Chapter 32 Natalie
NATALIE
Explosions popped off in rapid succession. Cheers rose up in a roar outside this lavishly decorated penthouse venue. Celebrations carried on as the ball dropped, heralding a new year.
The clock had struck midnight and the whole city reacted with glee.
Not me.
I sat numb and trembling on the couch. Locked in a fugue state of panic and terror, I let my body shut down.
All I could do was close my eyes and shake, my heart cracking into pieces as I willed it not to be true.
They had taken Maisie. My daughter had been snatched away.
There in her pretty holiday dress beaming up at me with excitement one minute. Then gone the next.
“Get another blanket,” Claire ordered calmly, a solid force of comfort in this time of crisis. This was what she did, what she was trained for as a former doctor in the emergency department.
She hadn’t left my side once and I wasn’t sure if I could cope if she did. Crouching next to me, she stayed seated with her arm wrapped around me.
I felt the couch dip and rise as the cushion shifted. Anya had been next to me on my other side in this penthouse party space. While she didn’t say much, she was here for me too. She got up to retrieve another blanket, almost like she was eager to have something to do.
I didn’t. I hated the misery of knowing I couldn’t do anything to help my precious daughter now.
The blanket wasn’t requested because I was cold. I was so mindless with shock and fear that I couldn’t have registered whether I was cold or not. I was suspended in such a blank density of horror that I couldn’t track what I was doing or feeling or thinking.
They’d brought me up here and I dropped onto the couch, trying to absorb that every parent’s worst nightmare had happened.
She’s gone.
Only one thought rocketed in my brain, ricochetting like a bullet that smacked my skull and made it ache.
She’s gone.
They took my baby girl.
Maisie is gone.
Until that changed, I couldn’t react to anything. I couldn’t acknowledge anything else of what I felt or saw or heard.
I was helpless to do anything but curl into myself and sob. To weep and panic as one second turned into another. As minutes passed by slowly with my daughter remaining in her kidnappers’ custody.
“How is she doing?”
Mikhail. I knew it was his voice. He was here, pacing and ordering his organization of killers and spies to get my child back. Not to party and celebrate with his new wife, but as the commander of the operation.
Claire shook her head. “She’s in shock.”
“Does she need anything to address that?” he asked.
Claire set the blanket over my back. One thin throw was already draped over my lap. She didn’t move away, rubbing her hand up and down my spine.
The pressure was reassuring, reminding me that I wasn’t alone at my darkest moment. I hadn’t been dismissed. They were all protecting me and keeping me updated as they worked to get Maisie back. Claire was here for me, but I couldn’t feel any more connection to reality than that.
This reality that my baby girl was gone.
Just like that, she was taken from me.
“She needs her child to be found and brought back,” Claire said curtly.
“I meant medically,” Mikhail replied. “Is there anything you can do for her medically?”
“A sedative, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I shook my head, vaguely able to give my opinion about that. “No. No… drugs.” My voice barely worked, so hoarse and raw from screaming and crying.
Mikhail dropped to his haunches to get to my eye level.
“We will get her back, Natalie. I don’t ever bluff and make empty promises I can't deliver on. We will get her back. Hang in there, okay?” He patted my knee.
It seemed like a weak gesture of sympathy, but this was a Mafia boss. An older, gruff leader of criminals.
“I’ve been in your shoes.” He glanced at Anya sadly. “I know everything I say, anything anyone will tell you, won’t matter. But it is true. We will get through this, and we will get Maisie back.”
I sniffled, nodding, but I wasn’t sure if I was agreeing with the hope he wanted me to feel or if I believed him. I wouldn’t rest until I saw Maisie again with my own eyes.
They’d taken me up here as soon as Sergei bolted off in the direction of the men who’d taken her.
He hadn’t waited. He didn’t second-guess it at all.
He took off, rushing to get her back.
With that blurry memory replaying in my mind, I knew that Mikhail wasn’t bluffing. He had his lethal enforcer on the case.
It had all happened so quickly, in such a haze of fear and shock, that I hadn’t been able to react in any other way than screaming for my daughter.
In that foggy smoke that filled the air so suddenly, I’d held on to Sergei to ground myself.
He held on to my hand too, keeping me close.
But I reached out and groped the air to search for her to no avail.
Once I understood that she had been abducted, I could only cry and panic, begging anyone who’d hear to get her back to me.
Half of the panic was how I locked down in fear. I didn’t want to be further addled and unable to think or feel. “No drugs, though. Please.” I didn’t want to lose any more of my weak grip on reality. This masking pressure of terror was hard enough to work through.
“I just hate that I can’t do anything,” I admitted with tears as Mikhail stood.
All I was good for was crying and panicking that my worst nightmare had come true.
The only thing I could do was pray that Sergei would find her. That he would save her for me.
“I failed her.”
Claire hugged me closer. Anya sat again and rubbed my back as well. Both of them were so distressed and right there to comfort me. But nothing would comfort me except seeing Sergei striding into the room with my unharmed daughter in his strong arms.
“You did not,” Claire argued. “You haven’t failed anyone.”
“I’m supposed to keep her safe. I’m supposed to always protect her.” Sobbing harder again, I feared that I’d let my precious baby girl down in such an unforgivable way.
“And you do. You will. Natalie, those men came up and surprised everyone. No one could’ve been able to predict the future and foreseen that happening,” Anya said.
That hardly appeased me. I still struggled with the guilt that I had ever let Maisie enter this world of violence and crime and drama and deadly agendas. All these Mafia politics. The rules and laws they made for themselves and governed over as they saw fit.
Because if I hadn’t let her be a part of their world, if I had tried harder to escape…
No.
Stop it.
You can’t think that anymore. You saw how much more dangerous it is out there on your own.
I never could’ve been able to keep Maisie as safe with only myself to rely on.
Yet, it was the association with the Orlovs that made me and Maisie a target at all.
I shook my head, warring with the thoughts because that wasn’t true, either. Fitz had been killed when he had an unfortunate brush with these people, too, and that was an inherent threat to our family just the same, when I had no clue who Sergei or the Orlovs were.
The world was never going to be completely safe. It was impossible, and it was that hard lesson of parenting that I didn’t want to acknowledge now.
No matter what anyone did, the world would always be risky.
But by being here and finally opening my eyes and taking a chance on loving Sergei and his family, I wanted to have more faith that he would save her. He would find her and retrieve her so we could keep her more guarded the next time.
Mikhail continued to pace throughout the room as we all waited. He was on his phone, ordering men and getting reports from those on the street. Others were working on it too, on their phones to connect or to dash off and look elsewhere.
Sergei hadn’t returned once. Roman had gone with him, and Andre was downstairs working on this incident as well.
Thrust into the Orlovs’ version of damage control, I witnessed how they didn’t waste a single second to hunt her down.
But it still wasn’t enough.
Sergei still wasn’t back. Maisie was still missing, captured by the Popov men—that much was clear from what Mikhail told his closest soldiers.
It sounded like the Popov Family was retaliating against the Orlovs because they thought they were responsible for getting one of the boss’s wives captured.
It wasn’t something Mikhail had ordered, though.
It was the work of the Cartel, another criminal organization, but the Popovs hadn’t cared to check their intel.
“They will fucking pay for this. A hundred times over, they will fucking pay.” Mikhail ranted and stayed busy, behind the scenes, sticking with us in this penthouse until we were driven back to the building.
I couldn’t imagine leaving Claire and Anya. Of having to go to Sergei’s apartment and wait there on my own for news. And I didn’t. We all gathered at Mikhail’s building to await news as the earliest hours of the morning carried on into the new year.
At last, Sergei called in to check with his uncle. Just hearing his voice on speakerphone urged me to speak with him.
“Please, Sergei. Please find her,” I begged.
“I will, Natalie. I won’t stop until I can bring her home to you.”
Simply hearing his promise calmed me a fraction. I wouldn’t rest easy until she was in my arms again, where I could see and feel with my own eyes whether she had been harmed at all.
“It’s good that George is with her,” Claire said as we listened to Mikhail and the other men in the room moments later. She glanced at me, showing the same worry in her eyes that I feared I’d never lose. “He’ll stay with her and protect her. It’s better that she’s not alone.”
I nodded, knowing she was right. I would owe that man my thanks for all of time for sticking with her and being able to protect her. These Orlov men were loyal until their last breath.
It was that concept that kept me from breaking down completely.
Sergei would never give up on looking for her and saving her.
He would never give up on his end of the promise to always keep me and my daughter safe and happy.
Because he loved us.
Sergei might have been the reason for the hardest parts of my life. Things like Fitz’s death and Maisie’s abduction would always haunt me. But I knew that Sergei was also the source of the deepest security and love, too.
The city’s most fearsome and deadliest enforcer wouldn’t stop at anything to bring her home.
Please, Sergei. Find her and bring her back to us.
I closed my eyes and willed him to come home to me with her safe and sound.