17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Sasha
N atalya and I come up with a plan to escape. It’s a stupid, risky plan but we don’t have any other ideas.
When the men eventually come back down, we plan on hiding so we can ambush them, steal their guns, shoot them, and escape.
Natalya and I both know how to fire a gun since our mom taught us.
She made sure to take us to the shooting range after we turned eighteen.
Irina and Ana don’t know how to shoot a gun yet and now with Denis’s control over them, may never learn.
“Are we going to get ourselves killed?” I ask as we hide on either side of the door so when its opened, no one will be able to see us right away.
“I hope not. But we can’t wait around and find out what Liam O’Connor wants with us. We need to fight.”
“Nico will be looking for me. He’ll come save me.”
Natalya gives me a strange look. “You have a lot of faith in him.”
“He’s saved me a lot from a lot of bad men. I know he’ll save me now.”
“You almost sound like…”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re in love with him.”
The notion that I could be in love with Nico is crazy. Nico is a bad man who’s made me kill for him. I can’t love a man like that.
And yet… I know it’s not just my body that flutters when he’s around. My heart does too. He makes me feel safe, despite everything. He makes me excited and strangely happy. I love the challenges we have between us. It has awoken something in me I never thought possible: true happiness.
I always felt slightly frustrated growing up. My dad meant well but he would put limits on what I could do. With Nico, there are no limits. Sometimes that’s terrifying but other times… it’s the best feeling in the world.
Maybe that is love.
“Let’s just focus on getting out of here,” I say.
Natalya’s eyes are knowing. Being in love herself, she knows how to spot the signs.
The two of us wait for a very long time next to the door. So long that I start to get fidgety.
“What if they have cameras in here?” I whisper, “and they can see what we’re trying to do.”
“Shoot. I didn’t even think of that.”
I smile a little.
“What?” she asks.
“Even now in a life or death situation, you still can’t cuss.”
Natalya flushes, looking at her feet. “Mikhail doesn’t like it when I cuss. And I don’t care for it either.”
“What happens if you do cuss in front of him?” She and I have never had these conversations before. Partly because Denis kept us apart after she married Mikhail… and partly because I just never cared to ask.
“That’s personal.”
“You can tell me. I’m your sister. I’m a married woman now myself.”
She sighs and flicks her eyes at me, embarrassment written on her face. “He spanks me,” she admits.
All the air leaves my body. “He does?”
“Yes. It’s a form of punishment. I… I like it. I need him to be in control. It helps me.”
“Wow.”
“I know,” she says with an eye roll. “You’re judging me right now.”
“No. I’m not.”
Her eyes widen. “You’re not?”
“I’m not. Nico has… spanked me too,” I admit, my face on fire.
“Does he hurt you?”
“You just told me your husband spanks you and you like it and yet, you’re going to ask me if Nico hurts me ?”
“Fair enough,” she says, raising her hands in surrender.
“And no. Nico doesn’t beat me. He’s only spanked me a couple of times. I didn’t exactly like it but… I didn’t hate it either. So…”
“Maybe we have something in common.”
I scrunch up my face. “Eww! That’s not something I want in common with you, Nat.”
She laughs for the first time since we’ve been taken. It’s a beautiful sound. A sound of hope. “I get it. You know, despite the circumstances we’re in, it’s just nice to talk with you like this. We rarely did it back when we lived together.”
“And now our husbands hate each other. They’ll never let us see each other again if we make it through this. Mikhail will continue to try to kill Nico and Nico will do the same to Mikahil and we’ll get caught in the crosshairs.”
She holds her hand out to me. “I know. But we’ll try to make it work. Let’s promise each other that. No matter how our husbands act, we will always try to be there for each other.”
I stare at her hand for a long moment before I place my own hand in hers. “Ok. I promise.”
We share a smile but it doesn’t last long before we hear footsteps approaching the door. We let each other go. This is it.
We hunker down on either side of the door, trying to stay out of sight. The door opens. No one comes in though. We wait, wondering what the men see.
Then finally, one of the men steps into the room.
Natalya jumps onto his back before he can react and I kick him in the balls, knocking him to the ground. A quick look shows that he’s by himself.
It’s not Liam, I notice. One of his lackeys.
I kick the gun out of his hand and pick it up, aiming it at his head.
“Wait,” he says, holding his hands up as Natalya comes to stand beside me. “Don’t do this.”
“Sasha, hand me the gun,” she murmurs.
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Only in self-defense. Never purposefully.”
I tighten my grip on the gun. “Well I have. And I need to kill him before he makes a move.”
I think back to Alek strapped to Nico’s table in Nico’s torture dungeon. I was so scared then.
I’m not scared now.
My fingers find the trigger and I press down. The bullet goes straight through his head, knocking him to his back. Blood splatters the wall behind him.
“They’ll hear that,” Natalya says. “We have to move. Now.” She grabs my hand and hauls me out of the basement. I keep the gun gripped in my hand.
We make it back up to the main portion of the nightclub where we find two men running in our direction. They stop when I raise my gun.
“What is happening?” Liam asks, coming into view. He has a lazy handsome way about him. “Ah, Sasha. Did you kil my man down below? Interesting. Didn’t know that either of you girls had that in you.”
“We’re not girls,” I snarl. “We’re women.”
He raises his hands in mock surrender. “My apologies. But you’re not going anywhere. I need you two to drive your husbands mad. If you leave, then I have no leverage.” He nods at his men to approach us.
That’s when I fire off my gun. I hit one right in the chest while the other one raises his gun and fires. The bullet lands in my leg, knocking me to the ground.
“Sasha!” Natalya screams.
The pain is excruciating but I push through it and fire my gun once more. This time, the bullet lands in the guards head.
Liam realizes how good of a shot I am and dashes into another room off to the side.
“We have to get out of here,” Natalya says, helping me stand up but the second I place any weight on my hurt leg, I scream. “Just lean on me. Let me help you.”
We limp out of the nightclub. Liam doesn’t stop us and I don’t know why but now is not the time to worry about that.
We have no car. No cellphone to call for help.
The bullet landed in my thigh. It’s slowly oozing blood. I’m going to die if I don’t get help soon.
Natalya gasps. “We’re close to our house. Our old house.”
“You mean Denis’s house?”
“Yes. It’s not ideal but that’s all we have right now. We go to him, ask him for his help. He won’t let you die. You’re married to his ally. He’ll help.”
“What about you? He might just kill you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she grunts, helping me walk. “We just need to save you.”
“How can I not worry? You’re my sister.”
“You actually said that as a nice thing.”
I smile despite the pain. “I did.”
“Denis is all we have right now. We have to try. Come on.”
It takes all of my strength and willpower to remain upright as we walk to Denis’s house. I’m slowly losing blood. I can feel my mind getting woozy. I’m not sure how much time I have left.
We reach his house and Natalya pounds on the door while trying to keep me upright. I’m growing weaker by the moment.
The door opens to reveal Denis himself. He sneers down at us. “What do you girls want?”
“Sasha is hurt,” Natalya gasps. “Please help her. Please.”
He flicks his eyes down to my hurt leg and sneers all over again. “Why would I help you?”
“Nico is your ally,” Natalya says. “His marriage to Sasha cemented that. Why wouldn’t you help her?”
“Because Nico and I are done. I’m no longer working with him. So you can go die, Sasha. I have no use of you anymore. Neither of you.” He slams the door shut in our faces.
Natalya screams a scream so savage and raw, it rocks me to my core.
“What do we do?” I whisper.
“We get help from someone else.” She walks me over to the neighbor’s house and bangs on their door. Thankfully, the person who lives there answers. This is our neighbor and I don’t even know them, despite having grown up in the house next door. That’s how sheltered our dad kept us.
It’s a middle aged woman. She gasps when she sees us.
“We need to get her to the hospital,” Natalya says. “Please. She’s my sister. She’s been shot. We don’t have a phone on us. We were kidnapped.”
“I’ll call the police. Wait here.” The woman runs back inside and comes back a moment later with a phone.
Natalya sets me on the ground as the woman calls for help. “You’re going to be ok. Just stay with me.”
“I never knew you cared so much.”
Tears spill from her eyes. “Of course I care. You’re my sister. I’ll always fight for you.”
“I see that now. I’m sorry if I was always trouble to you.”
“It’s ok. And I’m sorry if I wasn’t the best big sister to you. I was so busy with dance practice and pleasing our dad that I never made time for you.”
“It’s ok,” I repeat her words. “I forgive you.” I can feel the blackness creeping in on my vision.
“Sasha,” she snaps. “Stay with me.”
But I can’t. I find myself slipping, slipping, slipping… until I’m gone.
Nico
I go back to Liam’s nightclub to see if he’s there. To see if my wife is there.
But when I storm inside, I’m confronted with silence. And two dead bodies on the ground. Neither of them Sasha or Natalya.
Liam steps out of his office with a gun in his hand. “Come to kill me, Nico?”
“For stealing my wife? Yes.”
“She’s not here. She left.”