Russian Roulette (Russkaya Mafiya) (65 page)

My heart races when he shuts the door.

Did I upset him? What if he tells Chek what I said? I’m so stupid. Dumb, dumb, girl, my mother used to say, and she was right. How will I ever dig myself out of this one?

I cry myself to sleep instead of trying to save my strength, so I miss Beau coming to check on me again.

six hours later…

I awake disoriented from hearing a noise and instantly I’m on alert. I feel like I’ve slept longer than usual. I’m used to waking up each time Beau checks on me, but I feel like a long time has passed.

“Shhh, it’s me.” At the sound of Beau’s voice, I breathe deeply. He places his hand on my forearm and I bring my sleepy eyes to his hazel gaze.

“Do you trust me yet?”

“If I say yes are you going to kill me?” I ask and he chuckles.

“No death threats or plans over here.”

“Okay, then yes, although I probably shouldn’t. My mother always told me I was ignorant growing up.”

“She’s wrong, there is absolutely nothing dumb about you,” he compliments and my cheeks heat at his kind words. “Hold this, right here.” He turns on a huge flashlight and positions my hand so it points at my hair.

He pulls out a small electric shaver and plugs it into the wall beside us.

“Why the shaver?” I whisper.

“They’re hair clippers,” he replies absently and brings them close to my hair.

He works at shaving the knotty clumps off. I watch as they fall to the floor and I can’t help but giggle. At this point, losing my hair is just another thing to chalk up to this fucked up mess I’m stuck in. Maybe it will make me ugly and Kolya will be finished with me.

“What happened to Kolya?”

“You know his name?”

“Yes, I know him. I think he’s the reason I was stolen from my friends and brought here.” There’s a chance me confiding in him could be the wrong move and it could kill me, but he’s the one who asked me if I could trust him.

“He had an accident,” he mutters and turns the clippers back on. My mind races with what that means exactly. Please let him be dead. But what if someone else even worse takes me? Hopefully this hair cut will repulse them.

It feels like I hold the flashlight for ages as he randomly stops to position my hand in a new direction to give him light. Once he’s finished, he sits back, takes the light away, and shines it all over to inspect.

“I like it. It’s different, but it looks ten times better.”

“Only ten? It must look bad then.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “I didn’t realize you had so little hair. I was able to cut through the knots, so you still have some length.” He takes the brush and lightly combs through it all. It still hurts like hell, but nowhere near when I was trying to rip through the tangles. When he finishes, I reach up, feeling my hair in a choppy cut, coming to the bottom of my ears. It was to my shoulders before, so this isn’t the huge change I was expecting, thank God. If I’m going to be stuck in here, then it’ll be easier to deal with.

“Okay, now you need to change.” He pulls a duffle bag next to us.

“I’m allowed a new set of clothes?” I gasp excitedly, hoping for a pair of sweats to ward off the cold that seems to be getting worse with time. Any more surprises and I may actually hug him. Though, I’m sure I smell terrible.

“Yes. It’s nothing fancy, just some things I was able to get easily at the nearby store.”

“I’ll happily take anything!”

Beau pauses, looking at me sadly, before mumbling, “You didn’t deserve to go through this.” He shakes his head and digs out clothes.

He lays before me a black pair of children’s sweats, black socks, black ski mask, black gloves and a pair of sneakers a size and a half too big.

“Are we going on a robbery?”

“Something like that. Now get dressed.”

I pause briefly, and then peel my clothes off, too excited for the warm sweats to care that he can see me naked. He turns his face away, showing me that not only is he kind, but has manners as well. The cold air hits the rest of my skin, bringing on chills and my back protests, but I grit through it, eager for the new things.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Put on the ski mask.” I do as he says and he pulls me to my feet once I tie the sneakers and get the cheap cotton gloves on. I have no freaking clue what he’s up to, but I’m game.

“Okay.” I stand, watching as he puts his own mask on and loads himself down with an abundance of weapons.

“If something happens to me, you take my gun and shoot anyone who approaches you, even if he has a badge on. Don’t stop until they’re dead. You get to a phone and call Tatkiv, tell him you are in the UK and to pick you up. The street in front of here is Bollington. He’ll know how to find you. You just have to stay alive until he does.”

“O-Okay.” I repeat again, floored that he’s giving me a chance to escape him if something happens. But who the hell is Tatkiv? And how do I reach him? I nod my head to Beau, but inside I know if I get away, the only person I’m calling is Nikoli.

Beau leaves the big duffle bag, shoving things into his side cargo pockets and grabs my hand, pulling me to the door.

“Be as quiet as humanly possible, even if you see someone.”

“Got it,” I whisper and we’re through the door.

We race through a long, cement hallway filled with doors on each side.

Nikoli

Heading back into the warehouse, I pat my overstuffed stomach. Viktor sent Lev to pick us up some lunch, and now it’s time to get back to work on Chek.

I have to admit, I’m impressed. I’ve been beating him off and on for twenty-six hours and he hasn’t cracked. It’s been a struggle, not punching him in the face as badly as I want to, but I know he needs to be able to speak. I’ve broken many bones though and that’s been entertaining. I can’t wait to tell Vishna that he’s dead and can never harm her again.

I’ve gotten him to admit he knows Sabrina. He’s given up information on another shipment of girls he broke at the same time as my sister. Chek has even been kind enough to let me know that yes, Kolya is a part of all the sex trading; he even went as far as telling me where we may be able to find him in the UK. I’d mark it as a success, but I’m still not any closer to finding Bina. I’m at the point I just want to kill him, but I’m starting to believe that he may really not know where she is and it’s heartbreaking.

“What next, Boss?” I turn to Tate and he huffs.

“How can you still have any energy?”

“I have to. I’m what she has against all these fuckers that want to hurt her. I’ve already eliminated Kristof, now I’m going through Chek, once we are able to secure Kolya, he’s next. I’m going to make sure that once I finally find her, she will have no one to hide from.”

“I get it, this anger you have inside, but it’s tearing away at you. You’re no longer the happy man I’m used to. Now you’re like an animal, always on the hunt. You need to take care of yourself also, Niko. You don’t want her to come home to the wrong man.”

Tate’s grown into a wise friend. I wouldn’t have thought of myself changing so much that she wouldn’t recognize me. Not my looks, but the inside that she knows so well.

Being in this life, we’re all a little jaded in one way or another. Me with the emptiness left behind from losing my family, and Tate has had some serious shit happen with his father betraying him. Viktor’s been put through hell, damn near dying in his love’s arms. Add in all of the shit the women we adore have gone through and we’re one group of fucked up people. I think that’s what makes us all so close though, our demons we’ve beat and dealt with, we always support each other if needed.

“I agree, Tate, but if me changing so much that she will no longer love me saves her, then so be it. I love her enough to let her go if it comes to that, but it won’t be because I haven’t done everything possible.”

“Then let’s see if we can get anything else out of him before you kill him.”

“I’m glad we’re both in agreement that I get to finish him,” I grumble and follow him back over to Chek.

“Chek!” I bark and pick up the cup of lemon juice next to him, splashing the juice on his face.

He lets loose a roar of pain and a string of curses at the burn from it getting in all the little cuts I’ve inflicted.

“You’re out of time. You must talk now, because the agony has only begun. You decide how much it will hurt.”

Viktor smirks and hands me a pair of special steel cutters.

“I promised to take your fingers, and I’m a man of my word. Now where is Sabrina?”

Viktor holds Chek’s hand still so I can cut his middle finger off. It takes a strong grip, the resistance from the bone not wanting to break, but once I get it to snap, Chek leans to the side, expelling his stomach contents down over his good shoulder.

“Please Nikoli, please st-stop this. I can tell you that I knew your other sisters, they were sent to me, but ba-back then, I couldn’t do it. Those women were just too beautiful and innocent. It was different with the old whores that they brought to me to try and fix. It was when they brought the stolen girls I couldn’t do it. Th-the Master put me through hell at the time, threatening to kill me if I didn’t suck it up and break the new girls. Your oldest sister was in the first group. I failed at hurting her and they killed her for standing up to them. I-I’m so sorry.” He hiccups and I feel sick myself.

“And my mother?” I grit, snatching up a hammer.

I nod to Viktor and he holds Chek’s other hand still, against a small side table as I drive the hammer down onto the top of his hand.

“Aghhhhh, nyet, nyet, nyet, please,” he sobs, but my hatred only grows with his pathetic tears. He’s hurt probably hundreds of women and yet he can’t stand the discomfort now.

“My mother?”

“Nyet, your mother, the master took her himself. I don’t know what he did to her, only that your sister was left alone to clean for years, and then he brought her to me because he had a buyer.

“And Brenna?”

“Wh-wh-who?”

“The middle one of my little sisters, Brenna. What did you do to her?”

“There was no one named Brenna. I’m sorry. She either didn’t come to me or they changed her name.”

I nod at Viktor again, taking another of Chek’s fingers from the hand I had hammered. He bellows, “I speak the truth! Only the truth! Forgive me, please, forgive m-me.”

“There were three of them!”

“No, Nikoli, I only ever saw two of them, I swear it. I swear, two, one big, one little.”

“Two had blonde hair; one had brownish-red hair like my mother’s.”

“No, I only ever saw the blondes, I promise.”

“And where is Sabrina?”

“I do not know.”

Viktor grabs the hammer and slams it down on Chek’s junk, making the man puke again.

“Errmmm, huhhh-huhhhh-sh-she is with the master, sh-she belongs to Mamama-Minski.”

“Good boy, Chek!” Viktor says jovially and I grab up the torch, slamming the bottle into Chek’s head.

“Where the fuck is this master?” I bellow, but Chek stays silent, his eyes trained on nothing.

Tate turns to me, “I think you broke him, moy brat.”

I can’t reply, only huff out heaving breaths to keep the tears away. I just heard about my family, finally after all of these years, I have some answers and it feels like the world wants to tumble down on me.

These people are sick; I need to find my little pixie.

THIRTEEN

SABRINA

HOPE

I grip onto Beau’s hand so tightly it’s probably
cutting off his blood supply.

“Where are we going?”

“Shh, keep quiet!” he grumbles.

The hallway’s dim and cold with weak lights placed in sporadic places. As we pass the doors, I notice random supplies outside them, towels, blankets, buckets and others have cleaning supplies and mops propped against the doors. The ones with blankets each have a loaf of bread placed on top and it brings a bad feeling to me. I bet there are people in those rooms. Not just regular people, but women like me who are being tortured and held against their will.

I jerk on Beau’s wrist until he stops. He turns to me in a rush, his eyes wide and mouths, “What?”

“We have to save the others!” Whisper shouting, I point at all the doors.

“We can’t, come on!”

“Beau! We have too, please?”

“I’m not here for them, Sabrina; only you. Many of them can’t even move. We’ll send someone once we’re out of here, you have my word.”

At his promise I nod in agreement and he takes off running down the hall pulling me along again. Even if he doesn’t alert someone, if I’m able to figure out where we are, I’ll definitely be reporting this to the authorities. What these people are doing is not only illegal, it’s vile.

We both hear a noise and he jumps into a little grooved out area tucked into the wall, shoving me in first and placing his body in front of mine. Pain explodes through my back from my wound but I force myself to choke it down.
I need to be brave.
Fortunately, the lighting’s so bad, and with us in all black, we probably blend right in with the dark corner.

Footsteps pass by and I think I hold my breath the longest I’ve ever held it before.

“How do you know where to go?” I poke him and mumble when I’m confident I don’t hear the steps anymore.

“I work here,” he mutters back. I figured that, but it’s still painful actually hearing it come from his mouth. “Come on.”

He tugs me along and we sprint through another hallway. This one has better lighting, and I can almost make out the names on charts hanging beside each door. We pass an open doorway with another guard but he has his back to us and never bothers to check it out if he had heard us running.

It seems like this place goes on for miles and I start to grow tired easily from not getting any exercise or the right amount of vitamins recently. If he’s really here for me like he says, then it makes sense why he kept telling me to concentrate on getting better, but who could he work for? My father perhaps or maybe a different man is trying to kidnap me now? I seriously doubt my father would go to the trouble of hiring someone to find me. I’m pretty confident he’s one of the people who wanted me here in the first place.