Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maksim.
My head tilts back as much as it can between my shoulder blades.
I groan in annoyance when I feel the fucking shackles around my wrists.
My arms are back up in the fucking chains.
Christ. I try to open my eyes, but whatever they injected me with earlier after searching me and finding Parker’s switchblade is scarcely wearing off.
Fuck. I barely have the strength to pick my head back up, but I’m making an effort.
I won’t go back to my wife broken. I can’t.
But it’s all fucking with me. More now than ever.
Was it real? Did she really come see me?
My heavy eyes blink, trying to take in my fuzzy surroundings.
Did I really kill someone? The collar around my neck weighs as much as a bag of bricks.
My shoulder hurts but not like it was before.
And I can still feel socks on my feet. Did I have socks before?
Drool seeps out of my mouth and onto my chest. I wiggle my toes and feel the floor beneath my feet.
C’mon, Maksim. Wake the fuck up. You gotta wake up.
I try to move my legs, but they’re either lame or my brain isn’t sending the right signals. Or worse, I'm restrained again.
The tip of my heart fills once more with despair. Fucking hopelessness.
The growl in my chest leaves me as I try over and over to move my muscles, to find a type of balance, to get ready to run, to kick, to fucking jump. Anything. Everything. Because I can't give up.
Except it’s as silent as a mausoleum.
Blurred memories of Sabrina come to me, but it doesn’t feel like I’m getting out. It feels like goodbye.
“NO!” I roar and writhe again. My chains move with me, and they finally rattle.
It was in my head. The silence was in my head.
I blink awake again, throat dry. Itchy. Sweat coats me even though the room is freezing.
Fuck. I have to get out of here. I try to get out of the restraints once again.
I'm moving. I have to keep moving. I kick my legs. And they’re free.
I take in deep, long breaths, letting my lungs fill as much as they can, exhaling as slowly as possible. Then I repeat.
The familiar buzz outside of the door causes me to open my eyes to blinding light. Kane comes in and my eyes narrow at his ugly fuckin’ mug. “What do you want?”
But it’s when I notice he looks pained, not smug. His eyes flick to the corner of the room and then back at me.
“Do it!” I hear from behind him. I almost choke at the sound of my wife’s voice.
“Alright!”
He’s shoved forward and he gets a set of keys out of his jacket pocket. Sabrina steps from behind his shadow, and I smile at my wife. “Duchessa…” but my eyes catch the hot pink, shimmering thing in her hand. “Did you… paint your gun pink?”
“Yes, dear husband.” She waves it proudly, causing it to sparkle in the light. “And I purchased glitter spray. YouTube is amazing for finding DIY videos.” She smiles brightly up at me as Kane takes his time. Her eyes narrow. “I said hurry the fuck up, Kanedrew!”
But I see it before she does— “Sabrina!”
Kane yanks out his own gun, but my wife is a quick shot with great aim and shoots him in the hand and then both kneecaps before he goes down screaming.
His gun falls, and she steps over quickly, kicking it away to the corner of the room.
“If you weren’t such a fucking cockwomble, I wouldn't have had to do that. Seriously, one fucking job, Kane. You had one fucking job—unlock my husband.”
“You fucking bitch!”
“You fucking twat!” she retorts, walking over to me, but he grabs her ankle and tries to bring her down with his good hand. She steps on his hand and, with a high, shrill scream, begins to kick him. “That’s for raping me!” Kick “That’s for kissing me!” Kick “For touching me!”
But Kane begins to laugh. She kicks him in his teeth. He spits them out. “I only did what you wanted.”
She kicks at him again. “I never wanted you, you daft, spoiled manchild!”
He laughs. “You know your brother said that to me once…” his breaths are sticky and garbled. “And then never again.”
Her foot stops midair, rethinking her next kick. She calmly puts her foot down and then sinks down and straddles him, yanking him by the lapels. “Say that to my fucking face!”
“I joined the Syndicate the American way,” he coughs.
“I was the youngest to ever join, did you know that? Poor little Charlie Barlie never saw me coming.” His sticky laugh echoes in the white chamber, the crimson pooling from his mouth a dark contrast to all the bright.
“Turned off his air supply at the deepest part of our tour. And the current took him away.”
Sabrina’s face contorts into one full of fury, but she shoves her face by his ear and whispers something I can't quite hear. She pulls away, spits on his face, smearing it all over, making sure it mixes in with his blood. She grits her teeth and practically growls, “I aborted your spawn. The last of the Ainsworth line died with me. And I promise you, before the sun rises, I’ll have killed your little bitch of a grandfather, too. There will never be another Ainsworth capable of procreating alive and walking this planet as long as I live. I swear it on Charlie’s soul.
I will make it my mission to kill each and every one of you fucking leeches. And I’ll start with you today.”
Kane grins wildly and lifts his head an inch above the ground. “Don’t forget to kill dear old Daddykins.”
Sabrina’s eyes widen. “What?”
“That’s why it was so easy to negotiate for you. David… is Alfredrick’s bastard son. And with him not being your actual father, I was able to negotiate for you.”
“And still…” Sabrina smiles demurely with a hint of bitch. “You couldn’t get me to fuck you willingly. Not with a contract. Not with all the money in the world. You still had to resort to something so cowardly, so unmanly… to even get near me. You. Are. Nothing.”
Kane screams and reaches for her, but she drops him so his head hits the white floor with a sickening wet thud.
Her fists come up and she begins to stab him anywhere she can reach, anywhere that’s vulnerable until he’s gagging on his blood.
In a flurry of movements, Sabrina is up, kicking off her kitten heels and wiggling out of her pants and panties.
She stands with her feet on either side of his head.
“Sabrina! What are you doing?” I croak. “We don’t have time for this!”
The door behind her opens, and my eyes widen at the sight of Parker covered in blood. But he stops in his tracks at the sight before him, mismatched eyes wide and jaw to his chest.
“Just one last question, you pusillanimous twat.” She stands over Kane and tilts her head back as a stream of urine hits Kane’s face and chest. “Does that taste familiar?” Her head lolls forward as she makes eye contact with me, and there must be something fucking wrong with me because my dick twitches eagerly at the sight of my wife with a hot pink, glittering gun in her hand, bloody switchblade in the other, pissing all over the sputtering motherfucker that tried to hunt me.
Just as she finishes, Kane opens his mouth, but my wife tears her earrings out of her ears, bends at the waist, and shoves them into his already bleeding mouth, then her gun between his brows.
She shoots Kane between the eyes, stomping on his face with a large smile on hers.
She looks deranged. I love her excessively.
“Bri!”
She turns her torso. “Savage!”
“Put your fucking pants on baby. It’s mayhem up there and we need to get the fuck out.”
“Mayhem?”
“Yes!” Parker jogs over and grabs the set of keys Kane had in his hand off the floor and comes to me. “Can you walk?” He unlocks the cuffs on me.
My arm swings down and I grunt at the relief with a wince. “I’m not sure. But I'm standing. They doped me up with something. I can't really feel my legs.”
“Shit. Okay. Sabrina, are your pants on?”
“Yes!”
“I’m gonna unlock this thing; you need to catch him in case he falls.”
“I got him.”
“Sabrina, no, I weigh a hundred pounds more than you,” I argue.
“Then let's hope your legs work, husband.” She positions herself with her chest to mine, arms around my torso in a tight embrace, ready to catch me. I sling my free arm over her shoulder. “Ready?”
I nod. “Ready.”
The second my arm is free; I slump over her with a groan.
“I got you, Maks. We got you,” Parker soothes as I do my best to get my legs to move. It’s slow, but they’re moving.
“Savage,” I huff with a slight cough, feeling heavier than ever. I’m slick and coated in sweat, trying to get my body to work with my brain.
Parker grunts, bearing most of my weight. “I got you, man. C’mon. Your men are all over the place, taking out Syndicate members like beer cans on a fence.”
My brain immediately buzzes with the need to bark out orders. To make sure everyone is safe. “We need to help them.”
“Nope. My mission was to save the king. Retrieve the queen—”
“it’s Duchess—”
“...Besides, Aleksi has a fucking tank.”
“High friends in low places,” I groan out.
Parker chuckles, “Yeah, that’s exactly what Aleks said.” He leads us out of the room and through the corridor I've been through only a few times. My legs begin to move with a fraction more speed.
“Parker?” Sabrina says from my other side. “Where are the other people that were being held here?”
“I let them go when I got the doors open.”
“Is that what took you so long?”
“Darlin’, I got to watch you piss on a man's face while he gargled it and shoot a bullet between his eyes. I’m pretty fuckin’ sure I got here at the right time.”
Sabrina huffs, and before I can shift my weight more to Parker, she replies with, “I think I went a little too easy on him.”
I grin down at my violent little wife, feeling my legs move more swiftly now.
“This way.” Parker leads us further down the corridor. “Shit. There's a fuckton of stairs, Maks. But I don't know another way out.”
“I can do it. I can move my legs a bit more.”
He opens the door, and I let Parker go up first in case anyone tries to come down; he can get to them.
I crawl up the steps with Sabrina behind me.
As we get closer to a black square, I realize this is the way they had us moving like fucking cattle the night I was game.
I use my arms to crawl faster, scrunching my abdomen to move like a fucking worm.
The sounds from outside are getting louder, and it sounds like a war zone.
“Parker… the noise…”
His eyes flash. “I got it, Maks. I know where I am.”
Parker gets out and reaches for me, helping me out of the hole and into the shed. I sit against the wall, legs stretched before me. I take as many breaths as I can, waiting for Sabrina to come up. She smiles down at me. “Are you ready?”
I nod, and Parker helps me up once more. The sensation in my legs finally returned. “Fuck. I think I got this. I can walk.”
“Just hold onto us for the next few minutes. And don’t let go.
We have to go through the manor to get out.
If you could walk, I'd say we climb over the wall, but I don’t think it’s feasible, and the only other way out…
is the manor. Good thing Aleksi blew a hole into the side wall the size of fucking Texas. ”
He opens the door to the shed and the noise is louder.
There are body parts all over the property, plumes of gray and black smoke billowing in the soft, crisp breeze, ash mixes with snow, and my jaw drops at the sight of my men dragging out more elder Syndicate members in suits and ties, having them kneel in the snow.
Kill shot after kill shot, they’re executed, brain matter and blood splatters on the ground before their bodies fall forward.
Hot crimson melts the blanketed snow, creating little rivers of blood and viscera.
My teeth chatter from the cool wind whipping around us. It’s a massacre.
But it’s fucking beautiful.
“Alice,” I mumble.
Parker looks at me, then at Sabrina.
Sabrina lets go of me. “I’ll get her before your men do in case they think she’s one of ‘em.” She tips on her toes and kisses us quickly, running in the direction of the manor, kitten heels leaving tiny footsteps in her wake.
“No, Sabrina, wait!” I scream after her just as Parker shouts her name.
“I’ll find you!” she screams on a backward glance and continues. Her strides are powerful and determined. She keeps her gun out and shoots as someone comes running out, jumping over the bodies.
“Fuck. Leave me here. Go after her.”
“Let me get you to safety, and I’ll do just that. Fuck. There are bodies everywhere.” He takes a whiff, and that’s when I smell the scent of charring flesh. Parker shakes his head. “Fuck. I’m here. I'm not there,” he mutters to himself. “I’m not there.”
"You're here, Savage.”
He nods. “I’m here,” he parrots, chest rising and falling in quick succession. “Let’s go.”
We make the trek, more sensation flows back to me, and I'm able to pick up my feet faster, moving with him quicker. “Give me your gun.”
“You shoot to my right; I’ll shoot to your left.” He hands me his gun and pulls out another from his waistband. “Just don’t let go,” he commands. Even if I could, my legs are barely working. I wouldn’t have the strength to let go of him. Parker is… Fuck me, Parker’s my new partner.
More of the fuckers that were supposed to hunt this morning are crawling all over the place, using bows and arrows, hunting knives, and guns. I raise my good arm and shoot, missing the first target, but shoot again and hit between the eyes.
Over and over again screams and shots ring out.
Parker chants to himself that he’s here with me, but our pace is quickening into a scurried, limping jog.
Furniture has been overturned, and there’s glass and debris everywhere.
I hear my name being called out. I turn and look over to see Aleksi waving at us.
Parker shoots someone to my left before they’re five feet from reaching him, and I grunt out a ‘thanks.’ Aleksi shoves his arm around my torso and helps me get off of Parker. “Go, find her.”
Mismatched eyes, wild and alert, search mine before nodding once. And then he’s gone.
“Glad to have you back, Pakhan.”
“Give me more ammo.” I refill the magazine, take a few steps, and raise my arm, taking out as many motherfuckers in Parker's way as I can before he disappears up the stairs and I lose sight of him.