27. Isabela
ISABELA
It's late and I've given up on sleep. Demin hasn't come to bed and I've been tossing and turning for at least an hour.
After what happened earlier today with the bomb in his SUV, I know I'll never sleep unless he's lying next to me and I can feel his heart beating.
So I get up to go find him. Someday, I'll settle into this nonsense of him staying up late and worrying the hell out of me, but for now, I just need to feel him in bed next to me.
Mishka isn't by his door, nor is Bart, so when I slip out, I shut it behind me and creep into the darkness.
Usually, when Demin stays up late, it's because he has men in his office meeting with them or he's out doing something violent.
Tonight, the house is quiet, but I know he's home.
I can see his replacement SUV on the driveway.
But as I round the corner toward his study, a door I've walked past a hundred times swings open, and before I understand what's happening, a hand has closed around my arm and dragged me half off my feet into the blackness of an empty room.
The grip crushes my arm, and when I drag in a breath to scream, a second hand seals over my mouth.
Then Sergei's voice settles against my ear, dusting my cheek in heat.
"Don't." He's quiet and it's terrifying. "Not a sound. You scream and I'll snap your neck right here and carry you out over my shoulder. Trust me, you don't want that."
I bite him hard and get a good chunk of skin between my teeth.
I taste the blood erupt onto my tongue and a bit of his flesh come loose into my mouth, but he doesn't so much as flinch.
He holds me there with an iron grip until I'm suffocating, his thumb and forefinger pinching my nose shut.
I thrash and kick, moaning and groaning as loudly as I can, but it isn't long before the fight drains out of me and my own jaw gives up before his hand does.
"There it is," he murmurs, trying to calm me down. "Now we're going to walk out the side door together, nice and easy, like a man escorting a lady to see her father. Anyone asks, that's where we're going. Do you understand me?"
"Fuck you… I'm not going anywhere with—"
I never get to finish the sentence because his hand wraps around my throat and squeezes hard. It feels like he's crushing my windpipe, making it impossible to make a sound or even breathe.
"You fucking do what I say or I kill you, slut. Do you understand?" Sergei isn't messing around. He really will kill me, and now my body thrums with adrenaline and I can't stop shaking. "Now walk."
He keeps one hand locked on my arm and the other at the back of my neck as he forces me into the dim hallway. It's so quiet if I scream, I know someone will hear me, but I fear the immediate response he'll give more than the inevitable end he has in mind for me. So I remain quiet.
He takes me out a service door I've never used, across a yard of gravel that cuts into my bare feet.
There's a car waiting against the far wall with the engine running and no driver in it.
The whole way across that gravel, I keep waiting for someone to step out and stop this—a guard on a smoke break, Danya at a window—anyone.
But with every step that no one comes, the truth of what's happening sinks in deeper.
"Please, don’t do this," I whimper, stumbling as he shoves me forward.
"Shut the fuck up," he snarls. "I fucking said don't talk." Then I feel the weapon pressed into my back and panic.
When I pull away, trying to run, he wrestles me back against his body hard enough that it knocks the wind out of me.
"You're barefoot, and the gate's four hundred meters off with two of my men on it," he says angrily. "You'd get ten steps…" Then he tugs the door open and orders, "In," as he uses a large hand on my head to fold me in half before shoving me into the back seat.
This can't be happening. Demin promised me he'd keep Sergei away from me, unless Sergei is one of the men inside Demin's family who are turning on him.
If that's the case and Demin doesn't know yet, will he even know to come for me?
How long will it be before he realizes I'm gone and tries to find me?
"Please, you can’t do this. Please, my father…"
"Your papa will join us soon, Ms. Cruz. Nothing to worry about there. Just buckle up, this could be a bumpy ride." He keeps his eyes locked on the road while I turn and kneel on the seat, slapping the glass with an open palm, now screaming for help.
But he only chuckles at my fit and keeps driving.
I watch the house fade away through the back window. Then the trees close over the road and swallow the house whole. Sergei turns us away from the city instead of toward it, and one by one, the lights drop away until there's nothing out the windows but darkness.
We drive a long time and eventually, I curl into a ball on the back seat.
Sergei is silent the whole time, though his phone vibrates a few times with an incoming call he ignores.
I think about trying to swipe it from him and call someone for help, but what good would it do?
He'd kill me before they find me anyway.
Eventually, the car finally slows and turns off onto a rutted track.
The headlights drag across the face of an abandoned old building, and the panic in my chest worsens.
It's a warehouse, or it was one, before the windows were busted out and the roof caved in.
The doors appear to have sagged off their tracks and there's no other building anywhere, no light, no one for miles in any direction I can see.
"Where are we?" My palms are sweating now, mind racing a million miles an hour.
If he just wanted to rape me, he could've done it anywhere, including inside Demin's home.
Which means he's not planning to return me there at all.
Whatever he has planned for me, he doesn't want anyone knowing and has no intention of giving me back.
"Nowhere… shut up," Sergei growls at me, but I lean forward, squinting my eyes in the darkness to get any sort of clue where we may be. I'm frantic too, praying someone somewhere knows I'm missing and is coming for me.
When the car rolls to a stop, I tug at the handle, trying to open the door so I can run, but the child safety feature is engaged, preventing me from opening it. It takes me too long to realize this, and by the time I turn to crawl over the seat to the front, Sergei is there, prying the door open.
He pulls me out by the arm and walks me in through a gap in the doors, across a floor littered with rusted metal and broken old wooden skids.
There's a chair in the center of this mess, and he shoves me forward toward it.
I stumble, falling short of the chair, and start crawling, trying to get away as fast as possible, but Sergei is on me immediately again.
"Hold still," he orders, but I keep squirming and kicking.
"Stop it! Get your hands off me! Let me go!"
He shoves me down into the chair and I come straight back up out of it, or I try to. But his hand on my shoulder slams me back down so hard, the legs scrape across the concrete.
"Don't touch me." I get a nail across the back of his hand and drag it into his flesh, drawing blood. "Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch."
Sergei catches my wrist and pins it to the arm of the chair, and I twist against him and kick out, catching him in the shin, but it doesn't move him an inch.
The cord comes out of his jacket and he loops it around my wrist. I yank back against it with everything I have, throwing my weight sideways, trying to take the whole chair over with me, but it's no use. He's so strong.
"Help," I scream. There has to be someone, there has to be! "Somebody help me—"
"Scream all you'd like." He cinches the loop tight and moves to the other wrist while I'm still fighting the first. "There's no one out here. I told you that already."
I bite at his arm and miss. I get a fistful of his sleeve, but he peels my fingers off it one at a time, like he's working a knot loose. Then he ties that hand down too while I buck against the chair.
"Please, no! Please, God, no!"
Sergei crouches and catches my ankle. He isn’t even listening to me. I knew the instant I saw this fucker that he was a monster. Demin should never have hired him. He's nothing but trouble. I kick at his face with the other foot, but he pins that leg and ties it too.
The whole time, I'm spitting every word I have at him in two languages. When it's done, he stands and steps back, looking down at me as I sit shaking and sweating. My face is a mess of tears and snot, and my body is taut, straining against the ropes.
"Whatever you mean to do to me," I tell him, "you should do it knowing he will take you apart for it. You know him… He's going to kill you slowly for this."
Sergei cocks his head as he chuckles. "You think that's why you're here?" He drags a second chair out of the dark corner and sets it a few feet from mine then lowers himself into it. "I have no interest in you, Isabela. He fucked you… You're tainted."
A cold chill creeps up my back and I shudder. If he's not taking me because he wants me to… I can't even imagine it—the horror of even thinking it makes my skin crawl. Why does he have me here?
The confusion must be apparent on my face because Sergei sighs and says, "They’ve had this coming a long time, and you and your father were just in the wrong place at the wrong time…"
The revelation dawns on me like the sun over the ocean, growing brighter by the second. Sergei is definitely one of them… whether from the beginning or brought in recently. He is one of the traitors Demin is trying to root out.
"Why?" I breathe, incredulous. "He trusted you with his life.
" I shudder as I think about what this means.
Whoever has turned against Demin has recruited this sick bastard to help him.
He knew that bomb was there and he let Demin get in that car.
The realization has me trying to launch myself out of this chair again, only to find myself stuck fast. "You sick fucker! "
Sergei laughs darkly again and says, "You know, if you weren't so fucking mouthy I'd keep you around for when this faction owns the Bratva territory. You'd make a good whore to pass around to my men."
"Fuck you!" I hiss, spitting at him. The spit lands short of where he is, but he gets my point. "You're a lying bastard. I'd never trust you."
"Well, I'm prepared to set you free when we have what we want…
But your father will stay with us. Oh, and good luck getting anyone of significance to believe your story.
We'll be surrounded by layers of protection by then.
" When he sits back, picking the dirt from his fingernail, I grit my teeth and pull at the restraints harder.
No matter what I do, nothing comes loose.
"You tried to kill him…" I'm still trying to wriggle free, but I know it's pointless.
"The bomb was meant to be the end of it—I'll admit I was disappointed." He turns one hand over, like he's weighing a deal that fell through. "But I'll get another chance… This way is cleaner."
"Then what is this? What does dragging me out here get you?"
"You're bait, Isabela." He leans forward over his knees.
A disgusting flicker of evil lights up his eyes for a second and then snuffs itself out as he says, "Come morning, he knows you're gone, and he knows it was me who took you, and then your Demin has a choice to make.
He comes after you because he can't trust a single fucking person on this planet right now. Or…"
"Or what?" I say, though I'd give anything not to hear it. I clamp my eyes shut tight and try to squeeze him out, will myself to be back in that bedroom tucked warmly into Demin's bed waiting for him.
"Or he does the clever thing. He puts the Bratva ahead of the woman, the way his kind always do when it comes down to it, and he writes you off and closes his ranks and saves his own skin.
" Sergei opens his hands in a gesture of indecision.
"I win on either road, you see. I get him, or I get to watch him devolve into a maniac and lose his mind because I've touched you.
There's no version of tonight where I walk out without something I came for. "
I pull against the cords again, whimpering as I realize this asshole is going to kill the man I love.
"He'll come," I say. "And he's going to bring help. You won’t get your chance to hurt him again."
"I know him better than you, woman." Sergei licks his canine tooth and sits back again. "I've spent my whole life around men like Demin Roshin. I know precisely how this runs. The only thing I don't know yet is which way he'll break. But I've made peace with whatever the outcome is."
He stands, brushes the dust from his trousers. "Get comfortable," he says. "We've a few hours yet before any of it begins."
He walks to the door and lets it shut behind him as my head hangs and tears flow freely.
"Oh, my God…" I'm sobbing, praying to the saints to protect him. Because God help me, I know Demin Roshin is coming to claim what's his, and I’m not sure if he understands the evil waiting for him.