22. Anton
ANTON
“Answer me!”
I roar into Doctor Anatoly’s face as I land another blow on his jaw, sending blood spraying across the wall of the bar storage room that one of my businesses operates out of. He groans, twisting his body away from me, but I’m not about to let him get away that easily.
I grab his hair, forcing his face to mine. “What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything!” he protests, squirming, as two of my men stand at his sides to pin his arms in place. “I thought—the two of you were family, I thought that he knew anyway!”
“So why do we have footage of you in one of his bars, getting drunk and speaking to him all night while he slipped you pills under the table?”
The doctor tries to wrench himself loose, but there’s no point, my men have him in an iron grip. I straighten up, pacing, my jaw clenched as I try to think of a new method of interrogation that will get the information I so desperately need.
The doctor is the leak, the one who let Artem know that there was more to Maya’s presence in my life that just a grudge against him.
One of my men, who had been watching Artem’s bars to ensure that the girls were safe, had mentioned seeing him there the other night, and it hadn’t taken long till we had pulled the footage and proved the obvious.
“Did he say where he was going to take her?” I demand, turning to him once more, making sure he catches sight of the gun on my hip.
He shakes his head. “He didn’t say anything about taking her at all!” he replies, blood gurgling briefly at the back of his throat as he tries to get the words out. “If he had, I would never... I would never...”
“You’ve worked for him before, hmm?” I press. “So where did you work for him? Where did he have you tending to his men?”
The doctor’s eyes—well, the one I can still see, since the lid is mostly unswollen—droop to the ground as he tries to remember. I know that he will do anything to save his own life right now, and I need to be certain that he is not going to try and bullshit me to get me off his case.
“I... there were these office blocks,” he replies, finally, pressing on one of his loose teeth with his tongue and wincing. One of the guards at his side yanks his backwards, forcing him to sit up straight and look at me.
“Ah,” he grunts in pain. I make no effort to stop them. He deserves to suffer, for the danger he has put Maya and the baby in.
“They used to be for this old paper factory,” he goes on, furrowing his brow, hair matted to his skin with sweat and blood. “I can take you there, I remember the directions...”
“Give me the address,” I insist.
His eyes dart from side to side, like he is calculating his chances of getting out of here if he does what I say. “No,” he shoots back. “I can show you where to go. But Artem never gave me the address, I don’t know exactly where it is.”
I growl in irritation. I know what he’s doing, but every second that ticks by is another wasted. We’ve already passed three hours as it is, and Artem’s warning is echoing in my head. Just a couple more hours, and she’ll be gone.
I can’t allow that to happen.
“Put him in one of the cars,” I order my men, straightening up and turning for the door. “You fuck with me, Anatoly, and I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your brain. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” he whimpers back, another rush of pain probably shooting through his body as he is dragged to his feet once more.
We make for the vehicles outside, and, within fives minutes, we’re on the road. Anatoly rides with me, and one of the guards keeps his gun pointed at him from the back seat as he directs me through the city.
It’s early in the morning, the day just beginning, sunlight clearing away the shadows of night as we pass through the city blocks. The air is silent, apart from Anatoly’s brief interjections to give me directions. Whenever he tries to reason with me, I let out a grunt to silence him.
Time ticks on, and the city streets wind onward for what feels like an eternity.
“How much longer is this going to be?” I ask Anatoly, as I draw to a halt at a crosslight, waiting for another car to pass.
“Not long,” Anatoly assures me.
I shoot him a look out of the corner of my eye. I’m not going to let him keep me from Maya. If he thinks he is going to get away with fucking around…
And then, right in front of me, several large office buildings rise up at the far end of the street. Anatoly jabs his finger in the air, looking relieved, as though he is as surprised as I’m that we have actually made it.
“There!” he exclaims. “There, that’s it!”
I pull the car to a halt outside the building, the small convoy behind me doing the same. I gesture for my men to surround the buildings, and stride up to the metal fence, kicking it down and climbing over it.
“Which building?” I bark at Anatoly, who is stumbling to catch up with me.
“That one,” he tells me, pointing to the one in the center.
“You’re sure?” I demand, reaching for my gun. He nods, and it looks like the first thing he has been entirely sure of since he dragged us out here in the first place.
“Positive—”
That’s all I need to hear. I pull my gun, aim it at his head, and pull the trigger. He hits the ground with a heavy thud. I tuck my gun back into its holster.
No one that fucks with Maya gets to live.
I gesture for Ilya and Gregori to join me, and I pause out the front door of the largest building.
“Ready?” I mutter, tensing my shoulder as I prepare to barge through. They both nod, and I take the lead, slamming my shoulder into the door once, twice, three times, before it finally gives in and comes off its hinges with a groan.
I rush inside over the collapsing door, swinging my gun around, ready to take out anyone who might still be here.
But there is nothing. Not that the building has been abandoned for that long, by the looks of it, as an ashtray full of cigarettes sits on one of the tables, practically still smouldering.
“Shit,” I mutter, and I turn to Gregori and Ilya.
“Take the opposite corridors,” I yell to them, pointing to two of the three doors that lead off this space. “I’ll take this one...”
We split off from each other, and I move with caution through the rest of the quiet building. There is nobody here. Nobody.
For a moment, I think that Anatoly brought us to the wrong place, maybe trying to throw us off the scent on Artem’s orders—but then, as I round the corner to an office that sits with the door open, something catches my attention.
A fresh lock on the office door. I lift it to get a better look. There’s no way someone who worked here would have needed a lock this heavy-duty, and besides, it looks like this one was installed in the last day or so, no dust on it, still gleaming bright, fresh from the store.
I glance inside the office, take a step forward to look around, and I’m hit with it, the same scent that lingered in Maya’s room. And I know then, I know for certain that this must be the place that he brought her to.
Fuck! How long has it been since he took her? I should have known that the timeline he gave me would be bullshit. I’m here after four hours, and she’s nowhere to be seen.
Probably already on the way to the buyer that he has arranged for her.
I storm along the corridor, intercepting Gregori and Ilya as I go.
“Pull CCTV for all the streets around here,” I tell them. “I need to find out every vehicle that came and went from this place in the last ten hours. Meantime, get the men on the road, I want them following every feasible route someone could have taken out of this place.”
“On it,” Ilya replies, as he heads for the door, Gregori close behind him. The blood is pulsing in my temples as I make my way to my car, stepping over Anatoly’s body as I go. That bastard—if it hadn’t been for him, I might not have been in this nightmare.
But I know, deep down, as I start up the car, that my brother was never going to let something like this go easily.
It’s not who he is, never has been. He was always going to do what he could to hurt me, to take revenge, and now he knows that she is pregnant, too, it’s a double victory for him.
I can already imagine the ways he will make sense of this act of senseless violence to himself, as some kind of revenge against me, but I will not give him the satisfaction of going through with it.
I pull away from the office buildings, knowing that my men will clean up the body as they parse out the route that Artem took out of here. He can’t have gotten far. I just have to intercept him before he gets a chance to hand her over to that buyer.
Fuck, even if that bastard manages to get his hands on her, I will hunt him down, too, execute him for thinking for a moment that he had a right to the woman carrying my child...
I grip the wheel tight, so tight it looks like the knuckles might burst right out from under my skin.
I need to get to her. That’s all that matters.
Everything else in the world can wait. As long as I make sure she is safe, that she does not succumb to whatever my psycho brother has planned for her, I will be able to fix this.
Even if I can hardly stand to think about the terror she must be experiencing right now.
“I’m coming, Maya,” I mutter under my breath, and I put my foot down, my car tearing through the quiet morning air.