Vanessa
Chapter eighteen
Even though Liam said I wouldn’t break the tracking device that’s in my mouth, I’m trying like hell not to clench my jaw as I drive to the address Russ sent me.
Tension rolls off me in waves. More than once, I have to fight the urge to pull over and empty the contents of my stomach—which isn’t much, considering I’ve barely eaten since my mom and Noel were taken.
My nerves have been shot, except for the brief moments I’ve had with Braxton when his calming presence lessens the voice in my head screaming at me that there’s no way out of this.
I’ve been on the road for thirty minutes, and I’m almost to my destination. My eyes keep darting to my phone. Leave it to Russ to cancel this whole thing if he’s in a mood. Or to send me on a wild-goose chase just because he can.
When I pull up to the small diner, I thank my lucky stars that none of that’s happened. At least not yet.
Walking into the restaurant, I look around and don’t see him. The diner is old and looks like it hasn’t had a good cleaning in ages. I sit down in a sticky booth and a waitress comes over.
“I’ll just have coffee, thanks,” I say when she asks for my drink order.
“You need a menu?”
“No, thanks,” I reply with a weak smile. “Just the coffee.”
She rolls her eyes and walks away. Nice place he picked.
I know this isn’t my final destination. There’s no way he’s going to trot my mom and sister out in public.
Liam said the same thing when we looked up the address he gave me.
Russ is trying to trap me somewhere private, and he’s going to do his best to make damn sure I’m not being followed.
I swipe my tongue over the tracking device in my mouth, once again grateful that we have a man like Liam on our side.
When the waitress comes back with my coffee, I take a sip of the bitter liquid. It scalds my tongue, and I try not to wince, but damn, this shit is horrible.
Five, then ten minutes pass. No one walks in. The longer I sit here, the more nervous I get that this was all a ruse to fuck with me. Russ would be the kind of asshole who would leave me sitting here all damn night.
When twenty minutes have gone by, my phone rings on the table. It’s an unknown number, which means it has to be Russ.
“Hello?” I answer.
“How’s your coffee?” Russ asks.
“Terrible. I’m here. Where are you?”
“Not there,” he says with a chuckle that doesn’t hold any humor. “Get up and walk to the back. There’s a door that opens into an alleyway. Turn left, and when you get to the street, make a right and start walking.”
“Alright.”
He hangs up without saying another word, and I stand, throw a ten-dollar bill on the table, and do what he says.
When I open the diner’s back door, the stench of garbage smacks me in the face.
I turn left, and when I get to the end of the alley and turn right, I’m on a completely different block than the diner.
I start walking. After I’m about two blocks away, a car pulls up beside me, and the man in the passenger seat rolls down the tinted window.
“Get in, Vanessa,” a man I’ve never seen before says.
I bend and look inside the car, and recognize the driver as one of the assholes who came to Midnight Rose with Russ. Opening the back door, I slide onto a leather seat.
“Here,” the driver says and hands me a black sack. “Put it over your head.”
I do as he instructs, slipping on the itchy black fabric that I can’t see more than tiny pinpricks of light through.
“See, you can follow directions,” one of the men says with a laugh as though he made the funniest joke.
“Yeah, we’ll let Damien know you were a good girl in the car.”
Both men chuckle, and I want to throw up. Now that I know for certain what business Damien Sokolov and my stepbrother are into, I’m even more terrified for my mom and sister.
We drive for about twenty minutes, and the sounds of the city disappear.
They’ve made so many turns it felt as though we were going in one big circle, which was probably the point.
If I’m disoriented enough, I won’t be able to track where we’ve been.
The car makes another turn and drives down a bumpy road until we finally come to a stop after a few minutes.
Two car doors open, then slam shut before my door is opened.
I’m unceremoniously grabbed by the arm and pulled from the back seat.
My first instinct is to yell at them for manhandling me, but I clamp my mouth shut.
The less I resist whatever the hell is happening, the faster I’ll get to my family, then we can get the hell out of this. Hopefully.
I’m dragged several feet away from the car and hear a door open, then shut, the slam echoing through a large empty space.
The bag is pulled off my head, and I blink several times, adjusting my sight to the bright lights hanging overhead in what looks like some sort of shop that houses old farm equipment.
The stench of gasoline and motor oil is strong, and it stings my nose.
Directly in front of me are two more men and my stepbrother.
“Glad you could make it,” he says with a smile as though this is a normal Wednesday afternoon.
“Where are Noel and my mom?” I ask, attempting to keep the tremble out of my voice.
We’re in the middle of nowhere, and though I know Braxton has my location, what if something goes down before he can get here?
What if the point of me coming out here is so Russ can put a bullet in my head and bury me on some deserted farm?
The thoughts swirl, and it takes everything in me to keep my breathing steady.
“They’re safe. For now,” he answers. “Noel is looking forward to seeing her sister. She’s been so worried about you. Especially since I told her you betrayed me and deserve exactly what’s coming to you. Take your clothes off.”
“What?” I ask. This time I can’t stop my voice or my body from shaking. “Why?”
Russ rolls his eyes as though the answer should be obvious. “I need to make sure you don’t have a tracker or some shit on you.”
Swallowing hard, I lift the long-sleeved T-shirt from my body and pull it over my head. One of the men from the car holds out his hand to take it from me.
“Such a gentleman,” I mumble, then slip my shoes off and undo my pants, taking one leg out at a time. I hand the jeans to the man holding my shirt and look at Russ. “Good?” I ask, lifting my arms so they’re perpendicular to my body.
“Bra and underwear, too,” he tells me.
God, I want to tell him to go fuck himself. He’s doing this to humiliate me, to make me feel small. I’m not an idiot, and the satisfaction he gets from making me play this little game is clear as day in his smug expression.
When I remove my bra, then my panties, the asshole next to me holds out his hands for those too.
“I got it,” I tell him.
“Nope,” Russ interjects. “He needs to check to make sure you don’t have anything hidden in those cute little panties of yours.”
I slap the matching bra and panties into the man’s waiting hands, and he squeezes and shakes them like fucking diamonds are going to fall out or something. When we get out of this, the first thing I’m doing is burning those clothes.
Finally satisfied, he hands me my clothes, and I quickly redress.
“Why are you so shy about being naked? It’s not like you haven’t been stripping since you were old enough to shake your ass,” Russ comments. “And you’ll be back working in some clubs again this time next week.”
“Which ones?” I ask.
A smarmy grin covers my stepbrother’s face.
“We’ve invested in some new ones outside of New York.
Ones where there’s a little more than dancing, but you should be okay with that—considering you were whoring yourself out to a biker for me.
Now you can whore yourself out to men who will pay a premium. ”
I swallow hard, trying to keep the disgust and fear from my expression.
Russ lives to see that shit. Especially the fear.
The only thing I can hope for is that Braxton waits until I’m with my mom and sister before the cavalry comes to my rescue.
Stopping at a second location before Russ takes me to our final destination wasn’t what I thought would happen.
Liam said there could be many different possibilities and scenarios, but that I could trust him to know when the time is right.
As far as I know, he doesn’t have eyes on me, but he said Sawyer could work miracles with surveillance, so I’m holding on to hope as tightly as I possibly can.
Russ looks down at his phone for a moment, then lifts his head and nods toward the old SUV parked in the workshop. “Let’s go. Damien is waiting for us.”
The same man driving the car whom I saw at the club gets in the driver’s seat of the SUV, and Russ gets in the passenger seat.
I’m once again unceremoniously dragged to the open back door and practically thrown inside.
A man is already sitting on one side of the back seat while another climbs in behind me, and the last guy takes a seat beside me.
“Seat belts,” Russ says as he latches his.
We buckle up—because apparently, all of a sudden, Russ believes in safety first. The giant mechanical rolling door to the shop opens and we drive out, leaving the car behind.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, not expecting an answer, but then Russ starts talking.
“Do you remember an old hunting cabin your dad had? Apparently it was handed down to him from his dad, who inherited it from his grandfather, and so on. When he died, your mom inherited it. Never signed it over to my dad, but when she was spreading her legs for a married man, that’s where they used to go. ”
“Wait, you’re telling me my mom had a house this whole time? Property?” Something she could have sold for money, and I don’t know, maybe have used it to get the hell out of New York?
Russ laughs. “I told that dumb bitch I sold it when my dad died. Looked like it broke her heart, too.”
This fucking asshole.