Chapter 33 Sergei
SERGEI
The car careened to the left, and I let my body sway with the motion. Holding on until the vehicle righted itself on the slick road, I twisted to see Roman in the backseat. As I craned and pivoted, a sharp ache spliced up my side.
Wincing and ignoring the pain that still hit me when I overdid it, I sought out my brother’s gaze.
“What did he say?”
He furrowed his brow at me, still listening to the reports he was getting from our uncle, from Andre, and countless other men on this dangerous rescue mission none of us had counted on tonight.
Most times, danger was planned. Expected. This wasn’t.
Roman was in the back with another soldier, both of them running interference to guide us to the next location to search for Maisie.
The Popovs had plenty of places to hide, and with their precision of snatching Maisie at that building, it proved that they had put foresight into this.
This wasn’t a whim. This was a calculated strategy to abduct that sweet young girl right from under our noses.
“Are you okay?” Roman asked.
I shook my head. It wasn’t an answer in the negative. I wasn’t in the mood to waste time answering anything about how I was doing. My comfort didn’t matter. How I felt was an irrelevant concept.
What mattered was how frantic and distraught Natalie was. When I’d last spoken to my uncle—clearly on speaker for her to cut in from the background—she’d begged me with that desperate, heartbroken tone that indicated she’d spent the last several hours crying her eyes out and imagining the worst.
What mattered more was that I found Maisie now. The longer she was captured in the Popovs’ hands, the more at risk she was to be moved again, taken away, hurt, killed—
No. She can’t be dead. They couldn’t have—
“Sergei,” Roman said again, sterner, yanking me out of my horrible fears.
I must have cringed at the ideas I never wanted in my head.
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be fine until I found Maisie.
Until I took her back to Natalie. That wouldn’t be the end of it.
The girl could be scared, traumatized, and experience untold horrors from the flashbacks of what was going on.
And I would be there. I would stay and comfort her however she wanted me to, whether it be hugging her or coloring or anything else.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do to make her happy.
And there wasn’t anything that would stop me from proving to Natalie how much I loved her, both her and her daughter.
The ache in my side wasn’t anything that could slow me down, anyway. I simply had to watch it in the next fight.
Since we began this pursuit, we’d been fighting, searching, and demanding answers. From one high-speed car chase to another. In one bloody shoot-out to the next. And after one episode of hand-to-hand on to more, as we tracked down any and all Popov players we could find, we were far from giving up.
I never would.
Roman didn’t look convinced, frowning at me as the SUV rocked and swayed with the next turn. The soldier next to him shouted out a new location to the driver.
“What did he say?” I asked my brother again. Our uncle would be the leader of the whole mission, working remotely like a puppeteer, dispatching men as he saw fit to better align us as a cohesive team. So many people came together, ravaging our way through the city on this usually festive night.
“They thought they were retaliating for one of their supervisor’s wives being taken and raped.”
I raised my brows. “What?” The thought that the Popovs had taken an innocent like Maisie in the sense of exacting an eye for an eye burned another fire of pure rage inside me.
“Yeah. He’s gotten word to and from Niko Popov himself,” Roman said of our uncle. As the boss, he could—and would—go to the top and demand answers. “The Cartel had one of their women taken, and Niko assumed it was our doing.”
I growled, shaking my head. We wouldn’t ever hesitate to hit back at our enemies with the hardest force possible, but that incident wasn’t our fault.
“He ordered his men to take Natalie, and if they couldn’t get her, to take Maisie.”
I didn’t want to ask why. Or for what purpose. They hadn’t snatched her to bake cookies and have a fucking play date with her.
I could only cling to the hope that George was still alive to defend her. That they hadn’t separated them.
The soldier next to my brother lifted his hand. He was still on the phone, likely with another spy or soldier on the street. “They’re there. I’ve got a visual confirmation.”
Nodding once, I faced forward and primed myself to end this. To finish this fight through hell all night and morning long to reach that young child.
We’d risked ourselves through gunfire, among knives, against fists and kicks, and all through the adrenaline rushes of deadly speeds of chasing after their vehicles. We’d all scraped through, shot at, cut up, and bruised all over. Our SUV had more than a few dents from sharp stops and crashing.
But we weren’t quitting.
I couldn’t. Saving Maisie and showing Natalie how I never wanted her to be afraid or have to struggle on her own would be my ultimate redemption.
I’d taken her husband’s life.
But I would protect hers and her daughter’s with all that I was to make up for it.
The driver slammed on the brakes, and we all were thrust forward with the abrupt cut to our momentum.
Rolling with the halt, we didn’t delay. Not a second was lost as we forced our doors open and ran out toward the low-lying storage unit that stood next to the river.
Near the docks, they clearly wanted to transport Maisie somewhere even further away, with a mode of travel that wouldn’t be tracked or easily recorded.
Fuck that.
You’re not taking her anywhere.
Roman and I led the charge. Soldiers and guards filed in after us, hurrying despite our injuries and the fatigue that threatened to drag us down with how long and hard we’d been fighting and searching overnight.
Details merged in a frenzy of too much speed, so many shots, and all the madness of a full sprint ahead.
Firing at all who stood in our way, we slaughtered the Popovs without checking which ones they were and if any were higher-ranking leaders. Every one of them deserved a merciless death full of suffering.
“This way,” one of the men said, picking up the pace to charge down another hallway that ran perpendicular to the one we were in. It was set up like a maze in here, too many lines and corridors of pods and storage containers preventing a clear line of sight deeper into the building.
I hurried on, trusting the direction.
On the next dash around a couple of storage containers stacked on top of each other, I skidded to a stop at the threat in my face.
Several men were blocking me from them.
Maisie was there, her mouth covered with a filthy gag. Dirt and grime covered her face as she stared at me. Streaks of tears cut a clean line down from where the moisture rinsed away the filth. But it was her eyes, so scared and vulnerable, red from crying and open so wide as she saw me.
George kept her on his lap, protecting her with his arms wrapped around her. But he sat to the side, as if favoring wounds that he’d received. While she looked unharmed at the first glance, my right-hand man looked like he’d volunteered to be a punching bag to protect her.
I’d found her.
But that meant these assholes had found me at too close of a range to escape. Multiple guns were aimed at my head, but I didn’t stop. Without lowering my gun, I stalked up to the meanest-looking of them all, a mid-level boss we’d had on our radar for a while.
“It was a mistake, Sergei,” he reasoned with a wry snarl. “Niko told me. We miscalculated—”
I fired, shooting him in the chest just to make sure he’d live through every second of bleeding to death.
“It was a mistake!” he roared as all his men raised their guns and trained them on me again.
“Release her,” I roared.
“Not until we negotiate—”
I shot him again, this time in the head.
Perhaps he had his orders to figure out some bullshit compromise with me to give up Maisie and George. I wasn’t hearing it. He admitted it was a mistake, so he could pay for it with his life.
By killing him, though, I flipped a switch for everyone to lose their sanity and patience. Everyone started firing at once. Roman shouted at the men to secure the room, but I only moved on the drive to protect that little girl.
Diving forward as Popovs filed into the space, I blocked two bullets from taking them out.
They pierced my skin, cutting through me as I flew through the air.
I gritted my teeth, bearing the twin hits of pain before more came.
Landing against George and the floor, I grunted at the impact of my body smacking down hard, and on the spots where I’d been shot too.
Too practiced to not know what to do, George anticipated my maneuver. He rolled, almost cushioning half of my body as I slammed down over him and Maisie. But he also shifted to continue covering her, loyal to the end and using himself as a shield.
I did too, draping my arms out to cover them both.
Breathing through the agony of exhaustion and waiting out the radiating spikes of inflammation as my skin reacted to the shots, I stayed put while the gunfire continued. Then died out.
Smoke filled the air. Labored breaths sounded clearly in the deafening quiet after the shoot-out.
And then my brother spoke.
“Sergei. Sergei!” He grabbed at my back, in a haste to check me over.
I grunted, lifting up to check on those beneath me. Wincing at the trouble I faced to move at all, I leaned over them and urged them to respond.
George groaned, sitting back and getting more upright. As he released his arms on Maisie, she turned and wiggled to see me.
She was alive.
I found her.
She was here.
I had her.
Relief streamed through me in such a euphoric rush that I could’ve sagged against the wall and passed out. Bliss would have to wait. I knew Maisie was found and alive, but Natalie didn’t.
I reached up to tug her gag from her small face and used a knife to slice it off.
She didn’t flinch at the blade. She didn’t cower.
Trembling and crying softly, she stared at me like I was the hero she never imagined having her back.
“Sergei!” She cried it out immediately as soon as the gag was gone. Roman hurried to cut the ropes off her wrists. And once she could lift her small arms, she flung herself at me and cinched me in a tug hug.
I pressed my bloody hand on her back and pressed her to me. Only then did I close my eyes and take a full, deep breath. One of relief and joy that I had saved her.
With the sounds of the men around me, checking how many were hit and who needed help getting out, I sighed and wondered if I’d ever be able to let this girl out of my hold again.
“You’re hit,” George said, grunting with pain as Roman and another man helped him more upright.
I scoffed, opening my eyes to get a good eyeful of his appearance. “You’re not looking too pretty yourself.”
Sarcasm and grim humor might have been in poor taste, but it was often what got us through this hell we called life.
He chuckled as I extended my hand to his.
He gripped it and squeezed tightly once.
As a handshake. Something. We didn’t need fancy words to express the gratitude and relief we shared.
I’d figure out how to thank him, a million times over, for keeping Maisie safe.
Hell, he could retire and never have to struggle ever again, but I doubted he’d want that idle lifestyle.
We could discuss it later.
Right now, as I ground my teeth together to bear through the pain, I slowly stood while holding Maisie, ready to bring her home to her mother.