Chapter 46 Victor
VICTOR
My alarm goes off the way it does every single day at six thirty in the morning. My eyes snap open, and I reach for my phone, shutting off the sound before it can wake one of the others.
I take a second to order the routine of the day in my head, going down my mental checklist of things that need to be done.
There’s the Ilya mess to deal with, of course, and I spare a thought to how that spiraled out of control pretty quickly. It seems like everything is doing that these days. We’ll have a plan in place, and before we can make sure it goes off without a hitch, something comes along to fuck it up.
It never used to be like that. We used to work like a well-oiled machine. My hacking skills gave us the advantage we needed, and we executed most of our plans without fail.
Things used to be simple, and now…
Now everything is complicated.
I shake my head and slide out of bed at six thirty-five on the dot, moving to change into new clothes for the day.
As always, I showered last night, and I take off the clothes I wear to sleep in, dropping them into the hamper in my closet.
I select a new outfit and put that on, pulling the shirt over my head.
It’s early enough that my brothers are still asleep, and that’s one of the reasons I set my alarm so early.
There’s something peaceful about having the morning to myself.
I go into the bathroom and take my time washing my face and brushing my teeth, timing out the two minutes that I spend moving my toothbrush around to each quadrant of my mouth down to the second.
I run a comb through my hair and then wipe down the counters, cleaning up any toothpaste splatter or bits of soap.
The kitchen is also blessedly empty when I head down, putting the coffee on for myself. I always have one cup in the morning, before the others get up, and then another when we all sit down to breakfast together.
It’s a concession between hiding in my room all day and doing all of my little human things where no one can see them and spending time with my family, the way Ransom is always on my case to do.
Besides, we use meal time to strategize sometimes, even now that Willow’s here with us, so it works out well enough.
I finish the coffee in the kitchen, wash the mug and put it in the drying rack, and then head back upstairs, checking the time on my phone as I do.
Seven fifteen. Not bad.
My computer is asleep, and I jiggle the mouse to wake it up as I settle in at my desk, checking the progress of the things I left running last night.
The message to X has finally been encrypted and sent, and I check to make sure that both the video and the message went through. They did, and although there’s a sense of satisfaction that it’s done now, it doesn’t feel as good as it usually does to cross an item off my to-do list.
The footage I compiled of Willow is still up on the screen, and I let it play through, even though I’ve already seen it plenty of times.
But like everything that has to do with this woman, I can’t look away.
I’m so drawn to her, to everything about her.
I’ve never wanted to be that close to anyone before, but as I stare at the images of her touching herself in her bathroom and Malice eating her out on her bed, my fingers tingle slightly with the urge to reach out.
When the footage from Malice and Ransom fucking her in the living room comes up, I hold my breath, watching it play through.
She might have been a virgin before, but she looks like a natural on her knees, crawling to Malice, taking his cock in her mouth.
The look on her face and the way she throws herself into it makes my blood heat, and I let out a ragged breath as arousal stirs in me.
I watch her ride Ransom and then get fucked by Malice, wincing in sympathy as he pounds into her. She must have been sore after that. Then I see myself step up, my cock gripped in my fist, and my heart rate speeds up, my stomach clenching.
I stop the video before it can get to the part where she leans in to lick me, not sure if I could handle seeing it again. It was almost more than I could take, even in the moment, but when my brothers and I decided to do this, we agreed it would be all of us.
Working together as a unit, like we always do.
Leaving the video frozen where I paused it, I click over to the message that I sent with the footage.
It’s cold, even for me, and I scowl as I read through it. I don’t like it.
Something about talking about Willow that way doesn’t sit right with me, even though I know it’s not true.
None of it is true. I haven’t met her adoptive mother, but I’ve heard enough from Willow and Malice to know that Willow is nothing like her.
And calling her worthless made my fingers ache as I typed, memories of my father screaming those words at my face filtering through my mind.
But it had to be done.
I open the message from X that started all of this shit, reading it again with narrowed eyes. His messages are always curt and to the point, as detailed as they need to be to make sure we can carry out his instructions, but no more than that. This latest one from him is no exception.
I’ve got a new job for you. A delivery. I want you to bring me this girl—Willow Hayes. (photo attached)
Because the nature of this drop will be more complicated than others, send me an encrypted message when you have her subdued and ready for hand-off. At that point, I’ll arrange the drop site and let you know where to bring her.
Note: It’s imperative that she be untouched. She’s useless to me if she’s been defiled.
We’re playing a dangerous game, defying X without openly refusing to carry out his orders.
He said she would be useless to him if she was defiled, so we made sure he would see her that way.
Our hope is that this will lessen his interest in her, and that he’ll move on to something else that will be more lucrative for him.
And since we never declined the job outright, he can’t claim that we’re going back on our deal and reneging on our debt.
None of us are sure it will work, but it was the only option we could come up with. The only way to protect Willow and keep Malice out of prison. We’re walking a tightrope, hoping not to lean too far to either side, and we won’t know if it worked until we hear back from X.
Tapping my fingers against the desk, I check for a message in response to mine, but there’s no reply yet.
It only got sent a few hours ago, I remind myself. He’ll respond soon. The only thing we can do now is wait.
Needing to keep my mind occupied, I move on to the next pressing item on my mental list, which is tracking down Ilya Petrov’s whereabouts.
The work of that is soothing at least, and I start in the logical order.
The hotel itself doesn’t have any security cameras, but there are a few buildings nearby that pick up parts of it with their cameras.
I already downloaded the security footage from around the time of Malice and Ransom’s attack on Ilya, deleting it from the servers afterward, and now I scan through new footage to see if I can pick up Ilya’s trail.
It’s easy to let everything else fall away while I do this. My brain gets into a kind of zone, latching on to the rhythm of this work and pushing the outside world away.
My fingers fly across the keyboard as I move from camera to camera, tracing a line from the hotel to a nearby street to the next location, trying not to lose sight of Ilya’s large frame as I go through the footage.
“Fuck!”
The curse cuts into my concentration, and I frown, looking up from my computer.
It’s not rare for Malice to wake up in a bad mood, but that was definitely Ransom’s voice, and he sounds pissed.
I’m about to get up to see what’s going on when he steps into the doorway of my room. His pants are hanging off his hips, and he’s tugging on a t-shirt, his hair still messy from sleep.
“Wake Malice,” he says in a tight voice. “Something is wrong.”
“What?” I ask. “What happened?”
He meets my gaze, worry gleaming in his eyes.
“Willow is gone.”