Chapter 2 Ransom
RANSOM
Malice and I stand in Victor’s room while Vic sits in front of his computer. It’s a familiar scene, and we’ve done this exact same thing hundreds of times over the years, usually watching him go through video footage or disable security in a building or something.
The atmosphere usually isn’t this tense, though.
“Fucking find her,” Malice bites out, and Vic sucks in a breath.
He doesn’t turn away from his computer, but I can see one of his hands twitching on the mouse as he scans through the security cam footage he’s managed to pull.
“That’s what I’m doing,” he shoots back, his eyes glued to the screen.
But it’s not looking good so far.
Usually, it’s not hard for Vic to follow a trail and find where someone went, tracking them down so Malice and I can go after them. But so far, we can’t find even a glimpse of Willow.
Apparently living here with us taught her a few things—like how to avoid CCTV and security cameras if she didn’t want to be found.
“She has to have gone somewhere!” Malice growls, letting out his tension by slamming his palm against the desk. “She didn’t just fucking disappear.”
“If she’s not in the view of a camera, I can’t find her,” Victor snaps back. “It would be easy if she’d just stayed on the fucking path.”
But she didn’t.
She didn’t, and she snuck out, and we have no idea where she went.
That’s the thought that’s probably spinning through all of our heads right now, putting us even more on edge than we have been lately.
Worry sits in my gut, heavy and dense. The gash I got from running from Ilya aches on my thigh, and I curl my hands into fists at my side, trying to breathe through it all.
Malice’s jaw is clenched so tightly that I’m surprised we can’t hear his teeth crying out for relief, and even Vic, who’s usually cool and impassive under stress, seems strung out.
His usual ramrod straight posture is slumped as he sits in the chair, flicking from camera to camera, hunting for some sign of Willow.
“Go faster,” Malice grinds out, and Vic inhales sharply.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” he says. “Or do you want me to rush and risk missing something?”
It’s times like this when the two of them are so obviously twins.
Usually, they’re as different as night and day.
Malice is all chaos and rage, stomping through life and lashing out at things that don’t go his way.
Victor is cool, almost cold at times, all deadly precision and impassive intelligence.
They look alike, with similar facial features and dark hair, but that’s usually where the similarities end.
When they get worked up, though, they radiate the same kind of energy. The same intensity that seems to grow and get sharper like a feedback loop while they bark at each other.
Since I know that nothing I can say will make Vic’s search go faster, I tune them out for the moment, thinking about Willow instead.
I replay the last moments with her, trying to think this through. She came up to my room with me after Malice and I got back from the failed hit on Ilya. We had sex—damned good sex—and everything seemed fine.
I held her in my arms like I’ve done before. Like I started doing every night since she first let me. Willow melted against me, and she seemed content.
Then I woke up, and she was gone.
At first, I wasn’t worried, thinking maybe she’d gone to the bathroom. When she didn’t come back right away, I assumed maybe she’d headed downstairs for a late-night snack.
But after several minutes of dozing and waiting for her to return, I got up to go look for her. That’s when I realized she wasn’t in the kitchen. Or the bathroom. Or the garage.
She wasn’t anywhere.
There’s no sign of anyone breaking into the warehouse either, so the only thing that makes sense was that Willow just… left.
“There.”
I’m dragged out of my thoughts by the sound of Vic’s voice. When I look back to him, he’s leaning forward over his desk, his gaze intent on the screen in front of him.
There are a bank of several monitors set up on his large L-shaped desk, and there’s a blurry image on the screen of one of them. A few taps from Vic on his keyboard brings the image into clearer focus, making it resolve into what’s obviously footage of Willow, walking down a street in the dark.
She looks small and vulnerable, hunched in on herself, her blonde hair shining under the street lamps.
Something sticks in my throat just to see it, and I want to go back in time and rush to where she is, to protect her and make sure she comes back here safe. And then ask her why the fuck she left in the first place.
Vic tracks her movements on the camera while Malice and I crowd in behind him, practically holding our breaths as we watch the footage play out.
She makes it down the street, cuts through someone’s yard, and disappears for a bit, only to reappear on the other side of the block, still moving quickly.
“What’s that?” Malice asks suddenly, jabbing his finger at the screen.
I peer closer and see a dark shape lurking in the shadows, dogging Willow’s steps.
It puts a bad feeling in my chest, and the feeling of dread is justified when we see a man step out of the shadows a moment later and move in on Willow.
He comes up behind her, and it looks like he says something in her ear before he grabs her roughly, holding something over her mouth and nose.
Victor taps at the keyboard again, his fingers flying over the keys as he zooms in on the image, but between the darkness and the way the man is holding himself, we can’t see his face.
“Fuck!” Malice explodes. His tattooed hands curl into fists, and he looks like he would be punching something right now if the only things in his path weren’t Vic’s expensive computer equipment. “Goddammit.”
Vic’s jaw clenches, his blue eyes narrowing, but he doesn’t say anything. My stomach twists into a knot as the three of us watch the screen. In the dark, slightly grainy footage, Willow tries to fight the man’s hold and then slumps, going limp and unconscious in his arms.
“Who the fuck is that?” Malice demands. “What the hell does he want with her?”
It feels shitty to even think it, but only one thing makes sense here. There’s only one person who could have been after Willow. Only one person who would have anything to gain from kidnapping her, knowing her connection to the three of us.
“Ilya,” I say, the name coming out bitter and twisted. “It has to be. Who else would want to grab her like that?”
Malice turns to me and gives me a grim look, and when Vic looks up, I can tell that I said what we’re all thinking.
“Fuck,” Malice snarls again.
“He must have found us,” Vic murmurs. “He must have figured out a way to trace you back here and then decided to go after Willow. She made herself an easy target for him, alone on an empty street and away from us.”
“Find her,” Malice snaps. “Fucking find her. Where the fuck did he take her?”
Vic just nods, turning back to his computer. He scans through the footage, but once Ilya and an unconscious Willow leave the view of that security camera, it’s impossible to find him again.
Malice urges Vic to keep looking, and he does, but I think we all know that someone like Ilya is better at stealth than Willow. He probably knew where to go to make sure there was no way we could track him.
“He’s gone,” Vic finally says, turning in his chair. “I can’t pick up the trail.”
Malice looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin, every muscle in his broad body tensed like he’s ready to explode. His gray eyes are wild, darting back and forth, and his breathing comes in short bursts.
I feel the same way, honestly. If we can’t find where Ilya took Willow, there’s no telling what could happen.
“We have to find her,” I say, running a hand through my hair. “We know what Nikolai was like, and if Ilya is anything like his brother, and he has Willow…”
I trail off, because I know I don’t need to finish that sentence. If I speak the truth of what could happen out loud, it might get Malice so worked up that he’ll actually punch a hole in one of Vic’s screens.
“I’ll keep looking,” Vic says quietly. He starts back at the beginning, trying to go through the footage slowly, looking for any hint of Ilya or Willow.
“Wait,” Malice says, snapping himself out of his rage for a second. Or more likely, tapping into it enough that it focuses his energy instead of making him catatonic. “Where did he grab her? The exact location.”
Victor goes back to where we saw Ilya take Willow, and watching it again makes even more helpless rage churn inside me than the first time.
“I think I can get a street name,” Vic says. “Hang on…”
He zooms in and out on the footage, adjusting the view as he searches for the markers he needs. When he finally rattles off a set of cross streets, Malice nods sharply before glancing my way and jerking his chin toward the door.
“We’ll go there and try to track Ilya on foot,” I say to Vic, picking up what Malice must be thinking of. “While you keep scrubbing through the footage.”
“Good. Go.” Our brother doesn’t even bother looking away from his computers as he agrees. “With any luck, he’ll have left something behind that you can trace. Call me if you find anything.”
“We will. You too.”
He nods, his fingers flying over the keys. Malice and I move to head out, but before we reach the door, Vic speaks up again.
“Malice…” he says, and then trails off, his expression tight.
Malice just nods. “I know,” he says. “Call me if you find anything. Anything.”
“Right.”
We turn and stride out of the room, and I do my best to get my emotions under control as we head down the stairs to the first floor.
It says a lot that even Vic, who’s always been a master at hiding his emotions and compartmentalizing shit, is this worried.
Willow means something to all of us, and having her gone and in danger makes me feel fucking feral.
Malice and I gear up and head out, sliding into the car a few minutes later.
He cranks the key in the ignition, and the engine purrs as we pull out of the garage.
I let the silence linger for a moment as we drive, not wanting to ask the question that sits on the tip of my tongue.
But the more I don’t ask it, the more it burns in my mind, and I finally drag in a deep breath and glance over at my older brother.
“Do you think Willow is still alive?”
His jaw clenches, and his fingers go tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles blanching white from the pressure.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “For now.”
I don’t need him to explain any further to know what he means.
All this time, Ilya has been searching for information, trying to track down and figure out who killed his brother.
Now he has Willow, the only witness to the murder, in his grasp.
He’ll use her just like we feared he would: as a means to get to the three of us.
It’s what we worried would happen from the fucking beginning of all this. It’s the reason we essentially stalked her and then had her move in with us when it became clear someone was poking around and asking questions.
When we agreed to go after Nikolai and avenge our mother’s death, we knew there was a chance someone could catch wind of it and decide to come after us in retaliation. But we decided it was worth the risk.
Now, fear fills me at the idea of Ilya being involved in this. But it isn’t fear about what will happen to me and my brothers if Nikolai’s brother comes after us. Right now, I couldn’t give less of a shit about that.
All my fear is for Willow. For the gorgeous angel who fell into our laps and then became so much more than a loose end.
She’s stronger than she looks, I know that.
But up against someone like Ilya… I’m not sure if it’s going to be enough.