NIKOLAI (Her Russian Protector #4) (7 page)

A second later, something very hard hit the
window behind his head. A hammer? A crow bar? He wasn’t
sure.

Someone tried to open her car door but the
impact of the SUV had crunched and crimped the metal. Heavy
footfalls sounded on the roof and hood of the car. A sledge hammer
wielded by a man in black slammed against the windshield. Glass
shards exploded all around them as the sledgehammer broke through
the safety glass.

He reached for Vivian and dragged her into his
protective embrace. He wrapped his battered arms around her in a
desperate attempt to keep the flying glass from cutting her face
and neck. She flicked off her seatbelt and burrowed into the safety
of his embrace, burying her face against chest and whimpering with
fear.

As a crowd of men descended on the car, Nikolai
heard gunshots in the distance. Kostya and Sergei? He hoped they
would reach the car in time to help them fend off this blitz
attack.

As the men outside the car started to rip the
windshield free, he reached under his jacket and retrieved his
loaded gun. "Cover your ears."

Vivian hurried to comply with his order,
placing her small hands against her ears. The moment the windshield
was ripped free he fired at the first man who came into view.
Staggering backward and clutching at his chest, the man fell onto
the hood and tumbled onto the pavement. Another man took his place,
and Nikolai fired again, carefully conserving his rounds until help
arrived.

But it wasn't enough.

The window behind him was ripped free. A series
of blows to the back of his head stunned him. Four hands grasped
his shoulders and arms. In the melee, the gun was knocked from his
grasp. Vivian's scream echoed in the night as he was torn through
the window. Jagged edges of glass ripped through his clothing and
into his skin.

He watched in horror as three men tried to grab
Vivian. Somehow she'd managed to grab the pepper spray from her
purse. Judging by the screams of pain and the sounds of coughing
that erupted, he figured she'd gotten at least two of
them.

Refusing to be taken down so easily, Nikolai
twisted and kicked until he managed to free himself from the
clutches of the men who had dragged him through the door. With one
swift movement, he yanked out the knife he kept holstered in his
boot and wielded it menacingly.

He'd been in enough prison brawls, armed only
with hastily crafted shivs, to know how this fight against five men
would end. He'd be lucky to survive it but he'd do whatever it took
to buy enough time for Kostya and Sergei to reach Vivian and get
her to safety.

Two of the men rushed him. Relying on instinct
and adrenaline, Nikolai stabbed and ducked to evade them. He caught
one in the hand, driving his blade through the man's palm, and
wrenching a guttural cry from the attacker's throat. Ripping the
blade free, he turned his attention to the other man. The injured
one fell away but another quickly took his place, this one carrying
a length of pipe.

Bracing for the painful impact, Nikolai refused
to back down. In the background, he heard Vivian shouting and
fighting off the men trying to pull her from the car. The pipe
connected with his arm and shoulder just as he witnessed Vivian
being hauled out through the gaping hole where the windshield had
been. Her panicked shriek broke his concentration, giving his
assailants the opening they needed.

The man brandishing the pipe cracked Nikolai
along the side of his head. The blinding pain sent him to his
knees. A boot caught him in the jaw and flipped him onto his
stomach. Clawing at the pavement, he tried to force his battered
body to move but the jarring impact of the pipe and boot rendered
him worthless.

As blood dripped into his eyes and clouded his
vision, he watched helplessly as two men dragged Vivian toward an
idling SUV. She kicked and bit and shrieked but she couldn't get
free. Their gazes met across the impossible distance now between
them. Rolling onto his side, he lifted his hand in a final
desperate but futile attempt to reach her.

"
NIKOLAI
!"

Her terrified scream was suddenly muffled as
her kidnappers managed to get her into the SUV. The vehicle raced
away from the scene, taking the woman he loved more than anything
in the world.

An angry kick to his gut tore a pained groan
from his throat. Another blow to his shoulder knocked him onto his
back again. One of the assailants bent down and slammed the
full-length of Nikolai's own knife into his shoulder. He gasped,
but the pain of the blade slicing through muscle was nothing
compared to the soul-crushing agony he experienced at the knowledge
he'd failed Vivian.

"Jesus, we weren't supposed to kill him." One
of the masked men dragged away the man who had stabbed Nikolai.
"Let's go."

The attackers and his people started to trade
gunfire. The assailants piled into the remaining SUV, leaving
behind the crashed vehicle but taking their injured comrades with
them. Kostya and Sergei finally made it to his side.

Dropping to his knees, Kostya grabbed Nikolai
around the waist and dragged him out of the roadway. Men were
shouting all around him but he couldn't understand anything they
said. His battered brain couldn't compute a single word after the
nasty blows he'd taken.

Gripping Kostya's hand, he growled, "They took
her. They took my Vivian."

"We'll get her back."

As Kostya shouted at Sergei to get a
fucking ambulance, Nikolai fought to remain conscious. Blood seeped
out of his body and soaked into his jacket and pooled around
Kostya's legs. Nikolai relished the excruciating pain accompanying
each and every breath. It reminded him that he was still alive—and
if he was alive, he could get her back. He
had
to get her back.

And the men who had taken his beautiful,
precious Vivian would know true agony.

Chapter Five

Ivan hated hospitals almost as much as he hated
police stations. The lemony scent of the harsh cleansers used to
keep them clean spurred those old and terrible memories of the many
violent injuries he'd suffered in his life. He absent-mindedly
rubbed his left side as he relived the searing heat of a
razor-tipped shiv gashing at his gut.

This hospital in downtown Houston was much
nicer than the awful prison infirmary hellholes he'd visited far
too often but it still left him gritting his teeth. In the last few
months, he'd spent far too much time in these places. First, it had
been Erin's sister and then Dimitri and then Yuri. Thankfully,
they'd all been discharged—or escaped in Ruby's case—within a day
or two but Nikolai? He was in bad fucking shape.

But the lucky bastard had the hardest head in
the whole damned world—and thank Christ for that! Nikolai had to be
the only man in creation who could survive a beating with a pipe
and not come out brain-damaged. He had a nasty concussion, battered
ribs, bruised kidneys and a number of gashes that had required
extensive suturing and stapling. He'd live—but he was going to have
dozens of new scars to add to myriad others already dotting his
heavily tattooed body.

But Nikolai would find little comfort in
surviving the horrific attack.

Ivan's gut twisted as he tried to imagine what
Nikolai would feel when he woke up and remembered that Vivian was
gone. Just the thought of hooded men stealing away his Erin made
Ivan want to puke. He ran a hand across his chest as his heart
ached from the tormenting images of Erin being snatched from him
and taken away to some unknown place.

His gaze moved to Nikolai's sleeping form. This
late at night the hospital was very quiet except for the continual
beeps of the machines monitoring Nikolai's heartbeat and blood
pressure. Even in sleep, his friend's face was drawn and tight. Was
he dreaming of the attack? Was he dreaming of her?

When Nikolai finally woke, there would be hell
to pay. Kostya had managed to keep the men under control so far but
Ivan doubted he could hold the bloodthirsty, infuriated captains
and soldiers back longer. They wanted justice for the attack on
Nikolai and Vivian's kidnapping. Kostya was smart enough to know
that lashing out indiscriminately was only going to cause more
bloodshed and problems. The men were pacified for the moment but
one wrong move would set them all off.

Though she wasn't technically part of the
family, the men who served under Nikolai all loved Vivian and
considered her one of them. While the delicious food cooked by the
chefs at Samovar reminded them of home, it was Vivian's bright
smile and sweet kindness that brought Nikolai's men to the
restaurant again and again.

Like Ivan, most of those men had assumed that
eventually Nikolai would stop fucking around with the guardian
bullshit and finally claim Vivian as his own. It was clear to
anyone with even one working eye that Nikolai needed her. Ivan
hadn't really understood what drew Nikolai toward Vivian until he'd
met Erin—and then everything made sense.

Sometimes the darkest of souls needed the
balance of good, pure woman. Erin had brought such sweetness and
light to his life. Ivan could only imagine how desperately Nikolai
craved what he now enjoyed every day and every night with
Erin.

For the men in Nikolai's large crew, the idea
that someone had dared to take the woman their boss protected, the
woman they expected to someday slide into the role of family
matriarch, enraged them. It drove home the point that none of their
wives or children or girlfriends was safe anymore. The rules had
been broken in the most violent way—and now someone had to pay. If
Nikolai didn't wake soon and get things back under his control, the
entire city could erupt in violence and mayhem.

"Hey," Dimitri called softly from the doorway
of Nikolai's hospital room. "They're about to kick us out until the
morning." Dimitri's worried gaze fell on Nikolai. "Has he moved
yet?

Ivan shook his head. "Did you talk to
Yuri?"

Dimitri nodded. "The winter storm will keep
them in Moscow for a few more days. He's trying to keep Lena calm
but she's threatening to walk across Russia. He's put up an obscene
amount of money for information on the attack or Vivian's return.
Kostya has his men putting the word on the street."

If anything could motivate the seedy underbelly
of this town to speak, it was money. "Let's hope it
works."

"It's been almost twenty-four hours and there's
no ransom. If this doesn’t work, if someone doesn’t squeal, I don't
know how we'll find her." Dimitri hesitated. "If she's even still
alive."

Ivan despaired at the thought of Vivian being
dead. Erin loved her so much and considered her a sister. He didn't
know if she would ever recover from the horror of losing Vivian.
"She's alive. She has to be."

Dimitri stared at Nikolai's motionless body.
"God help us all if she's not."

* * *

Blindfolded and naked, I hugged my knees
tighter to my chest and tried to calm my chattering teeth. I
couldn't remember the last time I'd been this cold. My ears perked
to the sound of heavy shoes tapping against concrete. The echo was
similar to the one in my warehouse studio so I assumed I'd been
brought to some abandoned warehouse or factory—and there were
plenty of those around Houston.

I couldn’t absolutely say for sure how long it
had been since I'd been so violently torn away from Nikolai and
thrown in that SUV. I thought it was a day, maybe two. Once those
monsters had gotten me into the vehicle, they'd jabbed me with a
syringe filled with some kind of sedative. Sometime later, I'd
woken up blindfolded and naked in this strange cage.

It wasn't a very big space. Even with my tiny
frame, I couldn't stretch out my legs totally. I tried to shift my
position whenever my muscles started to cramp. When the guards let
me out of my cage to use the bathroom, I took full advantage of the
chance to stretch my legs. The humiliation of doing my business
while they watched me was almost too much to bear but at least they
let me use a real toilet and sink and not a bucket or worse. The
blindfold helped ease my embarrassment. At least I didn't have to
stare back at them.

I'd been fed twice—once a cold hamburger and a
little while ago a chewy egg sandwich on an English muffin. Both
times a bottle of water had been shoved through the wire squares of
the cage wall. Even though I was so thirsty, I carefully rationed
the water. I wasn't sure how often these food deliveries would
occur.

As I listened to the approaching footsteps, I
tried to slow my panicked breathing. My nakedness and forced
blindness only increased my terror. I'd tried once and only once to
remove my blindfold but a man who smelled strongly of cigarettes
had tapped my arm with some kind of device that shocked me hard
enough to make me yelp and cry. Shuddering, I touched the bumpy
burn marks the device had left on my skin. Since then, I'd been
terrified to do anything wrong lest they zap me again.

The footsteps drew closer and closer until they
finally stopped. I'd come to recognize the sounds of the different
men who were holding me captive. This man, the one with the
heavier, lumbering steps, never spoke. I heard the rustle of fabric
as he crouched down outside my cage. Though I couldn't see him, I
could feel him watching me, staring at me.