Chapter 30
CLAIRE
Jack didn’t stay long. After my initial arrival in this room, he joined the Mafia men in taunting me.
They loomed over me after they tied the ropes to an anchored hook on the floor, making sure I couldn’t even stand with my arms behind my back.
My face was pressed to the grimy floor, and with every hard exhale through my nose, a cloud of dirt fluffed up to irritate my eyes.
They threatened to whip and beat me, but they didn’t lay a finger on me at all.
I quickly understood that this was just a game for them.
There was no doubt in my mind that they had taken me for some grand purpose.
A motive lurked behind their kidnapping, something that they wanted to be rewarded for and paid for.
But until they would actually make good on their threats, they wanted to play with me.
It was psychological warfare at its worst.
I flinched every time they came near. I cringed at the crude, derogatory, and threatening insults they slurred.
Sticks and stones could hurt me, but I refused to let their words mess me up.
Their whips and clubs, fists and kicks could bruise me, but I wouldn’t cower mentally.
Calling their bluff wasn’t wise, so instead, I endured the wait for what would come.
After Jack did a couple of lines of cocaine with the mobsters, laughing and joking the entire time, he left without a word. He was most definitely not here to surprise me as an ally.
The others filed out of the room too. Leaving me alone in this dark, damp, and filthy storage room was the next phase of torture. Unknowns banged around in my head like monsters I couldn’t escape. No light shone through here. No one came to give me food or water.
Only the sounds of the rats scampering and scurrying across the floor kept me company. That and the impending doom that I could die very soon.
Why did I ever leave Mikhail?
Why couldn’t I have been more practical and suggest that we could talk about a future?
Why couldn’t I have paused and thought things through more?
Regret consumed me. Every time I thought about how good I had it with him, how safe and pampered I was, I drowned in the guilt that I chose to walk away.
But that was the problem.
Thinking with him around wasn’t so easy.
I was too quick to feel. I was sucked under the sensation of being cared for, of being wanted and desired. Pleasured. Mikhail Orlov was a larger-than-life force, and it wasn’t a simple matter of being rational. It had felt impossible to think anything through with the temptation of his presence.
My stomach ached. Shivering to conserve warmth, I acknowledged that I had to be in a basement level of some nasty building. Held captive and hostage for who knew what amount. Mikhail had money, but would he pay a ransom to free me?
I doubted it.
Wherever I was, whatever the catch was, I doubted anyone would find me. Least of all, Mikhail Orlov.
Why would he look for me? I had walked away despite his argument to stay. I left a note explicitly asking him not to look after me or search for me.
I’d damned myself with that note. Because he was all I’d had. No one else would be looking for me. Fatima was the only other person I knew here in the States, and she was just a coworker who was smart enough to not get involved with the Mafia. Jack was clearly no help, actively helping these men.
Mikhail would’ve been my only hope, and I’d left him.
Time dragged on with agonizing slowness as my mind raced.
In the same vein, it sped by, every second blurring too rapidly in this nothingness in which I was isolated.
The suspense over when these mobsters could come back gnawed at me.
Hours passed, and I remained stuck in this dread of what would happen when they returned.
I hadn’t been abandoned, though. Even though no one was in the room, I heard the distant and muffled sounds of a man outside this space.
A guard would be left to make sure I was here, likely taking watch outside the door.
But it made no difference. With this gag over my mouth, I couldn’t yell for help.
With this rope tying me to the floor, I was nothing more than a leashed animal in here.
Stuck in this room for so long, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Only with the hunger pangs in my stomach could I know that time had passed. With the ache in my head worsening, I knew that I had been barricaded in here for more than a little while.
Isolated and without anything to track with the darkness, I neared the brink of insanity. Anxiety was all I could feel. Fear was all-consuming. Beneath it all, I had to endure the fact that I could only blame myself.
If I hadn’t walked away from Mikhail, because he didn’t love me, I never would’ve been taken like this.
I could’ve been smart and planned a flight to London while I was still under his protection.
I could’ve asked one of the guards to give me advice on how to escape.
I could’ve tried to be patient and discuss with Mikhail how uncomfortable I was with his life of violence.
There were so many things I could’ve attempted to change, but it was far too late now.
When the door opened, bringing in a rush of dank air, I gasped and nearly suffocated myself with the gag over my mouth.
Jarred out of the hazy drowsiness that I kept fighting, I realized how badly the sleep deprivation was getting to me.
It was the biggest mind fuck of all, but I was instantly alert and awake.
The time had come.
Two men stormed in, their expressions full of malice and nefarious plans. Smirking and sneering, they crept closer and closer. Without a warning, they were suddenly there. Real and present danger had me trembling again.
“Time to rough you up, little bitch,” one taunted.
“Time to fuck you up,” the other said, chuckling as he reached for the zipper to his pants.
No!
No! No, no, no!
I scrambled back, held in place by my ropes tied to the floor. It wouldn’t make a difference, but my instinct of fight or flight reared to the surface. I couldn’t just lie here. Being a victim wasn’t supposed to be part of my life!
“Time to fuck that pussy before we make a mess of that face.” The first one smiled at his buddy. “You wanna go first?”
“You take her ass and I’ll fuck that mouth,” he replied.
They nodded, in agreement on how to defile me, but before I could scream mutely again, someone else rushed in behind them. A shadow smeared in the darkness, but I saw him appear just in time.
An arm lashed out, choking off the shorter man who dictated my rape. Long fingers gripped his chin and wrenched his head back before the other hand came up swiftly. Swiping a long blade from left to right, he slit the mobster’s throat.
Crimson sprayed out. Blood leaked instantly with the jugular severed.
Despite the gore, the grisly bleeding that I normally wouldn’t have baulked at with my background in medicine, I stared with horror as the man slumped backward.
Draped over his murderer, he gazed back at me, a vacant look already stealing over his face and in his eyes.
The killer dropped him. He’d shown up so quickly and ended this man’s life in such a rush, it was hard to believe it happened, that this wasn’t fiction but actually happening.
Mikhail heaved in deep breaths as he withdrew his arms, letting the dead man drop to the floor.
Making eye contact with me, he narrowed his eyes. Anger lit the fire in them. Rage and the feral urgency of violence crossed over his face, but it wasn’t at me.
He turned with the fluid momentum of dropping the first man. Extending his arm, he aimed his gun at the second man before he could react. With his hand still at his zipper, the mobster was too slow to get his gun.
Mikhail didn’t delay. He fired point blank at the man’s head. Five times, he sank bullets into the face of my would-be rapist.
Blood and brain matter sprayed out backward. More gruesome remains painted the wall and floor. He dropped too, dead before he could utter a word or fight back.
“In here,” Mikhail said, as if he was reporting to someone behind him. A comms unit was stuck in his ear, but with his solemn gaze locked on me, he seemed to be addressing me with his look.
Fear. Anger. Worry. Sorrow.
I trembled, overwhelmed with the relief that he was here.
I had been wrong, all wrong about him.
He did come to look for me. He’d found me.
Shouts and gunshots came from the other room, but I couldn’t slow down to catalogue whether that was Andre or his cousins out there or other Orlov men backing up their boss with my rescue.
It didn’t matter.
They were here.
I would live.
Mikhail pressed his lips together in a firm line as he approached me. Stepping over the dead men, he reached me and lowered to help me.
Blood stained his suit. It dripped over the toe of his shoes. The imagery was a moment of déjà vu, when he’d saved me from that drunk kicking me at the hospital and I’d been on the floor, at eye level with his messy shoe.
I shook and focused on breathing as he leaned down, crouching with that same knife he’d used to kill my kidnapper.
Swipes of the blade had my arms moving, lighting on a line of pain from the posture that wrecked my muscles and tendons.
Once he freed me from the floor, he used one hand to help me up as he tugged my gag from my mouth.
No words crossed between us, but I didn’t need them.
As soon as my arms were free and I could sit up slowly, I threw myself at him.
Ignoring the blood.
Disregarding the gap between us from my choice to leave.
I hugged him and sobbed, clinging to him with all the gratitude and relief I couldn’t try to hide.
He didn’t shy away or lecture me. Not trying to remove me from him, he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me until he could carry me out of the nightmare I would never be able to scrub from my mind. I tucked my head against his shirt, clutching him like I never wanted to let go.
And in that moment, I prayed that he would still have room for me in his life. Not as a criminal boss who’d dictate what I could do and where I should go, but as my hero. The man who’d saved me. The man I loved.