25. Maxim
25
MAXIM
T he next morning, I shot straight up from the couch when my phone rang. It buzzed, pulling me out of the shitty couple of hours of sleep I’d managed. Since the moment Nadia disappeared, I’d been doing all I could to look for her. My body crashed on me, but I was up now, instantly reaching for my phone.
By the time I picked it up, the call was dropped.
“Fuck.”
If that was something about Nadia…
It rang again, long enough that a name showed on the screen.
It was Alek. I didn’t hesitate to answer. He had to know by now that Nadia was gone. I hadn’t updated him personally yesterday. Each time I called, the reception sucked or he didn’t pick up.
“Alek?”
“Max—” Static cut him off, and I only got butchered syllables afterward. “—it then.”
“Alek. You’re breaking up.”
A faint click, then a buzz, sounded.
“What? You keep going in and out of audio,” he replied.
I ended the call and set my phone on the table. Staring at it, I gave in to the alarms blaring in my mind. There were too many red flags about this to ignore.
The spottiness of being able to call him. The gibberish words. Then those sounds.
And Yusef was talking about Nik’s phone being weird.
They had to be bugged. Or tracked. Something was altering the calls. Someone had to be interfering with our communication.
“Fuck. Just… fuck!”
If someone—likely the goddamn Avilovs—had been tracking us, that was probably how they’d found Nadia here in Chicago. Alek was the one who suggested this property to lie low and wait for his feedback on keeping Nadia from Lev. I hadn’t told anyone. No one else would’ve been able to know I brought Nadia here.
I ran into the dining room where deliveries had been stacked along the wall. With haste, I rummaged through them until I found the one holding a brand-new phone. I’d ordered it from the plane while she napped, knowing she’d need a phone and a new number.
It was already charged and activated. No one could trace it to me or the Bratva. We used a shell company name for many of our personal cell numbers. That was done by my design, and I was damned grateful that I had this new, unused number now.
Instead of calling Alek back where he would be able to pick up immediately, I called the pizza place down the road from the mansion. It was a tiny, dinky, hole-in-the wall pizzeria, but it was very valuable for its real purpose. It was a front, a business to launder money, and the workers there would know how to reach my brother.
“Yes. Send someone right now to get Alek and tell him not to use his cell phone. Now. He will know why.”
My instructions to the pizzeria worker were simple. While the worker sounded confused, the supervisor who then took the call comprehended it clearly. They’d do it. My impulse to call through a second source would work.
Still, I had to endure the wait. Someone would need to drive from the pizzeria to the mansion, get through security, relay the message to Alek, and then bring him back to the pizzeria.
I scarfed down room service just to replenish myself and keep up my energy. I had no appetite. I was too pissed off and worried about Nadia to want to eat, but I would do her no good if I were hungry and weak.
By the time I forced down the stale croissant from yesterday, Alek got my message.
The pizza place was calling this new phone, and I answered right away.
“Maxim. What the fuck is going on?”
“I think we’ve all been bugged.”
He cursed. “Yes, we fucking have. I don’t know how or when. All of us think we’ve been hacked. Nik’s phone was acting up. Then Ivan’s.”
“Don’t let them use them. None of the lines. The house too,” I advised.
“Yes. That’s what we’re doing. Yusef is starting up new lines for all of us, new phones.” He sighed heavily, and I hated that he was stressed about this on top of everything else. My oldest brother handled stress well, but he would soon reach a point of being overwhelmed. If he hadn’t already.
“We don’t know when everything started going to shit, but as soon as Yusef mentioned it, I was suspicious.”
I knew he was saying it to update me, but the way he worded it filled me with guilt. Like he wished that I were there, at the house, manning all of these technological and communication issues myself—as I should’ve been.
“I know. You’re probably wishing I’d stayed behind the scenes and kept working at the desk,” I said.
“Shut the fuck up. That’s not what I mean. And I don’t think that at all.”
“If I hadn’t insisted on getting a job and leaving to do something else, though…”
“Then something like this still would’ve happened, Maxim. I know that. And you should too. I only wish I knew how long ago this shit started.”
“I think the last time we spoke, someone was listening in.”
“Why? Why do you think that?” He grunted. “And who? Who do you think did this?”
“The Avilovs.”
He hesitated to reply, and when he did, it was a question. “Not the Kastavas?”
“No.” I furrowed my brow. “The last time you and I talked, it was when I said I wanted to keep Nadia for myself.”
“Right,” he agreed. “And I said I had suspicions about Lev Avilov.”
“Yes. Then you texted me, suggesting that we come to the property in Chicago.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“We did. And someone came right up to the penthouse and took Nadia.”
Again, he released a long length of profanity. “Where were you?”
“I stepped out to speak with the security supervisor, and within the five minutes I wasn’t with her—when she was locked in the penthouse and told to stay put—she was gone.”
“Gone because she ran? Or because she was taken?”
I hated that he asked it. I’d wondered that right away too, whether she’d taken off. Alek asking me that seemed like another example of his doubt in me when I said I thought Nadia was the one woman who’d be mine for good.
“I saw signs of a struggle. I don’t think she would’ve run. I’ve got everyone looking here. Yusef got someone to hack into the nearby surveillance and search for her too.”
“Shit. I see what you mean. We talked about your wanting her for yourself. I said I was going to investigate more into the Avilovs. We mentioned Chicago…”
“And once we arrived, someone was waiting to get her.”
“Fuck, Maxim. Just when I think nothing will get worse. We’re still hitting dead ends on finding Dmitri, and the shit that I’m learning about what Sergei Kastava’s been up to is making this more complicated.”
I tensed. I hated this constant dread gnawing at me that my brother was still held captive. “How so?”
“The fucking Avilovs are backing the Kastavas. They are directly involved with Dmitri’s hostage situation. And if Erik Avilov is mad that you fought him and nearly left him for dead in London, they’ll retaliate.”
By torturing or killing Dmitri.
“One thing at a time, Maxim. One step at a time.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and paced. “But I don’t know where to fucking start now. I’ve been looking everywhere. Do the Avilovs even have territory near here?”
“We’re looking. You’ve got to keep looking. Find her, Maxim.”
He was insane if he thought I’d ever give up. I only just found her. We hadn’t had long enough together yet. My heart ached and my soul wasn’t whole. I needed to get Nadia back.
“Lev Avilov is the fucking enemy. He’s in the wrong to ally with the Kastavas at all, and even if Sergei was the one to have Dmitri taken, Lev is an accomplice, a backer in all of this.”
“And to have Nadia taken again.”
Alek grunted a mirthless laugh. “What a fucking mess. I thought it’d be a simple in-and-out job for you. Just go find some stubborn, bratty bride and drag her back home.”
“I never thought it could get this twisted either.” Learning that the man who wanted to marry Nadia was also involved in my brother’s capture… It was a crazy overlap.
“We’re going to keep looking into Lev and his organization.”
“You’ve got someone going through their property records?” I asked.
“Yes. Someone down in your office floor is handling it. If they have a place they might have loaned to the Kastavas to use for hostage situations, we will find it.”
In the meantime, I had to search for Nadia.
Just thinking about her being in the Avilovs’ hands irritated me. If Erik himself had taken her like I thought he might have, he could very well want to punish her for the way I’d beaten him in the alley. Or he might have hurried her to his uncle as expected. The thought of Nadia being within that old fucker’s reach…
I grimaced and rubbed my shoulder. Fuck no. I couldn’t let that mental picture enter my mind. I couldn’t. If I went down that path of what-ifs, I’d never be able to reclaim any level-headed logic and be useful in finding her.
And I would look for her until my last damn breath. She belonged to me.
We belonged together.