Chapter 22 Maxim
MAXIM
Letting Grace go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but it was the right thing no matter how much my heart feels like it’s being pulled from my chest. No matter how much my soul feels like it’s missing its half, it was the right thing to do.
I will go to the ends of this earth to keep Grace safe from him.
Seeing her tear-soaked face watch me for as long as she could told me there was no way in hell I wouldn’t go back to get my girl.
That this bullshit with Dmitri needs to be over and done with so I can bring Grace home.
It's early morning by the time Sergei returns, and he finds me sitting at my desk in my office with a whiskey in my hand.
“I’m surprised you aren’t on the floor passed out.”
“I need a clear head to end this,” I tell him.
“Good, because that girl loves you,” Sergei tells me.
“I know. I love her too.”
Sergei nods. “She arrived in Ibiza safely. She slept on the plane, but I think that’s because emotionally she was exhausted.”
“I did the right thing sending her away, didn’t I?”
“You did. Having her family around her is what she needs. And you need to concentrate on taking down that little fucker.”
“Am I being selfish thinking about a future with this woman? I can’t give her the life she deserves.
Maybe sending her away permanently is wiser.
That way she can meet a normal man, get married, and have children.
She won’t ever have to worry about looking over her shoulder wondering if today is the day my enemies plan to strike,” I say, throwing back the last of my whiskey.
“Is that the life Grace wants? The white picket fence, the 2.5 children, the normal guy?” Sergei asks.
Who knows. It’s what she deserves.
“I know I’m just an old man, but I see true happiness between the two of you even if it was fleeting. It’s the same spark I had with my wife, Natasha.”
I never got to meet her, but I always heard Sergei talk about her fondly. She died from complications during childbirth when Anna was only two. He lost his wife and child in one night. She was the love of his life, and no other woman stood a chance against that love, not even after all these years.
“Enough talking about our feelings and shit. We have work to do,” he says, changing the subject.
The old man is right. We have so much to do like hacking into Dmitri’s computers and phones to find out what he knows about Elena and Anna. It’s something we should have done earlier, but I was distracted.
Unknown number: I have a new phone.
I stare down at the text that came through on my secure phone. The only person that has this number is Sergei. Does he have a new phone?
I press his old number, and he picks up straight away.
“Do you have a new phone number?”
“No.”
“Then who the fuck is messaging me on my secure line?”
Sergei falls silent.
“Has the number been compromised?”
“It’s Grace.”
Everything stills.
“What the hell did you say?”
“I’m guessing she found the number when I gave her the money.”
“What the hell did you do, Sergei?”
“I was trying to help.”
“By putting her in danger?” I say, raising my voice.
“It’s your secure line. It can’t be traced. I thought …”
“You thought fucking wrong,” I say, slamming the phone down.
Maxim: Lose this number.
Grace: No.
Maxim: Yes. Before I block you.
Grace: Don’t. I miss you.
I stare down at those words, and my hand reaches out and rubs the ache in my chest.
Maxim: I miss you too.
Grace: See, that wasn’t so hard was it?
She makes me smile. This woman.
Maxim: The old man shouldn’t have given you this number.
Grace: He’s a romantic at heart.
Maxim: No, he’s an idiot. He’s putting you in danger.
Grace: I trust that you will protect me.
Maxim: Wildcat, how am I supposed to concentrate now that I have you on speed dial?
Grace: You’re a great multitasker. I’m sure you can work it out.
Cheeky little minx.
Maxim: You always did like it when I used my tongue and fingers on you.
Grace: See you can multitask.
My cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
Grace: Just a heads-up. Interpol interviewed me this morning.
I still at her words.
Maxim: What the fuck did they want?
Grace: Chill. Enrique is Tomas’ cousin. It wasn’t anything official. I didn’t say anything just confirmed what they knew already.
Maxim: What do they know already?
Grace: That I was in Italy and that the people who took me were Russian.
Maxim: That’s all?
Grace: Yes. I blamed my detox for fuzzy memories.
That’s my girl.
Grace: I’m going to have a sit down with my family this afternoon in the war room, and I’ll let you know what I find out.
Maybe the old man was onto something pooling both of our resources together. We might be able to find these fuckers earlier.
Maxim: Be careful.
Grace: I will.
Maxim: Did you have a good sleep last night?
Grace: No. Seems I’m not used to sleeping alone anymore.
I feel the same, Wildcat.
Grace: But there were no nightmares. I think I was too tired for them.
Maxim: I bet your family was happy to see you.
Grace: It was overwhelming. Everything is so loud here. I miss your solitude.
Grace: My sister Sophie, she’s the journalist, she has questions. She’s not buying the story I’m giving.
Grace: Zoe, on the other hand, has been so supportive. She guessed straight away that something happened between us. But she isn’t judging me. She of all people knows what it’s like to fall for someone in unusual circumstances.
Grace: Don’t worry, none of them know who you are. That is all for me.
Maxim: Whatever you need to do to make things easier for you, do it.
Grace: What happened between us is just for us. They’ll move on once the novelty of me being home is over.
Maxim: I’m here if you need me.
Grace: I’ll always need you.
What the hell do I say to that.
Maxim: I’m yours.
Grace: I know. And I’m yours.
Maxim: Wildcat, I have to go. I’m glad you texted.
Grace: Me too.
Grace: Can I call you tonight?
Maxim: We should just keep it to texts.
Grace: Please just one call?
Maxim: Fine. 10pm tonight.
Grace: Talk to you then. Bye.
I’m so screwed.
Grace: I’m alone.
The text comes through. I’m sitting on my bed, nervous over a phone call. I press her number, and her gorgeous face fills the screen when she picks up. Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“Gosh, it’s so good to see your face.”
“It’s good to see yours too, Wildcat.” Using her nickname makes her smile wildly.
“Are you naked in bed?” she comes right out and asks me.
Tilting the screen down, I show her that I’m wearing my sweats and that something is starting to twitch to life thanks to hearing her voice.
“Look, he’s happy to see me too.” She giggles and the lightness in her voice washes over me, taking the day’s troubles with it.
“He misses you too.”
“I miss him too.” She grins.
“What are you wearing?” I ask her.
She tilts the screen down, and I cover my mouth with my fist as the screen scans down her body, showing me she’s sitting on her bed in nothing but a pair of black or navy lace lingerie. Does this woman want me to kidnap her again? How dare she tease me like that when I can’t touch her.
“Wildcat,” my tone is gruff.
“Wanted to give you an incentive to come back for me.”
“You never have to worry about that, sweetheart, you can’t escape me. There is no place on this earth that I wouldn’t hunt you down to make you mine again and again.” I growl as I palm my aching cock.
“I’ve missed that dirty mouth,” she coos, running her hand down her body.
“And I’ve missed that pretty little cunt. Now show me what I’m missing.”
It takes us a week to hack into all of Dmitri and Nikolai’s networks.
What I wasn’t expecting was to find years and years of footage of him with girls.
Images of him torturing them, forcing them, humiliating them.
I’ve done some fucked up shit, but this takes the cake, I’ve never been evilly depraved.
What tipped me over the edge was finding the folder labeled ‘Diamond’.
I knew I shouldn’t have clicked on it because now I cannot unsee the things that monster did to Grace.
My fucking Wildcat. The love I feel for that woman has doubled with the fact that after everything she’s been through, all that messed up shit, she still let her walls down for me.
She let me, another monster into her heart.
I don’t deserve her or her love, but I am going to make sure I give her the best fucking life she deserves, and maybe one day, I will feel deserving of her love.
The further we search on the computers and the cloud, the more images we find of the jewels.
Least now we know what each one of them looks like and we are able to run their faces through the missing persons databases.
We might even get lucky scanning them through facial recognition security systems of each country to get a hit on where they might be.
There’s a folder named ‘Sapphire’. I click on it and that’s where I find Grace’s sister Zoe. Nikolai did some messed up shit to that girl, and he’s fucking lucky that he’s already dead because he would be if I got my hands on him.
“This is fucked up, Max,” Sergei says, shaking his head.
We were led to believe these girls were there because they wanted to be, that they chose this supposed glamourous life. Judging by these videos, these women were trained to take anything the men dished up with nothing but a smile on their faces.
I feel sick.
I want to kill every one of the fuckers in the videos for what they did to these women.
Getting their rocks off when they knowingly knew these girls were trafficked.
Did it make them feel powerful having women as gorgeous as these letting them do anything they wanted to them?
I hate myself for being a part of something like this.
That I didn’t investigate it more. What’s even more shocking is the detailed catalog they created for every single jewel, even down to the days and times they were kidnapped and from where.
The time of death and how they died. Guess they thought encrypting the folders in a cloud meant no one could hack into them. They were so fucking wrong.
“Max.” Sergei stills, switching his computer screen to the big screen.
I see a folder marked ‘Emerald’. Opening that folder turns my world upside down.
There staring back at me is my sister. She looks different, older, harder, but it is her.
Thankfully, what’s missing from Elena’s folder is Dmitri’s depravity.
There are no videos of him doing heinous things to her.
That seems to be reserved for the other jewels.
There’s a subfolder, and we hesitate before clicking on it.
What I wasn’t prepared for was countless videos each labeled with a person’s name, and a time or date.
Clicking on one of the videos, we watch as my sister seduces men and then moments later kills them.
While in the middle of fucking them, she pulls a needle from her hair and injects them.
Some men feel it and fight her, but they don’t last long.
Others have no idea what’s happened until they have a heart attack and collapse.
I watch, stunned as my sister removes herself from the men, gets dressed, then wipes the room down.
My sister is a fucking femme fatale.
The more we search through the videos, the more people we find she has killed, including high-profile men like politicians, opposition leaders, criminal bosses, and so on.
I can’t believe my little sister, the one who couldn’t even kill a spider, has turned into an assassin, just like me.
“What the hell did they do to her?” I turn and stare at Sergei in shock.
“I don’t think the sister you know is there anymore. She’s a killing machine, Max.”
“I’ve heard reports of a woman assassin killing people, but I never suspected it would be her.”
“How could you have? We thought she was dead.”
“Seems like the sister I know is dead and replaced with a cold-hearted killer.”
We spend the next couple of hours scanning through every single folder as we collect as much information as we can from the files.
Each folder is a goldmine with the girls’ full names, all their social media connections, job history, medical history, photos of them before they were kidnapped, and information on their families.
These girls never stood a chance. They had been watching these girls for days, sometimes weeks, and even months, waiting for the opportunity to steal them.
All these girls came from good families.
They were smart and worked in powerful jobs, the opposite of who you’d think would be stolen by sex traffickers.
My eyes scan down the lists with Dmitri’s latest notes on each girl. That fucking asshole lied. He does know where the girls are. What kind of game is he playing?
Sapphire: Ibiza, heavily guarded, unable to recapture.
Diamond: Captured location unknown.
Jet: Japan, possibly Tokyo—Yakuza. Could exchange a boat load of
dancers/prostitutes for her.
Ruby: Possibly Croatia? But she’s disappeared, no trace.
Jade: Dubai—Sheik Daoui. Will need $$ to buy back, may
exchange weapons for her.
Pearl: Mexico, probably with one of the cartels. Need contacts there
to find out more information.
Citrine: China. Billionaire’s pet? Need contacts there.
Amber: No clues yet.
“Do we have contacts in any of these cities?” I turn, asking Sergei.
“Yeah, I’m on it.”
The screen with Dmitri’s phone on it lights up as a message comes through.
E: Miss you too, babe.
My heart races, this is Elena. She’s alive.
D: Sorry I’m missing our one-year anniversary
No. She can’t be dating this disgusting man.
E: I went and bought new lingerie for it too.
D: Don’t say those things to me, baby, when I’m in the middle of a meeting. You’re making my dick hard.
I’m gagging. What is wrong with my sister?
E: I’ll see you in a couple of days. You can give it to me then.
D: Damn right I will. Can’t wait to get home and fuck you.
D: Love you.
E: Love you too.
This can’t be right.
Elena can’t possibly be in love with this man.
“We must find her, Sergei. I can’t leave her in these monsters’ arms another second.”