18. Anton
ANTON
The scent is thick in the air, booze and cheap, sweet perfume, sweat and desire so thick that they feel as though they might choke me. I lift the beer to my lips but don’t bother taking a sip.
I don’t want to be so much as tipsy. I need to be on my game right now, and this drink is nothing more than a cover to make certain that I’m not busted as I keep watch on this strip club, and make sure Iris Langford doesn’t succumb to the bullshit that Artem’s men will spin to her.
I’ve been working on finding the women who Sergei name when we managed to draw forth some information from him. Ruby, it looks like, has already made it out of the city, so she is not in danger that I can sense, but Kyra Kelso and Iris Langford…
I can’t say the same for them.
We managed to track them to this sleazy strip club on the East side of the city, where it looks like they have been moonlighting under different names since they quit work at the bar.
Whether my brother is targeting them out of revenge or just tying up loose ends doesn’t matter. Artem’s men are coming for them, and I’m here to stop it.
This club is the perfect place for a kidnapping. It’s the kind of grimy dive where baggies and fifties change hands in the open. It’d be entirely too easy for one of Artem’s guys to flash a fat stack of cash, lure a girl into a back room, and drag her out the alley door to a waiting car.
I’ve had my men watching the place for a week. Leon finally flagged a problem: a guy playing the long game, chatting Iris up every night to build trust so she’d drop her security. A quick hack of the CCTV confirmed it was Stefan Rodri, one of Artem’s enforcers. That’s why I’m here tonight.
I grip my beer, scanning the grim, neon-lit room. I’ve always hated these places—the tinny music, the vacant stares of the dancers, the pathetic men salivating over them.
Then I spot her. Iris.
She looks nothing like her social media pictures. Her blonde hair is lank, her body whittled down to almost nothing. As she totters toward a platform on towering heels, Stefan intercepts her.
I tense, keeping my posture casual so I don’t give myself away. Stefan grins, reaching up to brush a stray hair from her face. Iris stiffens, then swiftly masks it, forcing a polite smile.
Before he can push further, Kyra appears from the back in a tiny bikini. She steps sharply to Iris’s side, eyes locked on Stefan. Even numbed by this place, her survival instincts are still sharp enough to spot a predator.
But he still leans in, bringing his mouth so close to Iris I can almost smell is breath in the air around me. I see him reach into his pocket and press some money into her hand, and she stares down at it for a moment.
She slides her hand into the man’s grip, and tugs him towards one of the private rooms. I rise to my feet and head to the stage next to them, pretending I’m fascinated by the woman before me as she spins around the pole.
I pull some dollars from my pocket and throw them on to the stage, not wanting to stand out in here anymore than I’m sure I already do.
“...baby, I know that you love this place, but I just want some fresh air before we start,” he tells her, leaning in even closer, the distance between them almost vanished. “Come smoke with me. I have something I know you’ll like...”
He pats his pocket pointedly, and her gaze flicks downward. She chews her lip; out of the corner of my eye, I can see her trying to figure out just how much of a risk this is going to put her at, if she should think better of even entertaining a suggestion like this.
But then, she glances back to Kyra, and leans in to whisper something to her—before she follows him towards the back door.
Shit. It’s happening. No doubt he has a car waiting out there that he’s waiting to bundle her into first chance he gets, take her to wherever it was that they held Maya before.
I can’t let him get her out of here. Even if I could send a few of my men to follow the car, there’s no telling how difficult it would be to break her loose once they had her under lock and key.
I catch Kyra’s eye, and gesture for her to come over to me, trying to put on the same suggestive smile that it feels like everyone in this place has when they talk to these girls.
She is still staring after Iris, no doubt worried about what her friend has gotten herself into, but she seems to brush that off at once as she spots me looking at her, softening her eyes and giving me a bedroom stare as she approaches.
“How’s your night going, handsome?” she coos to me, fluttering her lashes at me. I lean in closer, hoping to avoid being overheard.
“That’s your friend who just went out there, right?” I ask her, and she nods, looking surprised.
“Yeah, but I—”
“You need to stop her,” I tell her urgently. “The man she’s with, he works for a sex trafficking ring, and he’s targeted her. I—”
“What?” she exclaims, straightening up. A few men look over at me, no doubt pissed at whatever request they think I have put in for spooking one of the girls.
Shit. I think my cover is blown. I look around, searching for Leon, and catch his eye, jerking my head towards the door that Iris was just led through. We need to move, and now. Time is running out.
“Go get security,” I order Kyra. “Fast. We don’t have much time...”
She’s already rushing for the door ahead of me, though, her concern for her friend overtaking anything else that might be going through her head. I grimace, and press my hand against my gun, making sure it is there and ready to go should I need it.
Leon is already moving through the tables, ignoring the stares we are getting from some of the customers. They can judge all we want. This is bigger than any of them.
Kyra reaches the door first, and throws it open, screaming out into the quiet night beyond as she stumbles into the alleyway. “Iris! Iris, where are you...?”
But before she can finish what she is saying, Leon and I catch up with her, and I’m faced with a horrifying scene.
Iris is slumped into the man’s arms, her mouth slack, her eyes unfocused, what looks to be a cigarette dangling from between her fingers, though I would bet that there is a whole lot more than tobacco in that thing.
Stefan has his hands under her armpits and is dragging her towards a car sitting at the end of the alleyway, a driver visible through the open door.
“Let go of her!” I order, as I whip my gun out, levelling it at him.
He stops dead, staring at me, at Leon, at Kyra, calculating his next move. But before he can say a word, the telltale sound of a silenced gun catches my attention—and I spring to the side just in time to send the bullet aimed at me into the concrete wall beyond, exploding it into a handful of dust.
“Fuck!” Leon yells, and I pull back inside the doorway, catching the stunned Kyra by the arm and dragging her with me.
She stumbles in her heels, tripping over as another shot rings out. The driver is shooting at us, clearly refusing to let us get away with interrupting their kidnapping.
“What the fuck is going on?” Kyra cries out, her voice tinged with terror and tears as Leon fires a few shots towards the driver.
The first few ping off the top of the car, denting the metal with a loud crack, but the third finds its target, slamming into the driver’s chest and throwing him back into the vehicle with a cry of pain that soon fades to nothing.
I turn my attention to Kristof, who is still holding on to Iris, her entire body limp in his arms. The cigarette falls from between her fingers, her eyes unfocused, and I know I need to get her some kind of treatment before she is entirely snatched away.
“Let her go, and you can walk,” I tell him. A lie, of course, but I’m willing to do or say anything it takes to make sure that he leaves that girl alone.
“I have a delivery to make,” he replies, and I see his hand inching for something, just out of sight. At first, I think it’s a gun, but then he returns his grip to her shoulder, making sure she can’t go anywhere.
“I’ll deal with my brother, if that’s what you’re scared of,” I assure him, taking another step forward, my gun and Leon’s still trained on the man before us. The whisper of a smile crosses his face, as though he finds the mere suggestion of it amusing.
“You think I’m scared of anyone?” he replies. Beside me, I can hear Iris breathing hard, frozen to the spot. I want to tell her to run, but I doubt it would do any good. In those heels, she wouldn’t get anywhere.
And before I can say another word, an engine roars behind me.
I turn just in time to see a car screeching down the other end of the alleyway, fast enough that it knocks Leon off his feet, sending him sprawling into the wall. Blood smears on the spot that he just hit, his gun clattering from his hands, and the car comes to a sharp halt and three men leap out.
I back away, trying my best to shield Kyra, who is still frozen and unmoving.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warn them.
But, before I can make my point any more clearly, two of them run for me, and I fire off two shots, taking one out and sending the other ducking to avoid the hit.
I spin around to face the man once more, aiming the gun at him again.
The blood is pulsing in my veins, and I will Leon to get to his feet, to join me, to help me in this battle because it feels like I might be on the brink of losing everything...
“Take the other girl!” Stefan roars, and he suddenly pushes Iris towards me, forcing me to catch her before she hits the ground; in the split-second of distraction, the third man grabs Kyra, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her towards the car as Stefan follows close behind.
Kyra screams out, but one of them stuffs something in her mouth, silencing her, and her body goes limp as she slumps against them.
There’s nothing I can do.
If I try to run after them, then I will drop Iris, who seems hardly able to stand on her own two feet right now. No, the best thing I can do is make sure that at least one of them gets out of here in one piece, if nothing else, and send one of my men after that car to make sure it doesn’t get far.
Behind me, Jakob, the other enforcer I had on this case, steps out from behind the door. I jerk my head towards the car.
“I need you to get after them,” I tell him. “And call in medical for Leon.”
“I’m okay,” Leon grunts, as he drags himself upright, leaning heavily against the wall as though his legs might give out from underneath him at any moment.
“No, you’re not,” I reply. I ease away from Iris, seeing if she can stand up yet, but she looks as if she might collapse if I try to move away from her. “And neither is she. We need to get you somewhere safe, Iris. Is there anyone who knows you’re here, anyone we can call...?”
She stares at me for a moment, gripping on tight to my shoulders, as if, when she lets go, she might just fall to the ground. And she shakes her head.
“No,” she murmurs. “No, I... Tt’s just me.”
Her voice is heavy with the weight of that statement, the confession that there is nobody here looking out for her. Fuck, it hits me like a knife to the gut, more than I can take.
I know a little about her, enough to understand that she has been through hell.
She came from a wealthy family, but that family turned their backs on her the moment she succumbed to her pill addiction.
No attempt to help her, to understand what the fuck happened to push her to the point where she needed to lose herself to complete and utter oblivion every single day, just casting her out like she is nothing more than a pain they want nothing to do with.
And that’s exactly why my goddamn bastard of a brother did what he did, chose her as the target for his latest auction. Because nobody would come looking for her.
“Come on,” I tell her, as I put an arm around her, leading her towards my vehicle. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Where... where’s Kyra?” she asks. I don’t reply. We can deal with that part later. What matters right now is getting her to safety, and doing everything I can to make sure that she doesn’t succumb to whatever bullshit Sergei fed to her with that cigarette.
And pray to God that I can get to Kyra before he hurts her in ways that she will not be able to recover from.