Chapter 70 Dimitri
DIMITRI
A man waited for me inside the room.
But he was not the Souleater.
His panicked eyes flitted to each of our faces. The only movement he could manage since he was bound and gagged in the middle of a barren room. Blood dripped from his lacerated skin.
I ripped off his gag. “Who are you?”
“Who?” he mumbled, head lolling. “Where am I?”
I swore. It didn’t matter who this man was. The Souleater had laid a perfect trap for us, and I’d walked straight into it.
“Deal with this,” I snarled before running out of the room.
I didn’t need the blueprints to know where I needed to go.
Pounding footsteps followed me as I wove through the halls until I reached the door to the main room.
I slammed the door open and my eyes went straight to the cracked concrete in the center of the floor—the last place I’d seen Mama.
This time, the only thing waiting for me was a black satellite phone.
And it was ringing.
Sergey, Ilya, and Konstantin covered me as we crossed the room together.
I picked up and waited.
A low chuckle raised the hair on my neck. “Dimitri Ivanov. I have waited in great anticipation for our reunion. I only wish I was there to welcome you in person, but there was somewhere else I needed to be tonight.”
“Dusheguby.” I snarled the Souleater’s Russian name, bile rising in my throat at the sound of the voice I’d never thought I’d hear again. “Where are you?”
My feet took off beneath me. My men followed without question as we sprinted to the cars.
“I think you already know, Mitka. Quite irresponsible to abandon your prized possession all alone in the middle of the woods. I thought I taught you better than that. Your lapses disappoint me, but it was lucky for me that you kept your dear papa’s safe houses.”
Panic choked my chest. This was my fault. I had grown too confident. “What do you want with her?”
The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew I’d fucked up. I’d revealed too much, confirmed how much Sienna meant to me. The Souleater’s laugh confirmed it.
“I have often wondered what it would be like to train a soldier from infancy. Breaking boys will always bring great satisfaction, but there is something tantalizing about the idea of controlling every aspect of a soldier’s development.”
“If you lay a hand on her, you will be the one who breaks!” I shouted into the phone.
I threw open the passenger side of the SUV. Sergey jumped into the driver’s seat while Ilya and Konstantin got in the back. We’d barely closed the car doors when Sergey peeled onto the road. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that the rest of my men were following closely behind.
I pulled out my cell and called Maxim, thrusting my phone at Konstantin so he could warn them.
“Of all the boys I trained, you were the only one who didn’t break,” the Souleater continued in his infuriatingly calm voice. “Tell me, Mitka. When I slice open your wife’s stomach and pull out your unborn child, will you break then? We might find out…if you get here in time.”
The call clicked off and I roared, the anguished sound bursting from the deepest depths of my soul. I whipped my head to Konstantin.
“The call will not go through,” he said, eyes stricken. “I called Maxim again, then Sienna. There is no cell service.”
“Not reception on my phone, either,” Ilya stammered.
I clutched the satellite phone and dialed Maxim with shaking hands.
Pick up. Pick up.
All that greeted me was silence.
I snatched my cell phone back from Konstantin and opened the tracking app I’d installed on Sienna’s phone. The circle on the screen spun, unable to load.
“It could be a normal service outage,” Sergey said.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to. Sergey grew up in this world with me, and we knew there were no such things as coincidences.