Chapter 45
Forty-Five
For fuck’s sake. Whoever is driving the van needs glasses because he’s managed to hit every pothole in the road during the half hour long drive to wherever they are taking me.
My hip is sore from lying in the same position on the hard, metal, corrugated cargo floor, and the side of my face is going to be bruised from constantly being bounced around.
Other than a few utterances that didn’t provide much information, the men have kept quiet for the most part, giving my mind way too much time to ponder a million what ifs.
What if I’m too late? What if Aleksander is already dead?
What if I never get to hear him call me songbird again, or talk to him again, or spend more quiet moments gazing up at the stars with him…
or tell him that I never meant to fall in love with him, but my heart gave me no other option?
Hendrix was right. I have been afraid. And that fear may have taken another person I love away from me.
The van slows down and makes a right turn onto smoother asphalt, and the silence is broken when the guy in charge calls someone.
“We’re one minute out…yeah…how’s Uri…fucking hell.
..no, she kicked him in the balls when he got too handsy with the pat down…
fuck you, it wasn’t my fault…no…yeah…kiss my ass, Alto.
” Apparently done with the conversation, he hangs up. “Fuck.”
“What?” someone asks.
Instead of answering, he barks, “Pull around to the back of the house. She awake?”
Ow, motherfucking fuck. I don’t make a sound when I get punted in the back with the toe of a work boot.
“No.”
“Good. Stupid fucking bitch.”
The van abruptly brakes, and the back double doors open. A pair of hands grabs my ankles and slides me out, then I’m flipped around and tossed over a shoulder. I can’t see much through the tiny holes in the burlap as I’m hauled inside the house.
Clickity-clack. “There was a problem?”
No freaking way. I don’t think I’ve ever regretted not killing someone before, but hearing Serena’s high-pitched, nails-down-a-chalkboard voice has me cursing myself for not tossing her ass down the elevator shaft when I had the chance.
Now I understand why Viktor wanted me. But it wasn’t him. It was her. Kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.
Using every bit of willpower and restraint I can muster, I remain absolutely still. Finding Aleksander is my priority. Breaking every bone in her body in the most painful way will have to wait.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” the man carrying me replies.
Strands of my hair get yanked out when the burlap sack is pulled off, and I get poked in the cheek with a pointy fingernail right on the bruise where the guy punched me. Serena leans in close, and I’m accosted by her bad breath.
“Hey, burn girl. I hope you can hear me. I just want you to know that I’m going to enjoy every second of what’s about to happen to you. Who knows? I may ask Viktor to spare Hendrix. He can be my fuck toy.”
Don’t do it, Aoife. Stick to the plan.
But the murderous rage comes bright and hot, almost too big to contain. Serena won’t get the chance to do what Natasha Zephyros did to Hendrix. I’ll die before I let that happen.
“Were you followed?” she asks the man.
“No.”
Serena scoffs. “Then you’re as stupid as you are ugly. They’ll come for her. Throw her in with him, then have your men do a sweep of the grounds.”
Hope and happiness blot out everything else. Aleksander is here.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Viktor just arrived and is in the study. Why don’t you go tell him that?”
The man doesn’t say another word, but I can feel the tension in his muscles as Serena’s click-clacks fade away.
He mumbles a string of very obscene and derogatory names about Serena that I absolutely agree with.
I slit open an eye as he descends a long flight of stairs.
From what little I can see, the house isn’t grandiose or ostentatiously decorated like I expected for a man like Viktor Androv.
Then again, this may not be his house. Aleksander said his main residence was in Las Vegas.
Sconces placed every fifteen feet along bare, taupe-painted walls light the way as I’m carried to the end of the hallway.
“Unlock it,” he says to someone.
This is going to hurt.
I experience a few seconds of weightlessness, and then all the air gets knocked out of me when my body hits the floor. I’m going to look like one of Christian’s finger paintings by the time this is over.
“Watch the door.”
A different man replies in Russian, but I don’t understand what he says.
“Watch the fucking door.”
“Fuck you,” the other man hurls back in stilted English.
Like an antique Victor-Victrola, their argument becomes distorted when I see Aleksander lying on the floor, bound to a chair and not moving.
His back is to me. He’s too still. Too quiet.
Dark, wet patches cover his shirt, glistening against the pale light spilling into the room.
Blood. His blood. Everywhere. On him, the chair, on the floor.
The metallic stench of it fills my lungs, and the ache in my chest at seeing him broken fills my chest until it hurts to breathe.
Don’t you dare leave me. Not like this. Not now.
I want to go to him. Hold him. Tell him everything that I’ve been too scared to say.
Baldy slams the door shut and looms over me in the dark, his brown eyes feral. Unzipping his pants, his intention is clear when he takes out his cock. “I can assure you that I’m going to enjoy this even more.”
Oh, hell no.
He never gets a chance to take his next breath.
In a blur of movement, I tuck my legs through my arms, then shatter his knee with an upward heel kick.
He hits the floor with a grunt, and I make sure he can’t call for help when I wrap my legs around his head in a triangle choke and squeeze my thighs against his neck until it breaks.
It’s over in seconds. He deserved to suffer longer, but whatever.
Lifting my bound wrists above my head, I swing my arms downward toward my knees and break the zip ties to free my hands. My heart trips over itself when Aleksander turns his head, those magnificent light-gray eyes looking at me through bruised, puffy eyelids.
“Hi,” I whisper, so fucking happy that he’s alive.
He doesn’t utter a sound. Just stares at me like I’m a ghost. The evidence of what they did to him, what he had to endure—his gorgeous face is almost unrecognizable.
Moving to straddle the man’s barrel chest, I sink my thumbs into his eye sockets as far as they will go, making sure he’s truly dead and not just paralyzed from the neck down. He doesn’t even twitch.
Using the guy’s shirt, I clean off the blood and goo from my hands the best I can and scramble across the floor to Aleksander. I start with removing the duct tape from around his ankles.
“Syn?”
“Hey, gorgeous.” I heave a frustrated sigh when I get to the zip ties. More fucking zip ties. Getting them off him is going to be much harder. I don’t have anything I can use to cut through them.
“I must…really look bad…if you’re…trying to…reassure me.”
“You’re the most handsome man in the room.” My efforts to free him are useless. Think, dammit.
“Don’t make…me laugh,” he rasps, his chuckles turning into labored coughs.
Alarmed by his horrific wheezes, I take a closer look at him. I don’t want to do any more damage if I can help it, but that may not be a possibility.
Because I need to touch him, I tenderly cup one swollen cheek. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“You shouldn’t…have come…I’m not…worth it.”
Getting a “Hail Mary,” I notice the chair is made of wood, not metal. Standing up, I glower down at him. Stupid, noble, clueless man.
“Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again. You are worth everything.”
I stomp down on the chair leg and am elated when the wood splinters. I’m able to wiggle the broken piece out from under the zip tie wrapped around his ankle. Holding it, I examine the jagged, wooden spikes at the end. Time to play.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“Literally…not going…anywhere.”
Silently moving toward the door, I crack it open. The hallway is quiet except for two guards stationed right outside.
The one on the left looks over his shoulder. “About fucking time. I want my turn—”
Blood gurgles out of his mouth when I shove the makeshift stake into his neck, and he collapses to the floor like a Slinkie.
“What the fu—”
Using the heel of my palm, I strike the second guard in the nose, sending cartilage and bone fragments into his brain.
With surgical precision, I deliver a forward finger jab to the soft spot right under his clavicle that instantly stops his heart from beating.
His eyes bulge out of their sockets, and like a stone statue, he topples over.
I glance down the hallway to make sure no unwelcome visitors are coming. All right, Aoife, have your fun.
Arterial spray geysers out like a firehose when I yank the wooden stake from the other guy’s neck before plunging it back in again.
Blood and gore and beautiful chaos.