Chapter 6 Grace #2
“Bruschetta, crostini with Tuscan pate, mushroom and goat’s cheese toasts, to start with,” Maxim explains.
This looks delicious and I’m ravenous, trying to escape will do that to a person. I take one of everything.
Maxim raises a brow at my full plate but doesn’t say anything.
Screw him. I’m hungry, and this is the first time I can taste the food without wanting to be sick.
“This is amazing,” I moan, taking another bite.
Maxim smiles and starts to eat his food.
We stay silent for a long while, I’m too wrapped up in the starters to start up any sort of conversation.
The waiter returns and clears the table.
I try and catch the waiter’s attention, but he refuses to look at me which annoys me. Does he not know I’m here against my will? You don’t look like it at the moment. This is true as a frown forms on my face.
“Is something not up to your liking?” Maxim asks me.
“Everything was delicious. Why do you ask?”
“That deep scowl on your face. Something seems to have irritated you,” he says, picking up his glass and taking another sip.
“That would be because I was thinking about you.” The words come out before I realize how they sound.
Maxim’s brows shoot up high.
“Ew, not like that.” You’re supposed to be seducing him not telling him the thought of him naked is Ew. I wasn’t thinking about him naked. But now you are, thank you. Damn this inner voice is annoying as hell. “You said you wanted to talk, and I was wondering when we would.”
“Of course, but you were enjoying the food too much for me to
interrupt.”
“I love Italian food.”
“I could tell. I was jealous that the food was able to make you
moan like that.”
I feel my cheeks burn at his comment. This is what you want, his compliments. It makes it easier to seduce him. “Why are you doing all this?”
Before he can answer we are interrupted by the waiter, who places a bowl of soup in front of each of us and then disappears as quickly as he came, he still refuses to acknowledge me.
“It’s ribollita, a traditional Tuscan soup,” Maxim advises me.
Irritation is getting the better of me, so I decide to concentrate on the food. I take a spoonful of the bean soup and the flavor dances across my taste buds. Whoever his chef is they are amazing.
When I am a quarter of the way through my soup, I continue our conversation. “You didn’t answer me earlier. Why are you doing all this?”
He finishes his mouthful of soup and places his spoon to the side,
then steeples his fingers. “Are you asking me why I am treating a beautiful woman to a wonderful meal?”
“I’m asking why my kidnapper is having dinner with his hostage.”
Maxim’s eye narrow on me. “I thought you deserved a nice night after the horrible week you’ve had detoxing. You’re probably hungry too. I’ve noticed you’ve lost some weight from not being able to keep your food down. You need to get your energy back.”
I sit back and glare at him. He’s not doing this to be nice, he’s doing it because I’m a paycheck. “Guess you don’t want to hand over the merchandise damaged, hey? Wouldn’t get a high price for damaged goods.”
“No. That’s not it at all,” he says, clenching his jaw tightly.
“But it would probably look better to give me away all fresh-faced than as some strung-out drug addict.”
His fist comes down on the table, rattling his spoon. “The truth?” he says through gritted teeth. I’m testing his patience now.
“Always,” I answer.
“Seeing you withdrawing from whatever drug you were on was a
horrible experience, but one I’m familiar with.”
“Why, because you were an addict too?”
He shakes his head. “You seriously think I could be one?” His tone
is a little condescending.
“Fuck you. Don’t think you have me all worked out.
I didn’t think a law intern at the International Court of Human Rights in The Hague would become a drug addict either, but here I am.
Thanks to being kidnapped just like this and sold into sex trafficking.
Fucked up shit like that can mess anyone up.
” Tears begin to fall down my cheeks, and I angrily brush them away. He doesn’t deserve to see me like that.
This silences him and he takes a couple of moments to collect himself before speaking again. “You were a law student?”
“Can’t a whore be smart as well as having a willing pussy?”
Shock registers on his face, but it’s gone as quickly as it arrived. “I
never said you were a whore.”
“Never said I was one, but here I am, about to be sold again.”
His brows pinch together as he resumes eating his soup.
Frustrating the shit out of me. Is he really that cold-hearted? Of course, he is. Did you think your little sob story was going to crack him? Kind of hoped I would get something.
“My youngest sister, Alexandra, she was a drug addict,” Maxim explains.
Oh. That wasn’t at all what I thought he was going to say. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. The story does not have a happy ending.”
Neither will mine it would seem, but I stay quiet.
“I tried so many times to get her to detox, and she would, but then something or someone would happen, and she would be right back where she was again until eventually she OD’d,” he explains sadly as a dark cloud falls around him.
“I’m sorry, Maxim.” I know his pain. I thought we had lost Zoe and that thought was enough to devastate my heart.
“There is no need for your apologies, you did not know her,” he
says tightly.
Silence falls between us.
Thankfully the waiter appears again but notices the tension and scurries away.
“Thank you for helping me. You didn’t have to, but you did.” I find myself saying.
He gives me a tight smile as he silently turns his champagne glass around in his fingers before he speaks again. “So, you want to be a lawyer then?”
“I did at one time.”
My answer surprises him.
“Not anymore?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Why?” he questions me.
“I no longer have faith in humanity.”
Maxim stays silent and then pours me another glass of champagne.
I take another sip of the bubbles, loving how they feel popping against my tongue. The golden liquid is giving me the confidence I lacked earlier.
“You seem to know a bit about me. Tell me about yourself. What do you do?” I ask him.
“Not sure if you’re going to like my answer.” He chuckles darkly.
“Nothing would surprise me.”
“Is that so?” He smirks, raising a brow at me as if daring me to prove it. “What do you think I do. I bet you can’t guess.”
“If I guess, what do I get in return?” I barter with him.
This makes him sit up a little. “You want to play this game?”
I nod my answer.
“Fine, I let you have your freedom.”
Everything in me stills. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” he says, taking a sip of his champagne as those dark eyes flicker with amusement. “You have three guesses, and it has to be the right thing, not close not near enough, but the title.”
My heart quickens, my breath becomes shallow, he’s giving me a chance of freedom and I believe if I did guess correctly, he would let me go. He seems like a man of his word as much as the devil can be believed.
“Three chances and you’ll let me go. If I guess correctly.”
“Yes.”
“How do I know I’ve guessed correctly,” I question him.
Maxim gets up, opens his phone, types something into it, and then closes it again. “I wrote it in my notes. As soon as your guesses are over, I’ll show you.”
Okay. I’m going to have to trust him. This gift is too good to let go.
“You ready?” he asks with a grin.
Taking a deep breath, I try to calm my mind because every part of me is as tight as a curled spring, and I want to make sure that I’m in this with a chance.
He works for the Bratva, of that I’m sure, but what as?
I try to think about the conversations Sophie and Brooks have had about the structure of the Bratva but when I try to recall it there’s nothing but an empty void.
Dammit. I should have paid more attention when they were talking about it, but instead, I chose to implode on myself and lock my mind away in a haze of drugs.
Is he high up? Maybe not because it seems like he is working for Dmitri.
“Are you a transporter for the Bratva?” I ask nervously.
He shakes his head.
Shit.
I thought that would be it. I remember hearing someone talking about transporters, men who would grab women and take them across borders. I swear that was what Maxim was doing as that is what he has done with me, taken me from Spain and transported me to Italy.
Okay, two more guesses.
Think, Gracie, think. Why would he kidnap me then? Is he a finder? Someone who finds things that others can’t. What the hell would that be called then?
“Are you an associate to the Bratva? Your job is to find things for them that can’t be found.”
Maxim raises a brow, and a small smile falls across his face. “Warm but still cold.”
Shit.
I’m close but not at the same time. Talk about a mindfuck.
This is my last guess. My life rides on this answer.
You need to think, Grace. Go back and search your mind for anything you could possibly find that would reveal who Maxim is.
He said that no one leaves this villa alive.
Many people have tried to escape, but none do.
He talked about chaining me up in his cellar like he does others.
He said on the boat something about me having bigger balls than the baddest men in the mafia.
My mind is turning up blanks, I don’t know.
I can feel the fear creep up over my skin, and my chest tightens as the thought of freedom begins to slip between my fingers.
“Are you an enforcer for the Bratva?” That’s my final answer, and in all honesty, it is the only job I can think of that would come close to the tiny bits of information he has given me.
Maxim shakes his head.
I was wrong.
No. I was so close, freedom was at the edge of my fingertips.
My shoulders slump as my body decides to give up.
I can’t put on this charade any longer as a single tear falls down my cheek.
I don’t have the energy to even wipe it away.
With a shaky hand, I reach out and throw back the last of my champagne.
It tastes bitter against my lips as the bubbles make my stomach turn.
Maxim grabs his phone and opens it. His fingers slide across the screen until he turns it around and slides it toward me.
Assassin/Hitman
Is written across the screen. Reading the words has me recoiling in my seat as I move away from him. My heart is thumping in my chest as my hands become clammy.
“I’m so screwed, aren’t I?”
The waiter enters the dining room at the worst possible moment.
He places a beautiful meal of steak and vegetables before me.
The delicious smell five minutes ago would have had my mouth watering, but now has my stomach recoiling.
He takes one look at Maxim, and for the first time tonight he looks at me, and his face pales before he scurries out of the dining room as if his life depended on it.
It probably does, seeing as Maxim is a hitman.
His job is to kill people. Bad people. Maybe some good people in there too.
Whoever the Bratva want dead, Maxim facilitates it.
Does that mean?
Dread fills the pit of my stomach.
“Is this my last meal? Is that why you have dressed me up, wined and dined me. Flirted with me. Give the dead girl walking her last good night before putting a bullet in my head. Why did you detox me only to kill me? Why didn’t you leave me to die?
It would have been a much easier death on your hands.
I would have done the job for you if you had asked me to.
Your hands would have been clean on this job. ”
My body shakes as I scream at Maxim. All the hurt, fear, and uncertainties come to the surface as my tears begin to flow freely.
“I need to go. I can’t … I … need a moment,” I say, sliding back in my chair. The sound echoes through the room as I get up and rush out of the dining room. I can’t breathe. The panic attack is beginning to set in as I frantically try to find a bathroom to lose my shit in.
I try a couple of doors until I find a powder room. Slamming the door behind me, I collapse onto the floor under a waterfall of tears as I curl up into a ball praying that this nightmare will be over soon.
Maxim is an assassin.
I’m never going home.