Chapter 21
As the sun breaks over the horizon, it slants through the trees and casts the training grounds of Alexi’s estate in mottled shades of golden light and shadow.
The men competing for the final challenge are standing at attention before him, their breaths leaving silver puffs of mist in the chilled dawn air.
Off to his side, his team stands in an informal huddle, sipping on coffee cups and rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
He can tell they’re looking forward to being done with training the men and planning these challenges.
It will be a relief for both him and his team once they can get back to a normal schedule—well, as normal as it gets for an elite hit team embedded within the Bratva.
Alexi holds his posture, refusing to fidget, but a sense of worry flickers to life inside him. There’s only one person who should be here and isn’t—Ulayna.
He left her sleeping in his bed two hours ago.
She’d wanted to get up with him, but he’d told her to get a little more sleep.
There was no reason for her to get up that early when it would only take her a few minutes to get dressed and join them here.
He knows how she feels about this challenge, and he knows that she wouldn’t miss it for anything.
As the minutes tick by, his sense of dread increases. He could see her being a couple of minutes late to make a statement with her arrival, but it’s been almost twenty minutes, and there’s still no sign of her.
Finally breaking, he turns to his team. “Phoenix.” He calls the woman over to him for a quick, whispered conversation. “Go check on Ulayna. There’s a chance she’s just sleeping, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.”
“Yes, boss.” She trots off, heading back to the main house.
Alexi returns to his position in front of the waiting men. He doesn’t say anything to them. He doesn’t have to. They’re his loyal soldiers, and they’ll hold their position, waiting for his orders all day if he wants them to.
But holding himself steady is becoming nearly impossible.
He doesn’t know why, but the urge to go, to move, to act, gnaws at him.
There’s a deep, uneasy feeling in his gut that he can’t explain.
It’s the same feeling he gets when a mission is about to go sideways.
But there’s no threat here. His compound is locked down tight.
There’s no way for an intruder to get in. They’d know. He’d know.
It’s all in his head, he tells himself for the hundredth time. But then his phone rings in his pocket, and cold fear washes through him.
With trembling fingers, he yanks his phone out and presses it to his ear.
Three words are all it takes for his world to be ripped out from under him.
“I have her,” the voice on the other end of the line says with glee.
“One of my many loyal subjects took her right out from under your nose. And you’ll never get her back because once product 417 is back at the Program, she’ll never be the same.
Even if she somehow escapes me a second time, I’ll make sure the woman you know is gone. ”
Alexi’s grip on the phone tightens until he hears the glass crack, but the voice on the other end just keeps talking in that quiet, hideously cheerful tone.
“I have ways to break them, you know. Ways to make them believe that what I want is what they want. Product 417 has been a failure in that regard, but no more. Once I have her back, I will rip away her identity, her very self, and I will replace it with a weapon of my own design. She will be my slave, my—”
Unable to listen anymore, Alexi disconnects the call. He’s heard all he needs to anyway.
He takes a few seconds to control his reaction. Then he lets the cold, calculating mind of the Bratva leader, the pakhan, settle inside him. When he looks up, the fury of a merciless man is in his eyes.
Just then, Phoenix races into the training grounds, panic and fear on her face.
“Boss!” she yells, coming to a screeching halt in front of him. “She’s—”
“I know,” he says, holding up his cracked phone as an explanation.
Phoenix holds up a damp cloth. “They used chloroform. She never even saw it coming.”
“What the fuck?” Ruger asks. “How did they possibly breach our security?”
Alexi shakes his head, incredulous. “They had someone on the inside already.”
Shade frowns as if refusing to believe what he’s hearing. “I trained her to always secure her sleeping area so she wouldn’t be vulnerable. There’s no way—”
“It’s my fault.” Alexi feels his own words reverberate through him. “She was in my room, and she trusted me to protect her.”
Emotions riot through Alexi. Panic, fear, and guilt are a nasty cocktail in his blood. But he forces it down. If he’s going to get her back, he needs to think logically. There will be plenty of time to unleash hell once they find the men responsible for taking her.
Determined, he nods to his team. “We’ll get her back.” Then he turns to face his men. “Challenge three is canceled. All of you are being activated immediately. Ulayna has been taken.”
His team shares disturbed looks, but his men don’t break. They hold position, waiting for his orders. Now, more than ever, he can appreciate the success of their training.
“What do you need, boss?” Ruger asks, stepping up to his side in support.
Alexi takes a deep breath, then starts rattling off orders with the efficiency of a drill sergeant. “Phoenix, call the Irish. Tell them I’m calling in a favor and need as many men as they can spare. They can meet us at the private airstrip outside of town.”
“Yes, sir,” Phoenix says, turning away to make the calls.
Alexi turns to Bill and Hawk. “You two stay here and oversee security while we’re gone. I don’t need any rival organizations getting wind of this and thinking now is a good time to hit us.”
Bill and Hawk both nod.
Next, he meets the eyes of Ruger and Shade. “You’re with me.”
They meet his stare, their eyes turning steely with single-minded resolve.
Finally, Alexi faces the rest of his men. The twenty-two men who are left from the challenges.
At that thought, Alexi sucks in a sharp breath. Quickly, he counts the men gathered before him. Then he counts them again. Twenty-one men, not twenty-two men.
“We’ve been betrayed,” he says with a lethal calm. “One of our own has taken Ulayna. They plan to turn her back over to the Program, for them to brainwash, torture, and rape. But we’re going to find the fucker who thinks he can get away with this and annihilate him.
“The Program is about to face a reckoning. When we’re done, its very existence will be wiped clean.”
Alexi rolls his shoulders back and lifts his chin. “Though no woman should be subject to the kind of treatment the Program implements, Ulayna isn’t just any woman. She is my woman. And any man not willing to put her life before his own can step back.”
Despite everything, a sense of pride overcomes him when none of his men even flinches. Every one of them holds their position, steady, waiting for orders.
“Za nashu sestru!” one of the men calls out from the back of the crowd.
As one, the men all repeat the phrase in a chorus of battle cries.
Alexi nearly falls to his knees as the meaning of the words hits him like a physical blow. For our sister!
—
Almost thirty hours later, Alexi and his men step off the plane in Moscow. A second plane is landing any minute, carrying all the men the Irish could spare, including Liam and Brian themselves.
Impatience curls inside him. Ulayna has been in enemy hands for over a day. God only knows what they’re doing with her.
Hopefully, he and his men aren't too far behind. With any luck, the man who betrayed them only has a few hours' lead time. But each minute they wait feels like torture.
Unfortunately, it took precious time to gear up the men, secure a second plane, and activate the pilots. And now, the clock continues to tick as they gather their forces and get ready to make their move.
An unassuming man wearing khaki pants and carrying a briefcase hurries across the tarmac to meet Alexi.
“Bob,” Alexi says, extending his hand in greeting.
Bob flushes slightly at Alexi’s use of the name he gave him when they first met months ago. But he returns Alexi’s handshake with a firm, resolute grip.
“Do you have the information I asked for?”
“Yes, sir. It’s all right here. I’ve been keeping tabs on them, just like you asked. I have notes on their security layout, the guard rotations, even the commander’s personal living space.”
“The commander?”
“Yes, he’s the one in charge of the entire operation. Big, scary-looking, blond. The phone call you told me about? I believe that was him.”
Alexi grins. But it’s the sharp, lethal grin of a monster who finally has its prey within sight. “Then we know who our target is. Thank you, Bob.”
“Let’s move out!” Alexi calls out to his men as soon as the plane carrying the Irish has touched down.
The men all pile into the line of waiting SUVs and head toward the Program’s compound. As they drive, Alexi and Ruger review the intel from Bob.
Ruger’s eyebrows rise in surprise when he sees the level of detail. “Who is Bob, and how does he have all this information?”
Alexi chuckles humourlessly. “I can’t even remember what Bob’s real name is.
He’s the informant the Irish found for me months ago.
I paid him a visit and managed to turn him.
It was actually pretty easy. I get the impression the Program leadership doesn’t treat him well. He’s been my inside man ever since.”
“Smart,” Ruger says, nodding. “I don’t think what you’re planning would be possible without all this intel.”
Alexi just grins and stares out the car window as cold concrete buildings rush past.
—
There’s a relentless pounding in Ulayna’s brain, and the bitter taste of chemicals in her mouth and nose. She’d love nothing more than to sink back into the darkness that has held her captive until now. But she can’t. Every instinct, no matter how dulled they are right now, screams at her to move.