43. LACEY
Chapter forty-three
C old.
A thousand needles of pure misery pierced my skin, stealing the breath from my lungs.
My body screamed in agony. The cold was a living thing, crawling down my back.
I trembled violently as ice water streamed from my hair, slid down my spine, and dripped off my toes.
I choked on the water that had just flooded my senses.
When my eyes fluttered open, the world tilted.
A smeared gray blur slowly sharpened into a concrete floor below me.
Metal bit into my wrists, and in panic, I yanked my hands forward.
The weight of my body pulled against some kind of bindings.
My arms screamed with a savage, white-hot pain as my shoulders stretched so tightly I thought the joints might become dislocated.
The darkness was gone, replaced by an agonizingly painful, terrifying reality. I was awake. And I was in hell.
“She isss awake. Da bucket of aice water did the trick,” a man sneered. His voice was thick with a heavy accent similar to Delgado’s.
My eyes darted around to find the source of the voice as the pounding in my temples intensified.
A man with a bucket in his hand was walking away from me, toward a group of greasy thugs gathered around a long stainless steel table at the far end of the room.
Laid out before them were various tools that could’ve come straight from some medieval dungeon—long, thin boning knives with curved, gleaming points; cleavers so wide they could split a person’s skull in one blow; a coil of rusted chain; a bone saw with sharp, glinting teeth; and next to it, a heavy steel mallet that could shatter anything in one swing.
None of it had touched me—yet. But the message was clear, torture was in my near future.
No! This wasn’t possible.
Nik had sworn he’d never let anything happen to me. That he would burn the world down before he let me fall into Delgado’s hands. So how the hell had I ended up here, hanging by my wrists?
I searched for the last thing I remembered clearly—the mayor’s voice cutting through the crowd.
He’d stretched out his hand to Nik like a man greeting an equal.
Then there was a shove of bodies, a surge from all directions.
I’d heard Nik’s voice—roaring my name over the crush—followed by gunfire and screaming.
Of course, it had been the mayor himself, security entourage in tow, and who knew how many of Delgado’s men.
No one could have anticipated that the mayor of New York City himself would launch such a blatant attack on one of the syndicate’s highest-ranking men.
And it could mean only one thing—the mayor was in deep, desperate to appease Delgado.
How better to attack Nik than by taking me?
My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat. My entire body felt bruised and battered, like I’d been rolled down a hill and dumped here for the main event.
And the cold…! It pressed in from all sides. My breath fogged the air. My bare legs prickled with gooseflesh, and the involuntary tremors going through me made my body jerk, causing me to sway back and forth.
When I was finally able to lift my gaze again, I realized where I was. Rows of beef carcasses swung from hooks overhead, their pale flesh glistening under harsh fluorescent lights. Blood pooled dark and sticky in shallow drains along the floor; the metallic smell was enough to choke on.
And me? I was just part of the decor—handcuffed to a meat hook, arms stretched above me, wearing only my little black dress.
Stay calm, Lacey .
The voice of Miss Minerva—the old fortune teller from up in the holler—played in my mind, so clear she could’ve been standing right in front of me: “ You’ll never be harmed when danger stares you down, long as you never blink first.”
No fucking way was I blinking.
If they’d killed Nik…no. No, I couldn’t think that.
He had to be alive so I could feel his arms around me again.
Like he said, I was scrappy. Somehow, I’d figure out how to escape this butcher’s prison.
Think, Lacey .
I was still alive, which meant they wanted me for something. Maybe they thought I had useful information, but more likely, I was bait—to make Nik come running.
But here’s the thing about bait—it doesn’t always stay on the hook.
I scanned the room. The men were laughing among themselves—and it was the kind of casual, ugly laughter that said they thought this was already over.
They had no idea.
Nik would be coming. And whether I got out of here alive or not, Nik would murder every last one of them, the mayor included.
Just then, the four men rose from their seats and sauntered over to me.
One of them stepped forward, spit flying from his mouth and landing warm and vile across my cheek.
Before I could react, he drove a fist deep into my side.
White-hot pain exploded through my ribs, knocking the air from my lungs.
The force sent me swinging in a wide, helpless arc, the chain overhead screeching as my weight jerked it taut.
My dress flared up, baring my pantyless ass to the pack of grinning jackals.
Every instinct screamed at me to curl up, to protect my ribs and stomach, but that would’ve wrenched my shoulders further. My fingers clawed at the hook as I attempted to keep enough tension in my arms to stop my shoulder joints from tearing clean out of their sockets.
The men whistled and catcalled, barking out filth, their eyes crawling over my exposed skin.
And then a deep, metallic rumble cut through the laughter.
Every head turned.
At the far end of the warehouse, a rolling metal door shuddered upward, the sound echoing through the cavernous building. Light from outside spilled in, followed by the low growl of an expensive engine. A gunmetal-gray sports car rolled inside.
A winged door lifted slowly, and out stepped Ciro Delgado.
The men straightened instantly—postures snapping from predatory looseness to rigid attention.
But he didn’t look at them.
He looked at me.
He dragged his eyes—black, flat, and cold—over me inch by inch, the way a butcher sized up the next carcass to carve. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t even hate. It was worse—pure, calculated ownership. It was the kind of look that made me feel dirty just for existing.
“Nice to see you’re awake, Lyla.” His grin was all yellow teeth and poison. “Or perhaps I should say, Mrs. Volkov.”
I stayed silent, swaying slightly, fighting the temptation to react.
“You’re turning out to be more valuable than I’d expected,” he went on, his tone conversational, almost amused.
“Sure, you had value at the auction. But now? Now you’re bait—bait that’s going to bring down a syndicate leader, one of the most powerful men in the world.
” His smile thinned. “And a pain in my ass.”
Nik was alive. That was the only thing that mattered.
Delgado pulled his phone from his coat, tapped the screen, and turned it toward me.
My stomach rolled.
It was a picture of me—unconscious, strung up on this hook while two of his men held my dress above my waist and groped me. My legs and hips were on full display, like some kind of trophy fish.
The bile rose in my throat. I gagged, fighting it back.
Delgado let out an insidious chuckle.
“You’re an insurance policy, Mrs. Volkov. As soon as your husband’s dead, I’ve promised these men they can have you—however they want—as long as they kill you when they’re done. Payment for a job well done.”
Rage boiled up inside me, overpowering the fear momentarily.
“You’ll never kill him,” I spat, my pulse roaring in my ears. “He’s too smart for a thick-headed, short little rapist like you. You strut around like you’ve got a stick shoved so far up your ass you can taste it—lording over rats. You’ll never rule anything more than the gutters.”
His smile vanished.
In two strides, he was on me.
He fisted a hand in the front of my dress, yanking me forward hard. The cuffs bit deeper into my wrists, making me wince. His breath was rancid with cigar smoke and cheap liquor.
“You worthless whore,” he hissed, his gaze boring into mine. “The only thing you’re good for is fucking and screaming.”
He turned his head just enough to bark over his shoulder to his men, “Make sure she bleeds. Suffers. But also that she lives long enough to beg me to forgive her…before she begs me to let her die.”
And then his fist came up.
The first punch split my lip.
The second snapped my head sideways.
The world tilted again, light flaring at the edges of my vision.
The third strike was nothing but a bright, crushing explosion before the blackness swallowed me whole.
When I came to, pain was the first thing I knew.
A deep, gnawing ache in my shoulders. A throbbing fire in my wrists.
Every single one of my muscles was locked tight from cold and strain.
I didn’t open my eyes. Didn’t move.
The last thing I needed was Delgado’s men realizing I was awake.
Footsteps scuffed the concrete nearby—at least two men.
“…as soon as we get the word Volkov’s dead, I’m first,” one of them said, his tone dripping with anticipation.
“Won’t be long now,” the other replied. “That picture of her worked like a charm. The tech guy sent out the intel for Volkov to find. Bastard thought he was so slick, hacking into it. He thinks she’s in one of Mr. Delgado’s houses down in Mexico.”
I kept my breathing slow, even as my pulse began to pound.
“Dumb fuck’s only a few blocks away from her right now and doesn’t have a clue,” the first man went on. “On his way to Jet Aviation at Teterboro. Taking his shiny new toy down south.”
The second man laughed. “And the moment he sets foot on that jet, we hit the wings. BOOM. The jet fuel goes up in flames. No more Volkov.”
My heart slammed so hard I thought it might give me away. Nik was walking straight into a trap.
Boots shuffled closer. I stayed limp.
A hand clamped onto my arm, shaking me once. “You awake, bitch?”
I didn’t move.