18. Alexei
ALEXEI
“Maggie!”
Her name tears out of me before the emergency exit door finishes swinging shut. For one brutal heartbeat, the world narrows to the dark van parked along the curb, the open side door, and Maggie fighting with every ounce of strength she has while two men force her inside.
Her hair whips across her face. One hand reaches for the doorframe, fingers scraping against metal as she tries to hold on. Then one of the men drives his fist into her ribs.
Blinding rage blanks out every sound around me except her cry.
I run.
People scream behind me. Children cry. Parents shove toward and away from the exit at the same time. None of it matters. Ivy is crying my name from somewhere behind Luka, but I can’t look back. If I look back, I lose the van. If I lose the van, I lose Maggie.
The side door slams shut.
“Maggie!” I roar again, already moving through the crowd.
A man steps into my path with a gun in his hand. I hit him before he lifts the weapon. Bone cracks beneath my fist. He drops hard against the wall, and I take the gun from his hand without breaking stride. Luka appears at my side, his face grim, his weapon already drawn.
“Viktor has Ivy,” he says, breathing hard as we burst through the emergency exit.
“Keep her away from this,” I order.
“She’s secure.”
The van’s tires scream against the pavement as it shoots away from the curb. It clips the side of a parked sedan, shattering a mirror and sending glass across the asphalt. A woman screams from the sidewalk and jerks her child behind her.
Our SUV sits forty feet away with one of my guards already behind the wheel. Luka reaches the driver’s door first and drags him out by the collar.
“I drive,” Luka snaps.
The guard moves.
I climb into the passenger seat before Luka is fully inside. My hand is already on my phone. My thumb hits Roman’s number as the SUV surges forward hard enough to throw me against the seat belt.
Roman answers on the first ring.
“They have Maggie,” I growl.
Silence follows for less than a breath.
“Where?”
“Performing Arts Center. Dark van heading east from the rear exit.”
“Plate?”
“Covered.”
Luka takes the corner too fast, the SUV roaring across two lanes of traffic. A horn blares as a delivery truck brakes hard to avoid us. Ahead, the van weaves between cars, running the light at the intersection.
“Camera feed,” I tell Roman. “Now.”
“I’m on it.” His voice changes, directing men I can’t hear. “Enzo says there are two exit plans. River or airfield.”
“Which one?”
The van swerves around a city bus and cuts toward the wider roads leading out of downtown.
“Airfield,” Roman says. “He says Isabella keeps a private strip south of the city under a shell company.”
Isabella.
The name moves through me like poison. She knew we would react to Ivy first. She knew every man near me would shield my daughter. She used a child’s disappearance to pull the room apart and placed her hand on Maggie while all of us looked the wrong way.
I knew she would move. I knew she wanted my family. And I still let Maggie get taken.
My hand tightens around the phone until the casing creaks. “Lock down every route to that airfield.”
“Already happening,” Roman says. “I’m sending men from the south. Stay behind the van.”
“That’s not my plan.”
“Alexei.”
“She’s in that vehicle.”
“And if you ram them at this speed, you may kill her yourself.”
His words hit, but they don’t slow the violence beating through my chest. I force my eyes to the road and focus on what I can see.
The van is three cars ahead, cutting through traffic with no regard for anyone around it.
The back windows are blacked out. The driver favors sudden lane changes over speed, trying to break sight lines.
Professional enough to be dangerous. Not good enough to disappear.
“Two men inside, possibly three,” Luka says, reading the road with grim focus. “Driver is trained, but nervous.”
I glance at him. “You see that?”
“He overcorrects before every turn.”
The van blows through another red light, this time forcing a minivan onto the curb. Luka follows, missing the minivan by inches. My phone lights up with a new call from Viktor. I answer without taking my eyes from the road.
“Ivy?” I ask.
“She’s safe,” Viktor says. “Terrified, but safe. She wants Maggie.”
The words carve into me. “Don’t let her see anything.”
“I won’t.”
Behind Viktor, Ivy’s sobs carry through the line. “Papa! Papa, where’s Maggie?”
My chest tightens with pain so deep it tries to become sound. “Put me on speaker,” I say.
A faint rustle follows, then Viktor’s voice lowers. “Go ahead.”
“Solnyshko,” I say, forcing every trace of rage from my voice. “Listen to Viktor.”
“Papa, they took Maggie,” Ivy cries. “They took her!”
“I know.”
“Bring her back,” she pleads.
“I will.”
The promise leaves no room for failure.
Ivy sobs again, smaller this time. “She was scared.”
My eyes burn, and for the first time in years, I almost lose the iron hold I keep on myself. I see Maggie’s hand reaching for the van door. I see her fighting for Ivy, for me, and for the child she carries.
“I’m bringing her home,” I tell my daughter.
Viktor ends the call before Ivy can answer. Good. I need both hands free and every thought clear.
A black sedan cuts out of a side street and positions itself between us and the van.
“Escort vehicle,” Luka says.
“I see it.”
The rear window lowers.
I raise my weapon before the shooter leans out.
The first shot cracks through the windshield. Safety glass blooms white across the passenger side. Luka doesn’t duck. He drives straight through the blast pattern while I fire twice through the damaged glass. The sedan jerks, swerves, then corrects.
Not enough.
I fire again.
The rear tire blows. The sedan fishtails violently, sideswipes a parked truck, and spins across the road. Luka veers around it without lifting his foot from the gas.
Roman is back on the line before I can call him.
“One escort down,” he says.
“You saw?”
“I’m watching city cameras. Two more vehicles moving near Whitaker. My men are closing from the south.”
“Where’s Enzo?”
“With me.”
A savage sound nearly leaves me. “Why?”
“He knows the routes. He knows her fallback points. He says if she reaches the airfield, she’ll have a plane waiting.”
“Then he stays alive until Maggie is safe.”
“That was my plan.”
The van cuts left toward a road lined with warehouses and storage lots. Traffic thins. That’s worse. Fewer civilians means Isabella’s men can become more aggressive.
Luka feels it too. “They’re leading us out.”
“They’re going to the airfield.”
“They know we know,” he says.
“Yes.”
He glances at me once. “Then this gets worse before it ends.”
The van’s rear doors rattle as if there is movement inside.
Maggie.
I lean forward, every muscle in my body locked. For a split second, I think of the child inside her. Our child. Too small for the world to know yet already claimed by enemies who think pain is currency.
“Maggie,” I whisper, the name more vow than prayer.
Luka hears me but says nothing.
The road opens ahead into a long industrial stretch with low buildings, chain-link fences, and empty lots patched with weeds. The van accelerates. Luka matches it, closing the distance one car length at a time. Another black vehicle appears behind us, then a second.
Ours. Roman’s men.
My phone vibrates with a message from Sasha. A map appears on the screen with red markers moving toward the southern exits. Roman is blocking routes before Isabella reaches them.
The van swerves again, the motion far rougher this time. The driver overcorrects, nearly clipping the guardrail before wrenching the vehicle back into the lane. Maggie is still fighting. She hasn’t stopped.
“She’s alive,” I breathe.
Luka’s jaw sets. “Yes.”
“She’s fighting.”
The van jerks right, clips a curb, and bounces back into the lane. One of the back doors flies open before a man yanks it shut from inside. I see a flash of blue fabric. Brown hair. A woman’s arm.
My vision tunnels.
“There,” I growl.
Luka hits the gas, and we close fast.
The road ahead bends toward an overpass. Beyond it, one of Roman’s vehicles slides across the intersection, blocking the lane. Another black SUV cuts in from the opposite side, trapping the van between our pursuit and the barricade forming ahead.
The van driver sees it too late. Brake lights flare. The vehicle swerves toward a side road.
Luka anticipates the move and cuts the wheel first, angling our SUV to block the escape. Metal screams as our front bumper clips the van’s rear corner. The impact throws us sideways, but Luka holds the wheel with both hands and drives through it.
The van spins.
For one endless breath, I see only dark metal, blown tires, and Maggie somewhere inside that box of steel.
Then the van slams into the concrete base of the overpass. The impact tears through the air.
Luka brakes hard, and our SUV skids to a stop yards away. I’m out before the vehicle fully rocks back on its suspension. Guns rise around me. Men shout. Another escort vehicle crashes into Roman’s roadblock behind us.
None of it matters. I run toward the van. “Maggie!”
I reach the van seconds before Luka.
The front end has folded around the concrete support beneath the overpass. Steam pours from beneath the crushed hood while smoke curls into the late afternoon sky. One rear door hangs crooked on twisted hinges. The air reeks of gasoline, burned rubber, and hot metal.
Gunfire erupts behind me as Roman's men engage Isabella's escorts. I never glance back.
“Maggie!” I roar again as I wrench the damaged door wider.
One kidnapper lies sprawled across the bench seat, blood soaking his shirt. Another groans near the floor, pinned beneath warped metal and shattered plastic.
Neither of them is Maggie. My heart slams against my ribs.
Then I see her.
She lies half curled against the opposite wall of the van, tangled in broken restraints and debris. Blood streaks one temple. Her hair has come loose completely, obscuring part of her face.
“Maggie.”