Chapter 36 #2
A smile took over my entire face, and I couldn’t help but give him a quick kiss. “Perfect. And I need at least two officers at every hideout we target if you want to arrest the lackeys. Otherwise, we’re happy to blow them to smithereens.”
“You can blow up the hideouts, but leave the surviving goons for me. I’ll have as many officers with your team as you need. We’re happy to target hideouts ourselves if we’ve got more locations than the teams.”
“Great. I’ll consider the offer when I assign each team their targets.”
Sami scoffed and, with mirth lighting up her eyes, said, “Tara, you don’t have to be so happy about it. That’s literally his job.”
“Shh,” I told her with a wink. “He might stop doing his job.”
Knox folded his arms and gave a smirk. “Believe me, I’m tempted.”
I looked at Sami. “See? Let the man do his job.”
Knox leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to fuck you on the kitchen counter tonight.”
My legs squeezed together, and with a control I didn’t know if I mustered properly, I shook my head and looked at our audience. “Ladies, we will cover the two remaining leaders and the remaining hideouts.”
The girls and I were ready.
Seven days before the auction
“Hey, you don’t sound so good,” I said, clutching my hair in my fist, trying not to pull it out.
Sloane sniffled softly. “Maxim is a fucking sadist. He enjoys humiliating helpless women. I hate this, Tara.”
“What did the fucker do?” I growled.
“I think he prefers beating women. But he’s being careful not to mark up any of us girls. So he’s put collars on every woman. Doesn’t…doesn’t let any of the women wear clothes.”
My legs trembled as fear shot up my spine. Nightmares of the past started to rear their ugly heads. “Don’t hide things from me. Tell me everything.”
I could feel her tears slashing at my soul. “I’ll be honest. I couldn’t bear to watch him mistreat us. So I’ve kinda become his problem girl. The moment he tried to force me to remove my clothes, I punched him square in the jaw.”
“Good. What’d he do?”
“The fucker laughed when I did that. Well, he tried to slap me, but I punched him in the stomach and kneed him in the balls.”
“Yes. Fuck, yes.” She was going to be okay. She could handle herself.
“I don’t know if you’d say that in a minute.”
“God, no. What happened? What did the fucker do?”
She was quiet for a minute before she swallowed, and in a small voice, spoke, “You know men like these, Tara. When they start to lose a fight, that’s when their egos climb higher.
That’s when they want to show you who’s the boss.
He, of course, got his goons involved. Well, I started to fight them all. I could’ve taken them all…”
Her words drifted out. “I know, you could’ve. You’re the baddest bitch among us.”
She chuckled, but a small sob broke past her lips, and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest. “I should’ve trained harder with Sami. But I felt so weak. The fuckers aren’t feeding any of us properly. But the goons managed to hold me down, and…”
“And?” Horror slithered down my spine, coiling low in my belly, leaving frigid shivers in its wake as I braced myself.
“The fucker peed on me.”
The world around me halted. My breath left my chest. My fingers started to shake as a wave of dark, frightening wrath exploded out of my soul.
But not a sound came out of my lips. It couldn’t.
The shock and horror traveling through my blood had rendered me frozen.
“Sloane.” Only a whisper of her name passed through my lips.
How could someone do that to this beautiful soul of a person? What kind of person could stoop to this level of depravity? A fucking monster. A vile, weak piece of shit.
She sobbed quietly. “I at least won the fight. Even after he did that, I told him that if I’m made to walk around naked, I’ll slit every person’s throat here.
He must’ve seen something in my eyes, but somehow, he let me keep my clothes.
The fucker locked me in the fucking attic, away from the other girls. ”
“I’m so sorry, Sloany.”
“A few more days, right? I won’t let him kill me. I entered here very willingly. So it almost makes it slightly tolerable.”
“Did the goons beat you up?” I asked, rubbing my eyes as frustrated tears threatened to roll down my cheeks.
“No. Don’t wanna mess up our faces and bodies.”
“Which means they don’t anticipate keeping you all for too long. My theory for the art auction seems highly likely.”
“I agree.”
“You’re so strong, Sloany. You will be okay. Promise me.”
“Of course I’ll be okay,” she whispered. “I have you guys.”
“You also have a family, Sloane. One word, and I’ll find them for you.”
A sharp intake of breath hit my ears. After a full minute of silence, Sloane murmured, “Maybe. Once I’m out of here. For now, you four are the only family I need.”
“Alright, Sloany. Just know, you’re never alone.”
We were quiet for a while. I’d never cut the call on her first. Sloane was one of the strongest women I’d ever known.
She’d suffered through so much all her fucking life, and not once did she let it bog her down.
She walked around spreading joy and strength.
She was the first person to make me smile after I joined the Wildcats.
She’d stayed with me in dark rooms when it hurt to stay in the light.
She’d sung me lullabies when the pain from the surgeries got too much.
She’d been my pillar of strength throughout the years.
I’d never fucking hang up on her, even if we spent the entire night saying absolutely nothing.
And that was what we did.
I kept Sloane with me while we discussed plans in the afternoon.
I kept her with me while I worked through the evening.
I kept her with me while I had dinner with Knox and Shadow.
I kept her with me while she slept through the night, her soft breath echoing in my ear, while I stayed up all night being her ears.
She was my responsibility, and if I had heard any intrusion around her, I’d have grabbed Knox and stormed into that little hideout.
Six days before the auction
Sloane’s call came in the afternoon. The moment I picked up, she rushed her words in a breathless gasp. “The auction is on. Confirmed.”
“How’d you confirm?” I asked, meeting the eyes of Sami, Lena, and Naomi, who sat with me in my office, helping me go over the statistics of my plan.
“I irritated the fuck out of Maxim into revealing his plan. Got him so mad that he blurted out that he can’t wait to sell me and ship me off to the sickest son of a bitch.
He specifically said ship me off. And when I egged him on to find more about the sickest son of a bitch, he said he’ll paint his walls with my blood. ”
“Fuck yes. Love you, Sloane.”
“Love you too. Gotta rush. I’m in the bathroom. Just had to inform you of this. Call you tonight.”
Before I could respond, the call had already ended.
When I turned back to the girls, I found three sets of wide eyes staring at me. With the first smile on my face in a few days, I shrieked, “The auction is a go!”
Four days before the auction
Everything was coming together.
We had fourteen confirmed Russian hideouts. The recruits had pulled off a major recon mission, and I was so damn happy that we had them on our team now. They’d proven themselves above and beyond.
We received an official invitation for Dominic Park to bid in the special art auction room. Twenty million dollars in donations from an anonymous donor to the art exhibit, with a little note of interest posted on the dark web, would do that.
Knox had a large team of cops on standby.
On the day of the auction, he would lead the mission to capture Ruslan Karpov, the third leader, along with all the fucking millionaires and billionaires bidding on it. The priority would be Ruslan though.
At the same time, Sami and I will be targeting Maxim Orlov, while Naomi and Lena will be targeting Vadim Orlov, his brother, the guy who dropped off Sloane to Maxim.
The rest of the Wildcats would be off to each hideout in teams to deal with the Russian goons there and get the women they’d kidnapped out of there before the big boom. Knox had promised to get us extra men to ensure all bases were covered.
Besides the evening of the auction, the night before was going to be the most important. We would set up explosives at every known hideout, timed to go off during the auction, all at the same time.
Because we would all be involved in the fight during the auction, we needed someone extremely trustworthy and capable to manage surveillance of all the hideouts, confirm that no innocent people were trapped in any of them, and then time them all to blow up together.
Here, too, Knox had promised to introduce a man to me who he implicitly trusted.
I’d just finished talking on the phone with Sloane. She wasn’t sounding very good, but was still holding on.
It was near midnight, and I’d been with Sloane for a while.
The lights in the house were already dimmed.
Shadow was fast asleep in his bed in the living room, while Knox was probably asleep in our bedroom.
He’d moved into my room the night he killed those two men at Thunder Claw, and never really left. I never asked him to either.
It still surprised me that Knox loved me. That every night, he took me in his arms and held me to his chest while we slept. That he fucked me deep and slow when I was emotional, and hard and rough when my mind wouldn’t stop spinning.
I didn’t make any sound as I tiptoed into the kitchen to drink some water. My mind was circling through every possibility, every situation where things could go wrong. There was absolutely no room for error.
I chugged the cold water as my mind spun into various solutions, the number of men we’d need from Knox to send with each team of recruits, whether they’d prove to be useful or get in the way, when a large, warm presence enveloped me from behind.
“Come to bed.” Knox’s voice slid over my body like warm honey.