Chapter 39 - Masha
It all happened so fast. I barely stopped Anatoli from filling my cousin Dan with lead because it was clear he didn’t recognize who he was under all the protective gear.
For a moment, I was too confused to utter a sound.
One of Dan’s men lunged forward to pull me over to their side, and I realized then that they hadn’t seen Anatoli and me working side by side to take out Julio and clear the house of his minions.
All they saw were my bruises, which were a lot better but still pretty horrifying to family members who had been looking for me for a month, maybe already fearing the worst. By the time I figured out that they must have either been keeping an eye on this house or had somehow tracked Anatoli, Dan’s men had converged in a large group behind Anatoli.
Just as my cousin Aleks conked him over the head with the butt of his gun, I tried to jerk away.
Anatoli was on the ground, out cold by the time I let out a scream.
And kept screaming. They were all over him, a knee in the back, wrenching his arms behind to zip tie them together.
He was out cold, but they wouldn’t stop.
“Dan,” I shouted, finally getting out of the vice grip around my wrist. “Daniil, stop.”
He whipped around to give me an appraising look, full of anger and then pity when he assessed my battered appearance. “Take her outside,” he ordered. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
Oh my God, he was treating me like I was some fragile flower, like I was traumatized.
Not even that could keep me from trying to break free from the two men who gathered close around me and began to hustle me toward a door leading outside.
No one paid any attention to a single word I said, or rather screamed.
I was near hysterics, imagining the worst happening to Anatoli, waiting with all my hair standing on end for a gunshot that would mean he was dead. No one would listen to me. It was like I wasn’t there despite all the thrashing and all the noise I was making.
They got me in a car, and two different men had to sit in the back with me to keep me from clawing my way out of the moving vehicle.
It was either that or tie me up and put me in the trunk, but my own people couldn’t do that.
They could rip my heart out by not listening to me defend Anatoli just fine, though.
“Damn it, Masha, calm down,” the driver said.
“August,” I cried, a brief burst of happiness to see him alive and well-doused by the ice in his eyes. It was then that I recognized Vik as one of the men holding me in the backseat, looking at me as if I’d gone crazy. Not even my old friends would listen to me.
By the time we arrived at Aleks’s house, I was no longer screaming. My throat had given out, and now I was just wracked with desperate sobs. There wasn’t a time in my life I could remember crying so hard, as if there was a bottomless well of tears that might never stop flowing.
Before I moved to the Silicon Valley area with Mat, I had lived with my sister in my cousin Aleks’s huge, sprawling mansion, and Lilia still lived there. “I want to see my sister,” I said, sounding pathetic, miserable, and small.
That was how I felt without Anatoli. If I couldn’t save him, if no one would listen, and he was killed, I would feel that way for the rest of my life. Oh God, I loved him. What a time to figure it out.
As they helped me down the hall, which felt more like being dragged, Daniil appeared before me, still in most of his riot gear and looking stressed. “You need to rest,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I snapped. “What have you done with Anatoli? What I need is to see him.”
He took a deep breath, like he was counting to ten before answering me. If Vik and August hadn’t had their hands on my arms to “help” me walk, I would have connected my fist to his face.
“You’re not thinking straight,” he said. “It’s normal after what you’ve been through. Don’t worry. We’ll begin working on Anatoli right away for what he did to you.”
I burst free at last, lunging for him. I didn’t hit him, but grabbed his shoulders, pleading in my raw, tattered voice.
Only broken, incoherent sentences came out, and he wasn’t listening anyway.
He already made up his mind. They were going to kill Anatoli in a long, drawn-out way, and there was nothing I could do to make them see reason.
Because I was hardly being reasonable. I had to make myself see myself the way they saw me, think the way they thought.
I had been caught up during a secretive mission, my guards had somehow gotten free, and I informed them I’d been taken violently.
No one had a clue where I was for more than a month, and then I turned up with Anatoli, covered in half-healed cuts and bruises as if he’d been abusing me all along.
They might even think I had lost my mind, that I was completely broken.
I took a deep breath, stopped screaming, and stopped gripping Dan’s shoulders. I actually counted to ten, silently, then nodded briskly. Straightening my spine, I looked Dan in the eye.
“I’m going to be the only one who deals with Ovinko,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady and ice-cold.
Dan remained quiet for a long moment, never taking his eyes off me, and I never dropped my gaze. He needed to think I was angry, nothing else. Finally, he gave a begrudging nod.
“That’s fine. You deserve that chance. But only after you rest. He’ll keep just fine until then.”
I kept my mouth clamped shut against a barrage of arguments and more pleas that I be taken to Anatoli immediately. The matter was settled, and I had to keep up the ruse that I wanted to be the only one to torture Anatoli. I let them escort me to my old room without another word.
Once inside, I waited to hear a lock click, but of course, they weren’t going to lock me in.
I had no idea where they were keeping him, so I had to wait until Dan deemed me rested enough to deal with our common enemy.
And then I’d have to find a way to get him free without harming anyone or accidentally getting him killed.
Then I guessed I’d have to give up my family, because they’d never forgive such a betrayal.
Lilia came in as new tears were forming. I swiped them away, disgusted at what a fountain I had become in the last hour. My sweet younger sister rushed over to me and grabbed me up in a fierce hug that knocked the breath out of my lungs.
“Sorry,” she said when I gasped for air. “What happened to you? No, you don’t have to tell me. Let me get a first aid kit.”
I was perfectly fine. I had been treating my cuts with the ointment the doctor in Mexico gave me. The bruises were mostly yellowish-green and more itchy than sore by now, and my ribs hardly hurt at all when I wasn’t being hugged half to death.
But there was no stopping Lilia, and I sat as patiently as I could while she dabbed at me, tears forming in her sky-blue eyes. Those came from our grandmother, and were some kind of miracle since both our parents had brown eyes.
“I used to wish I had your eye color,” I said, making her eyebrows rise. “But I’m pretty sure Anatoli loves mine being whiskey colored.”
Her brows rose even further, disappearing under her blonde bangs.
Her one vanity ever since we came to California was a monthly trip to the salon to lighten her hair.
She was introverted but still wanted to fit in with and be accepted by all the new people around us.
As worried as I was about Anatoli, I had missed her.
We were as different as night and day, but also as attuned to one another as any sisters who were less than two years apart could be.
Except now she looked like she didn’t know me at all.
“Why would you care what that monster thought either way?” she asked, venom in her normally gentle voice.
“Oh, Lil, it’s not like that,” I said. “At least, not anymore.”
I told her everything, barely pausing for breath.
She listened, her brows drawn together in a scowl as I described the abduction and how much I hated him, how I plotted my escape and my revenge.
Then I told her about our trip to Russia and about his slightly odd family.
How he’d saved me when I was a single pull of the finger away from my brains splattering all over the ballroom wall.
How he saved me again from his untrustworthy guard. How we got along so well sometimes.
She was blushing, and I pulled back from describing just how well we got along sometimes. Though she was only sixteen months younger than me, she kept to herself and her books, and I suspected she was still a virgin. She could never understand the passion between Anatoli and me.
She gave me a soft shake and motioned to my face. “None of that makes up for this, Masha.”
“No,” I said, frustrated that even she wasn’t listening. “I haven’t gotten to the end. None of this is from Anatoli.”
By the time I was done explaining how I’d offed Enzo Santino and set the Collective after me, how I was kidnapped and beaten and was about to have my throat slashed, she was pure white and gripping my hands.
“But Antoli found me,” I said. “Just like I knew he would.” I took a deep breath and blurted it out even before I’d had time to fully examine it.
“I love him, Lilia. So damn much. And I think—no, I know he loves me.” My voice wavered.
Once again, all I could do was hope I was right.
“It might have been a whacky, messed up way to fall in love, but it happened and it’s real. ”
Lilia nodded. “I believe you. I’ve never seen you like this.”
“You’re the only one,” I said bitterly. “And now they’re going to torture him or make me do it. It’s the only way I could get them to take me to where they’re keeping him.”
“I know where they took him,” she said, her blue eyes brewing with a plan.
“Where?” I said, squeezing her fingers until she grunted. “Just tell me, and then find a way to sneak me out of here. I don’t want you getting in trouble, so you can just pretend you didn’t know anything after I’m gone.”
“What do you mean, after you’re gone?” she asked, horrified.
“Do you really think anyone else will accept me being with Anatoli? I’m not giving him up. We’re married and it’s staying that way.”
With every word, my resolve grew stronger.
I hated the idea of never seeing Lilia again.
It tore my insides to shreds. But a life without Anatoli was no life at all.
Being the cause of his death would end me.
Lilia gnawed on her thumbnail for a long time, and as well as I knew her, I didn’t push.
She was delicate on the outside but had a steel core and wouldn’t be budged until she was ready.
“Okay,” she finally said. “He’s here, on the grounds. In that old shed by the west wall. But promise me that you won’t give up on us. Aleks and Mat and the rest will come around if you don’t give up.”
“I promise,” I said, jumping up to fly to Anatoli.
She grabbed me back by the sleeve. “Wait a minute. Love is making you stupid. I’m sure you can get into the shed with no problem, but do you think you’re just going to waltz out hand in hand with Anatoli after?
” She took out her phone and handed it to me, first checking the time.
“Give me half an hour to set up a distraction, and then haul ass out that little gate leading down into the hills.”
I nodded, proud of her for showing such a cool head when I was being rash all over again.
She cleared the hallway, and I got out of the house by acting as if I were calm and in control.
Everyone had been informed that I was going to exact my revenge on Anatoli, and no one batted an eye as I headed toward the little shed way out at the edge of the property that my cousin used for interrogations.
There was only one guard stationed outside, which made my heart sink and my stomach clench with fear. Anatoli must be in pretty bad shape from the fight at Julio’s headquarters to rate only one guard. Would he be able to run once Lilia set off her distraction?
“I’ll take it from here,” I said. “Take a break.”
He faltered for a second but wouldn’t dare defy such a direct order, and I waited outside the door until the guard rounded the curve in the path and was out of sight.
Keeping my hands steady, I unlocked the door and pushed it inward, stepping into the dark room.
Snapping on the overhead bulb, light flooded the chair in the center of the solid concrete floor.
Anatoli was tied to it, slumped over with his chin on his chest. Fear making my heart pound halfway up my throat, I stepped in further and shut the door behind me. He didn’t move an inch.
“Anatoli,” I said, my voice coming out in a yelp that was laced with panic. Oh no, I couldn’t be too late.
His head rose, and his eyes focused on me. I barely recognized him. Not because of the bruises, but because the look on his face was one of pure, unadulterated rage. No, more than that. I had seen him angry before. This was different, worse. Hatred shone from his eyes.
I stumbled back a step under the force of his gaze. How could I have been so wrong about his feelings?