Chapter 35 - Masha
My vision returned as the man’s hand fell away from my mouth.
My knees hit the pavement, but I was quickly jerked back up, dazed at first, and sucking in a breath.
The other man near the car was in front of me now, the one who had grabbed me had me pinned to his chest again. My kicks weren’t even annoying him.
The heavy cloth bag went over my head, and I was shoved forward, slamming into the side of the car.
It didn’t matter much to him if I was dead or alive, so why would it matter how roughed up I got?
They jerked my arms behind my back, and I felt the bite of zip ties.
I still refused to quit fighting and managed to crack someone with another backward-aimed headbutt.
A hand dug into the back of my neck, squeezing hard enough to turn me into a ragdoll, certain he’d snapped my spine.
Once again, I couldn’t breathe, and panic was welling all over again.
They both picked me up and tossed me into the back of the car.
At first, I hit the seat, my head bouncing off the opposite door, then I rolled onto the floor between the seats.
“If you make a single sound, there’s tape that will go over your mouth,” one of them snarled before slamming the door.
No, I didn’t want tape over my mouth; it was hard enough to breathe through the bag over my head. The fabric was so heavy that I was in utter darkness, even though it was a bright sunny day. The front doors opened and slammed shut, the engine revved, and the tires squealed as they took off.
After a few rough turns that had me tossed in one direction and then another, the driving evened out.
When I calmed myself down enough so I wouldn’t hyperventilate, I heard thumping sounds coming from the trunk.
So that’s where Svet was. I hoped he was still alive, but I couldn’t tell if he was actively trying to break out of the trunk or just rolling around lifelessly back there.
It wasn’t long before we came to a stop, but neither of the two said anything to me or tried to get me out of the car.
I felt a rush of cool air flow in from their open doors when they jumped out and savored the brief moment.
Sweat was rolling off my forehead and into my eyes, and the bag was beginning to make me feel like I had my head buried in hot sand.
All I could do was try to remain calm so things wouldn’t seem worse.
I heard them pop the trunk and haul Svet out, and my hopes soared when I heard him barking curses in Russian at our abductors.
He was alive. Until a single gunshot rang out and the curses stopped midstream.
One of the last and only people who could have gotten word back to Anatoli and now he was dead.
Now I wished they had shut the front doors because the cool breeze didn’t drown out the sound of them dragging Svet’s body away. There was a heavy thud, then a metallic clank, and I felt sick. They must have chucked him in a dumpster. We were on our way again.
My only hope was to try to brazen it out with them and offer them something better than whatever the Collective was paying them.
If they were only hired guns, I had a chance.
I was almost confident by the time we stopped.
For one, we hadn’t gone too far from where Anatoli was.
For another, I’d worked myself into believing these guys would jump at the chance to ransom me back to the biggest crime family in the state.
I waited, still trying to breathe normally in the stifling bag, until they dragged me out of the car by my feet.
Neither of them made any effort to help me get up, just kept pulling me along a dusty path.
Small rocks dug into my skin, and my shirt was riding up to my armpits.
One shoe fell off, and it was all I could do to keep from eating a bunch of dirt on the bumpy slide to wherever they were taking me next.
They were both laughing under their breath when they stopped, finally hauling me to my feet.
I swayed and coughed from all the dust that had somehow gotten under the tightly tied bag.
One of them poked me roughly in the back, grunting for me to walk.
I immediately tripped on a step that was right in front of me, and the other one either took pity or ran out of patience and yanked me the rest of the way up before shoving me through a doorway.
It was hotter than outside and smelled like old, rotten wood.
The rope that held the sack around my neck jerked tight, and I had a moment of panic, about to call out my carefully planned offer in a rush.
But they were only taking the bag off, and I gasped and sputtered, blowing the hair out of my eyes.
I was in a single room shack, dimly lit from a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and sparsely furnished with things that the dump would have rejected.
The lone window was boarded up tight and covered with torn black paper, as if someone had been peeking through a crack in the boards.
One of them dropped a metal bar across the narrow doorway, and it landed with a finality that made my heart sink.
Now I could get a good look at my assailants, and they were ugly sons of bitches, tall and burly and scarred. One had long, greasy black hair, while the other was bald as an egg, tattoos running up his thick neck to his ears. Greasy shoved me into a chair, and they both loomed over me.
“Do you know my name?’ I asked, trying not to sound like one of those idiotic celebrities when they got pulled over by cops.
No answer, just glares. Baldy cracked his knuckles, but I refused to blink.
“You were probably told that I’m Masha Ovinko, that I’m married to Anatoli Ovinko. ” I paused hopefully.
“We know who you are,” Baldy said.
“Okay, good, but do you also know I’m a Fokin? Aleks Fokin is my first cousin. He’ll give you anything you—”
“We know that too and don’t give a flying fuck,” Greasy said.
“I don’t think you understand how much he’d be willing to pay. Or maybe you want a more powerful position? Aleks is very generous to people who—”
This time, I was cut off by a hard slap to the face. It happened so fast and knocked my head so far back I didn’t even know which one did it. Baldy leaned close enough for me to smell that he was fond of cabbage.
“The only thing I want to hear out of you is answers to my questions.”
I nodded. Waited. Neither of them spoke for a long time. “Okay,” I said, finally, thinking they were waiting for me to acknowledge them. Nope. Another slap, this one drawing blood from the side of my lip.
“That wasn’t a question,” he said. “Try again.”
The silence lasted even longer this time, but I waited them out and Greasy finally nodded to Baldy, who took charge of the questions.
“Which one of you killed Enzo?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I winced, waiting for another slap, but none came.
“Try again. Who killed Enzo Santino?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
Not a slap, but a punch this time. How my neck didn’t snap off my head, I wasn’t sure, and the only thing keeping me from flying off the chair was Greasy shoving me back into it. I saw stars for at least a minute, and had to spit out a mouthful of blood.
“Why aren’t you crying, little girl?”
I glared up at him. He didn’t get to call me that. That was Anatoli’s. “I already told you I’m a Fokin,” I said, then clamped my sore lips together and refused to say another word.
They offered me the chance to pin the blame for Enzo’s death on Anatoli, asking me to tell how he did it, but there was no way I’d fall for their bullshit, because I was dead either way, and I’d never let anyone take the heat for something I did. Not even Anatoli. Especially not Anatoli.
He’d find me. He’d find me and save me, just as he had twice already.
All I had to do was survive until then. That wasn’t going to be easy because they were not impressed with my silence.
Blow after blow, I just tried not to cry out too much and focused on that moment when Anatoli would kick down the door and shoot them.
Not dead, because I wanted a chance to get my own back for all the punches I was taking. But close enough.
Even as I kept getting smacked, it stunned me how much faith I had in my forced husband.
All at once, it hit me even harder than Baldy’s fists that there was no way Anatoli didn’t care after the lengths he’d gone to for me.
He never once tortured me or hurt me in any way, despite his empty threats.
Not in any way I didn’t like, that was. He turned against his newfound family to try to keep me out of these brutes’ hands, and lost pretty much all his remaining men in the process.
Hell, if I were just punch drunk and wrong about my epiphany and he didn’t care, I was still safer with him than these two.
But I didn’t think I was wrong. I felt it somewhere deep down, a place I never knew existed within me.
Anatoli cared about me. Maybe because I cared about him right back.
Crazy as it was, it was real. It had to be real.
They finally stopped whaling on me when it was clear I’d die before I told them anything, and stormed out of my new prison, leaving me alone.
It was only a tactic to make me stew in fear and pain, and it worked.
Everything hurt. I could barely move my jaw, and blood oozed from my mouth, not really certain if it was coming from outside or in, but I leaned over so it wouldn’t choke me.
They’d taken some shots at my ribs, so it was once again hard to breathe, and my vision was blurry, probably from my eyes starting to swell shut.
I slowly let myself fall off the chair and rolled to my side, curling up in a ball and letting my aching face thump against the hard plank floor. I was still alive; that was all that mattered, giving Anatoli more time to find me. He would, because he cared. I knew I was right.
I passed out from the pain, clinging to the hope that I was right.