Chapter 25 Emil
EMIL
Pinpricks of pain lit up along my spine and back as I dropped onto my bed. It wasn’t a graceful fall, but I didn’t give a shit.
Nothing mattered anymore.
The only thing I could concentrate on and notice was Sadie’s absence.
The second I woke up every morning, I latched on to the unfinished business of finding her.
The minute I crashed every night, I succumbed to sleep with the image of her in my mind.
There was no end to the agony of losing her. Not only because I missed her and was eager to really, officially start the rest of our lives together, but also because of the way she was taken.
I’d failed her.
I hadn’t kept her safe like I thought I could, but then again, neither of us were aware of how far word was spreading about her. How much interest was put on her since the FBI fired her, since they’d set her up and then gotten rid of her.
Growling low at the renewed reminder of how they’d wronged her, I endured the lancing heat of fury. It never died out. It never cooled. Burning and building gradually, I felt like a ticking bomb about to explode.
Because the instant I found her, I would unleash the beast within me. Killing others was a job. Like this, it would be so fucking personal, it should be marked in the history of mankind.
I would eliminate everyone involved. A total annihilation was coming.
If I can just get a fucking lead.
Draping my arm over my eyes, I waited for the tension in my chest to fade. The aches all over my body. The dull throb in my head.
I’d just spent the last two days chasing a lead about where Sadie could be.
This time, I flew out to Moscow. The assholes there didn’t know who she was, but when they taunted me about missing a pretty piece of ass and joked that they’d keep her comfy if they found her, I beat the shit out of all of them.
If Alexsei hadn’t been there to pull me back in and help me rein my temper, I would’ve wasted more time in taking my anger out on them for merely talking trash about it.
For weeks, I followed every clue about where she could’ve been taken.
For over a month now, I’d stalked, spied, hunted, and researched for any indication of who could’ve had her taken. It wasn’t an amateur job, but there were countless organizations with the skillset to have her taken like that.
Despair filled me as I sank against the mattress. It pulled me down, wearing on my bones, but I wasn’t exhausted enough. I had to physically push myself to the extremes of passing out to rest. That was how all-consuming this fear and fury had become.
Breathing in steadily, I waited for sleep, just so I could recharge and resume the fight to get my woman back the next day.
Instead, as the quiet gnawed on my nerves, I thought back to how fiercely I’d had to convince my father that Sadie had been taken.
That first day was hell, spending so much time insisting that she had been kidnapped.
He, of course, worried that I was being played, that she had run to avoid talking to him.
But when I lost my temper and yelled at him that he was testing my patience when the mother of my child was out there, potentially hurt or near death, I got through to him.
Gabby had chosen that moment to enter his study, and when I dared him to think about losing her, about his pregnant wife being taken, he changed his tune.
From that moment on, when he witnessed how crazy it was making me to know Sadie was kidnapped, he didn’t fight me as much. He gave me the resources to find her and get her back.
That was fucking weeks ago, and still, she was lost.
The door to my room burst open suddenly. It was flung open so fast and with so much force, the panel swung back and dented the wall.
Shooting upright, I popped my eyes open and watched Raisa sprint in. I was already swinging my legs over the side of the bed, rushing to get up. My heart raced double time, triggered with her unusual arrival.
“Come on!”
She ran toward me, arm out and urging me to get moving.
No one rushed into a room like that if they weren’t bringing urgent news.
“They have a lead?” I could barely get the words out with the punishing dread of getting my hopes up high. “They found her?”
“Come on!” She shook her head, grabbing my arm and forcing me to run with her.
If anyone else had ever dared to burst into my room like that, they’d be getting an ass kicking. Guards had more respect than that. But this was Raisa. Unlike Gabby, she was cool under a crisis, ready to get serious and disregard decorum and manners.
“Ivan—” She slowed as we sprinted around a corner of the hallway. “Ivan’s got one of the spies on the phone.”
“Where?” I asked. “Where? Where is he? Where is she?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know!” Not slowing for a second, she led me downstairs. “We were just coming by to pick up Lev and Misha, and he got a call.”
“What did he say? What?” I was too impatient.
I had to know everything now. My father hadn’t held back in the search for Sadie.
That was how much he trusted me. He trusted my trust in Sadie to go so far to find her.
That meant Ivan and Alexsei and many others were working around the clock with me in this mission.
“Nothing.” She pulled on my arm, steering me toward the kitchen. “But I know. I just know. I can tell by the face he made that something’s going on.”
I lifted my hand to push open the door to the kitchen.
And I saw how right she was.
My cousin was on to something.
He was scribbling on a paper, his face so serious as he listened to a spy on speaker.
“Go. Get a team now,” he ordered before disconnecting.
“Tell me.” It came from my lips like a wretched plea and a sinister growl all at once.
“Afghanistan,” he replied, matter of fact and already making another call.
“A confirmed sighting?” Raisa asked. “Not another dead end and diversion?”
That was what I’d faced so far. She was kidnapped and taken again by someone else. She was moved too often to follow.
“Yes,” Ivan replied. Staring at me with a level seriousness, he nodded once. “We’re heading out in five.”
I swallowed hard, overwhelmed with hope.
After I nodded once, I backed up and let him handle ordering the team to go with us as backup.
Retrieving a hostage was a layered effort, but I knew without having to ask that I could rely on him and the others to arrange the transportation for us to move in and get my agent back.
Wait for me, Sadie. I’m coming. I’m really coming for you.
Getting ready to rush to the airport was a blur.
Then when we were in the air, details seemed sketchy and irrelevant.
Time was dragging now that hope had blossomed in my chest, but the closer we came to the coordinates that we were given by the spy, I let that hope harden and deaden into a lethal need to kill and protect.
I’m coming for you.
I didn’t dare ask if they knew how she was. If she was alive. If she was hurt. If—
No. Stop. Focus!
I had to stay strong and ready to move. Emotions wouldn’t help the situation. She was relying on me to take control, once more, and I wouldn’t fail her.
We landed, and it was still a blur. We split into the cars arranged for us, and I didn’t lock down on any of it. I could only dig into my reserves of energy and stay determined to focus on her. On getting to her at last.
Ivan rode with me, a steady support next to me. Alexsei was off in Ireland, following another lead for me in this search for Sadie. That was why Misha was with the others at the mansion, being watched. Now that we had a solid lead, Alexsei would join us here as soon as he could.
Once we reached the site, it didn’t matter who was with me. I took in the scene of the abandoned military outpost that was taken over by rebels and knew no one would come out alive. None of them.
The spy who was in the area and had spotted her gave us the low-down, detailing how it seemed that Sadie had been moved here just a day ago, driven in from a nearby city. The small group of thugs who brought her was always on the move.
“Half of them left twenty minutes ago,” he said. “I have men positioned to look out as you go.”
That was it. That was all I needed to hear. Backup would cover for me. Nothing stood in my way from rushing in to get my woman.
Ivan and I ran together, approaching the dilapidated structure that had taken many bullets before. Dust rose and swirled with our haste, and the heat pressed down on us under the harsh sunlight, presenting too many bold shadows. Exposed like this, it was as if we were rushing under a spotlight.
Men popped around corners and shelters as we ran close, but I killed them all. Clean shots to the head, and they were done. Dead. More to add to my long list of lives I’d taken.
Ivan stopped at the door, checking around the entrance as I darted into the center of the space.
“Sadie.”
I didn’t slow until I was feet from her. Dropping to my knees as I slid to reach her small body, I tamped down the emotions. I enjoyed the elation. I dismissed the joy. Holding on to the fear and anger would do me better. I had to stay on task. I could feel later.
She lifted her head weakly. From under a hood, she tried to crane her neck toward the sounds.
“Sadie.” It came out as a strangled plea from my lips. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
She sniffed, breathing so hard as she tried to lift her body from the dirt floor. Croaking sounds were all she replied with, trying to speak.
“I’m here.” I hunched over, blocking her with my body as I pulled the hood from her head. She was so slight, so small, but the first look at her face enraged me all over. The plumpness of her cheeks was gone. Dark lines showed under her eyes. Filthy and weak, she seemed barely alive.
But she was. Reaching to me with relief in her blue eyes. Crying softly as she clutched my vest of body armor. Trembling from the effort to sit up.
She was alive.
Malnourished, wounded, and weak, but alive.
“Sadie.” I couldn’t stop saying her name, as if I had to hear my own voice and know that this was real. Not a fantasy, not a dream, but reality. She was really back in my arms.
I scooped her up, holding her upright with her belly between us. That baby bump had grown so much in the weeks she had been missing.
“Emil,” she whispered in a cracked voice. “You came for us.”
“I will always,” I vowed, nearly breaking my rule to shove aside the emotions until we were out of the danger zone. “Always, Sadie.” I lowered my hand to her stomach, helping her get to her knees and offering her balance. Beneath my fingers, our child kicked and moved, as strong as my little agent.
“Hurry,” Ivan called out from behind us. “They’re coming back early.”
Sadie stiffened, turning her fearful eyes to me, but I didn’t let her see the depth of my worry. I had to get her out of here, away from where a bullet could strike her.
“Here,” I said as I yanked my vest off. Before she could protest, I tugged it over her. As soon as it was over her, covering her, I picked her up and held her tightly, nervous that she had lost too much weight.
“After me,” Ivan ordered, in full militant mode as he rushed out the door. He fired at the incoming thugs, but as I carried Sadie out, I didn’t lower my gun once. Running with her in my arms, I didn’t hesitate to kill everyone in sight.
We left no one alive.
It was a massacre.
Blood stained the hot dirt.
No mercy, no fucks were given for the last assholes who tried to hold this woman against her will, away from me and my family.
As we sped away, riding to the airport, I closed my eyes and hugged her to me. She cried as she clutched my shirt, sobbing and gasping for air as she let it all out.
I didn’t let go once, promising with every bit of my soul that she would never have to suffer like this again.
“Let’s go home,” I whispered into her ear, soothing her with my hand on her back.
She lifted her tear-stained face to gaze at me with wonder and doubt.
“We’re going home,” I emphasized before picking her up and carrying her to the plane.