Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
MARINA
O leg still had the gun aimed at my head.
He never put it down.
I was trapped in a car with him holding me at gunpoint, eyeing me, silently begging me to do something that would justify using it.
He had all the power, and he knew it. And still he sat there in the back seat of the car, his body angled toward me, the gun a constant threat as he kept speaking about how I would never be as beautiful or as perfect as my sister.
It was clear he wanted me to know that my life was in his hands, and he could end it on a whim.
“If she was so perfect, why did you kill her?” I asked, trying to buy myself some time.
For what? I had no idea. But maybe if I kept him talking, I could figure something out.
Or run the clock for some divine intervention to appear or for Kostya to catch up to us .
If he was coming for me.
“She became too much of a liability,” he said, as if it was the simplest answer in the entire world. “Her silly games were no longer amusing, but I doubt I am going to have that problem with you, am I? No, you are not like your sister, you are a good girl.”
His eyes traveled up and down my body, my skin crawling in the wake of his unnerving gaze.
I let his question hang in the air, not sure how to answer.
If I agreed, it was the same as telling him I welcomed his lecherous advances. Not that he was the type of man who cared about consent.
If I rebuked him, he would just shoot me.
Instead, I looked out of the window as the car moved from the stop-and-go traffic of the city to the smoother speed of the highway. The car sped up as it merged into traffic, to take me even further from the city and Kostya and into New Jersey, with whatever horrid fate awaited me there.
“You will find I am not so bad once you learn to behave,” Oleg said, reaching over and running the tip of the gun barrel from my shoulder down my arm.
My spine stiffened with my attempt to suppress the shudder that ran through me at his next words. “You will learn to love the things I can do to you.”
Bile filled my mouth as I refused to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, instead watching the cars as we sped past them, praying Kostya was in one of them, coming to save me from this monster .
Did he know where I was? Was he able to follow us?
Oleg wasn’t subtle. He left two bodies lying on the garage floor.
It was practically the mafia’s version of a breadcrumb trail.
Would it be enough?
I had to pray it was. I had to pray that Kostya came after me, or at least the money. The duffel bag was sitting on the floor next to my feet, the stacks of bills still bound and haphazardly piled in it. Oleg had taken only a moment to glance inside the bag to make sure it was all there.
Then he just tossed the bag on the floor as if it were nothing more than an inconvenience.
Maybe it wasn’t as important to Oleg, but Kostya had chased me across the world for that bag.
Surely he would come after it again?
My heart ached.
It told me that Kostya wanted me, that he felt something for me…but my head was less convinced.
He made it clear he and Veronika weren’t a love match. He showed me over and over that he wanted me…but was it for me or because I was there, and he had…
No.
I refused to think of Kostya like that.
He pursued me. It may have started because my sister asked him to keep me safe, but I was sure it was more than that. It had to be…right?
Doubt and fear had my mind reeling while Oleg’s attention to me had my stomach twisting in disgust. I laid my head against the cold glass of the window, hoping the chill would help my body settle.
I closed my eyes for a few moments, focused on my breathing.
Oleg was still talking about my learning to behave.
I blocked it out.
If it was all the same to him, I would rather he just shot me. It seemed like a far more pleasant way to die than to be his pet.
The car jolted to the side, yanking me away from the window.
I grabbed the seat in front of me to stop myself from sliding into Oleg.
I opened my eyes just in time to see a black Mercedes pull up alongside us, and the back window rolled down to reveal the barrel of a gun pointed right at me.
The car I was in sped up, pulling ahead while the gunman fired two shots, shooting out the window behind me, showering glass down over me and Oleg.
I screamed, covering my head with the bag of money as I tried to stay low.
Oleg yelled something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the wind.
The car jerked to the side again as the driver slammed his foot down on the gas.
The Mercedes wasn’t so easily deterred.
They exchanged shots with Oleg while I strapped myself to the seat, clicking my seat belt in place, and then gripped the top strap to help me hold on.
I slipped my other arm into the straps of the bag and used it as a shield. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, I didn’t think, but it would help shield me from glass and whatever else was flying around in the car.
Everything was happening in slow motion.
My lungs burned with a scream as the car jolted to the side and the driver reached back with a gun in his hand to join Oleg in shooting through the now missing rear window.
The return fire hit the side of the car with a loud bang that sounded as if it were punching holes into the metal of the frame.
The car swerved, and I screamed again, trying to stay as low as possible in the seat, cowering under the large canvas bag.
I could smell the blood. It clawed at the back of my nose while I desperately forced the bile burning up my throat to stay down.
Oleg was screaming profanities in Russian while he reloaded his gun and returned fire over and over.
I felt rather than heard the right rear tire be shot out and suddenly we were spinning out of control, flying over several lanes of traffic.
By some miracle we didn’t hit any other cars before we slammed into the guardrail, sparks raining down on the bag, and then the world flipped upside down as we tumbled end over end.
More sparks from the grinding metal scraping the guardrail and the asphalt showered down on us until we landed in the grassy area next to the road and the car finally stopped when it slammed into a tree .
“Marina,” someone shouted.
It sounded so far away, the ringing in my ears muffling everything.
Red.
All I saw was red.
The red of blood covering the shards of broken glass on the ceiling below me, the red of the leaves floating down around the car, taking their sweet time to hit the ground, and even a few embers that still glowed from the sparks.
“Marina, say something.” The voice sounded closer, but I still couldn’t figure out who was speaking.
The ringing in my ears was too loud.
The world had stopped moving, but my head hadn’t caught up with it yet.
There was too much adrenaline in my veins, too much panic, too much shock to make sense of anything other than the single glowing red ember that faded in and out on the leather seat in front of me.
I watched it, unable to take my eyes off of the glowing red until it faded into nothing. It took a few minutes, or maybe it was only a second, for me to blink and be able to look around. The driver was still alive, coming to, shaking his head, trying to clear the shock.
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” another, closer voice said.
Kostya.
He came.
He’d found me.
I turned to see Oleg, crouched on the roof of the car, gun at the ready as he shot out the window of his door that had somehow miraculously survived the crash and kicked it out.
“No,” I tried to say, but nothing but air wheezed from my lungs.
I reached out, trying to stop Oleg, but it was too late.
He was already out of the car, intent on killing Kostya.