25. Victoria
25
VICTORIA
Two men drag me out of the trunk and into a building. It smells musty, damp. Even through the hood, I can tell that it’s dark inside. There are floorboards underfoot. Footsteps in front of and behind me, a guy on either side of me, holding me in case I try to escape.
Then the building seems to open up into a wider space. Heavy hands sit me down on the floor, and the hood is tugged from my head.
I blink at the thugs who dragged me inside, bringing them into focus. They’re both dressed in black. They’re younger than I expected them to be. Could one of them be the guy who followed me and Abigail into Penn Station? I didn’t get a good look at his face, but I remember what Terry said about him, and I shudder.
Then I hear a whimper from somewhere nearby and realize that I’m not alone.
“Sienna?” I crawl across the dusty floor on my knees, losing my balance with my wrists tied behind my back.
Sienna tries to sit up when she realizes that it’s me. Her wrists and ankles are bound; her hair is greasy and matted, and her eyes are raw, dark circles smudging her gaunt cheeks. As she slides back against the wall, using it to prop herself upright, I spot the legs behind her.
It’s Mason. But he isn’t moving.
“Oh my God, Mason!” I lunge sideways and land on top of him, expecting him to roll over and say my name, but he’s lifeless. “Mason?” On my knees, I lean over his face, panic hurtling through my veins at his gray skin and blue lips. “Mason, wake up. It’s me, Victoria.”
Using my shoulder, I smooth his hair away from his face and spot the blood, matted and dark, on his scalp.
Tears streaming down my face, I look at Sienna who is watching me with dark, sunken eyes. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“I don’t know.” Sienna is crying too.
“Are you hurt?” I can’t see any blood, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t hurt her when they brought her here.
She shakes her head. “I’m scared, V.”
“I’m so sorry.” I crawl over to her and brush my face against hers in lieu of a hug. “This is all my fault, Si. I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”
“None of this is your fault.” Her voice cracks, and I can see that the skin around her lips is dry and cracked too.
“Have they been giving you water?”
Sienna’s eyes flit to a spot behind me at the same time as I hear raised voices. I roll awkwardly into a sitting position, blocking Sienna as if I can protect her with my wrists bound.
“I’m done here.” A young guy with raven-black hair who I assume is Ivan Petrov, raises his hands and walks away from Olivia Dragonetti across the room.
I think this must be a warehouse. It’s a huge space with a high ceiling. The high windows are so grimy and weather-stained that they let in minimal daylight. Boxes and cartons are stacked up on tall metal shelving against the walls, and there’s no furniture, but I can see a forklift pushed up against the far wall. I scan the room for the way out, my stomach twisting when I realize that it’s at the other end of the building.
“Ivan, get back here!” Olivia screeches.
Ivan keeps walking. He raises a hand over his shoulder in a kind of salute, but my heart seems to freeze when I hear the click of a gun. He halts at the same time, and I instinctively shuffle backwards, shielding Sienna with my body.
When Ivan turns around to face Olivia, he has a gun in his hand too. “Seriously? You really want to do this?”
“You give me no choice.” Olivia shrugs. She’s holding the gun with both hands, arms outstretched. “We’re in this together, remember?”
“Were. We were in this together. I didn’t sign up for abducting Caleb Murray’s wife.” He glances my way, our eyes meeting briefly. “I want out. You do your thing, but don’t expect me to go along with it.”
Olivia laughs, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Very funny. I’ll tell everyone that this was your idea.”
“Be my guest and go right ahead.”
Ivan makes a circular motion with his gun, and my breath hitches in my chest. I don’t know the first thing about guns, but I’ve watched enough movies to know that you don’t mess around with them.
“You think no one will believe me, but they will when I tell them about your boyfriend.” Her expression is smug, and I’ve never wanted to punch someone in the throat more than I do right now.
I expect Ivan to laugh in her face and tell her that everyone already knows, but instead, his face pales. His hair flops forward over his eyes, and he tries to flick it back with his elbow.
“Thought that would get your attention. You wouldn’t want Daddy to find out, would you? Not when you’ve tried so hard to keep it a secret.”
She’s a nasty piece of work. I don’t know why Ivan needs to hide his relationship, but I’m angry that she thinks she can get away with using it against him. I’m angry at Ivan for allowing her to manipulate him so easily. And I’m angry at both of them for dragging innocent people into their fucked-up, messy lives.
I want Ivan to tell her to go fuck herself. But he doesn’t. He stands there with a gun in his hand and a defeated expression on his face like all the fight has been sucked out of him.
“That’s what I thought.” Olivia lowers her gun. I don’t even know where she got it from, but she isn’t taking any chances and keeps it in her hand. “Watch her while I go speak to Caleb.”
My pulse races, and I feel sick when I hear her say Caleb’s name out loud. It sounds all wrong when she says it, like she has no right to his name because it belongs to me. Which is ridiculous when I have no right to it either. But if I am growing his baby inside me, I at least deserve the opportunity to tell him.
I watch her walk away and disappear through the door at the far end. Ivan watches her too. As the door swings shut behind her, he raises the gun, aims it, and says, “Bang.”
“Fuck, man.” The young guy who dragged me here joins him. “Why the fuck did you let her get away with that? I’d have shot her in the fucking mouth and shut her up.”
“And then what?” Ivan pockets his weapon. “She’ll shoot herself soon enough.”
He glances our way, and I realize that he’s our only hope of getting out of here. Because I’m not leaving without Mason and Sienna. The other guy will shoot us in the back of the head if we try to escape and ask questions after.
“Will you help my brother?” I call out.
The other guy’s eyes narrow, but Ivan checks out Mason who still hasn’t moved.
“Please?” I need to talk to him alone, and I need to do it before Olivia comes back.
He mutters something to his friend that I can’t hear and then approaches us slowly, his eyes fixed on Mason like this might be a trap.
“He’s unconscious,” I say, when he’s close enough to hear me without raising my voice. “He needs medical attention.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it right now.”
I maintain eye contact. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in hostage situations? Show the abductor that you’re a real person, try to find a connection so that they have to think about killing you. I feel like I’m already halfway there because Ivan knows who I am, and he’s being manipulated into seeing this through.
“Can you at least bring some water so that I can keep him hydrated?”
Another glance at Mason’s immobile form on the floor. Then he snaps his fingers, his eyes never leaving mine, and one of the other men comes forward with a two-liter bottle of water.
Ivan slices the ropes binding my wrists with a small knife and hands the bottle over, and I seize the opportunity. “Please help me get my brother out of here.”
His eyes drift back to Mason and settle on his sallow skin. He’s thinking about it, now all I have to do is convince him that it’s the right thing to do.
“Caleb will help you,” I whisper. “He’s on his way here. He knows this is all down to Olivia, and he’ll see that your name isn’t dragged into it.”
I’m bullshitting and I pray that he doesn’t see right through me. I’m also praying that Caleb will listen to me before he does anything drastic. One bullet is all it will take for Ivan to retaliate, and I can’t even think about what will happen next.
“You don’t understand.” Ivan shakes his head and glances towards the doorway as if half-expecting Olivia to appear with her finger still on the trigger of her gun. Whatever he was about to say, he has obviously changed his mind. “Stay out of it.”
“What about my brother?” My voice is laced with panic.
“It will have to wait.”
I’m losing him. I’m not like these people. I don’t know how to use fear and threats to get what I want, and I’m nothing like Olivia who thinks that she can bully a man into marrying her. Maybe that’s all people like Ivan know, but from what Olivia said, it’s obvious that, like anyone else, he has issues that can’t be resolved with money and bullets.
So, I resort to the only thing that I know how to do: being honest.
“Caleb and I are not really married.”
His eyebrows lower over his dark eyes, and I remind myself that he’s the one with the gun, the one responsible for keeping us alive right now.
“Don Dragonetti went to Caleb with a proposal: an alliance in exchange for marrying his daughter. Caleb would never have agreed to marry her but, well, her father is persuasive.” Ivan is still with me so far. “So, he asked me to pretend to be his wife.”
“It isn’t real?” His voice is louder than I would’ve liked, but no one else appears to be listening.
“No.” I swallow. My mouth is dry, and I can feel a cough tickling the back of my throat.
His face breaks into a smile. “Fucking brilliant.” He releases a breath and rubs the back of his neck. “This is going to tip her straight over the fucking edge.”
“She already knows. That’s why I’m here: she thinks that she can buy me out of Caleb’s life. But she can’t.” Deep breath. “Because I’m in love with him. It didn’t start off real, but I think Caleb feels the same way about me.”
There’s a long pause. I can see the thought process behind his eyes while he figures out if I’m telling the truth and what Caleb’s next move might be. I hope that he has found someone who means the world to him because then he might just be able to relate to what I’m saying. He might just want to help.
“He promised to keep me safe, and I believe him. He won’t marry Olivia because he doesn’t love her, and what my friend here doesn’t realize is that Kyle Murray is in love with her too.”
Ivan’s top lip curls away from his teeth in a snarl, and I hope that I haven’t pushed it too far, but now that I’m on the subject of love, I sense him softening like butter left out of the fridge.
“Five years ago, there was a road traffic incident. My friend Sienna and Kyle Murray were both in the car wreck. The Murrays pulled Kyle from the wreckage, but they wrongly assumed that Sienna was dead. Kyle has never gotten over it because … because he’s in love with her.”
“V?” Sienna whispers behind my back. “What are you saying?”
I ignore her. I’m afraid to break eye contact with Ivan and lose our slim chance of getting out of here alive. “So, you see, you won’t only have Caleb seeking revenge if anything happens to us, you’ll have his brother too.”
“They’ll have to catch me first.”
Fuck.
“Wouldn’t you rather have them on your side? They won’t use your relationship to blackmail you.” I smile. The timeless act of friendliness. “Please, Ivan.”
I’m almost there. I think I almost have him when the door opens, and Olivia walks in, her arm linked with her father.
The tiny glimmer of hope flickers out and dies.