.
“You’re a pedophile,” Gregor spat as Vasily hid his face with trembling hands. “That’s why you’re willing to kill kids to hide the truth. That’s why you tried to kill me. Because you were that scared that I would find out frommy daughter.”
Gregor grabbed Vasily by the collar, lifting him off his feet as his eyes rolled in terror. I wondered if he was considering blowing his brains over the table right then and there, and covered Michelle’s eyes just in case. But no shot came.
Gregor handed the pistol to Sergei instead and loomed over Vasily, who looked ready to shit himself. “Well, you were right to be scared, but not just because of me. Did you really think we would take finding out what you are, and what you’ve been doing, any better than your family did? I’m assuming that’s why they kicked you out of their lives. What did you do, start chasing your grandkids?”
“Someone shut him up,” Vasily sobbed. “Shoot him, shoot him!”
Nobody moved.
“Put him downstairs in the cage until we figure out what to do with him,” Gregor said, sounding exhausted. I knew I would feel just the same as soon as the adrenaline wore off.
I at the old man who had caused so much misery just so he could get his perverse nut and saw he was blubbering silently. Fear? Self-pity? It didn’t matter. He was powerless now,
“It’s okay, baby,” I told Michelle, stroking her hair. “Nobody’s going to let the bad man hurt us.”
She relaxed a little in my arms. Meanwhile, Gregor stood like a bulwark between us and the ruined former leader, who had no more words for any of it. Two of the men who had captured us walked over grimly to escort him away.
Only when the door closed behind them did Gregor turn to us, folding both of us into a firm hug that seemed to squeeze all the chill from my bones. “It’s over,” he told us. “You’re safe.”
And I believed him.
***
It took another hour to sort everything out and then get us back home. It was unreal to hear those big, scary men apologize to me for this terrible misunderstanding. I wondered how much of it was genuine embarrassment and how much was fear that Gregor would kick the ever-loving crap out of them if they were less than contrite. But maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe what was most important was that they did, and that Gregor had kept his word in keeping us safe.
The biggest apology had come from Sergei, who turned out to be Gregor’s best buddy and seemed to feel genuinely guilty. He seemed horrified that he had been Vasily’s intelligence man and yet somehow had never caught on to what was happening until it had been almost too late.
I had been as gracious as I could manage, but I was worn out from terror and drama, and Michelle was even more so. She fell asleep in my arms during the ride back to Gregor’s.
“Are you doing all right?” he asked me quietly as he drove.
“Ask me once we’ve gotten some sleep,” I said honestly. “Right now, I’m holding it together and awake, but that’s about it.” I checked Michelle again. She seemed to be all right, but it scared me that she had taken all of this so well. It implied that what she’d dealt with when taken from me had been that much worse.
One crisis at a time, I told myself firmly, trying to ignore how heavy my eyelids were getting.
