Chapter 4 - Tatiana
Ouch. I opened my eyes to the pain of a splitting headache, the low hum of the motor filling my left ear. I had rolled off the backseat and onto the floorboards, my bound wrists bent uncomfortably underneath me.
Something loud floated back to me, sounding like concern for my well-being, but that couldn’t be right, and I ignored it, trying to shake the fog of pain that radiated from my forehead into my brain.
For a split second, I wondered, maybe a little hopefully, that this was just another nightmare, but no.
I was really tied up in the backseat of a car.
A slight upgrade from being in the trunk, but the duct tape over my mouth was a little much.
It was difficult to breathe, especially since I was on the verge of panicking.
What the hell was going on? Had Konstantin Fokin actually snatched me off the street?
Twisting around, I saw the back of his head, his wavy, dark blond hair a little longer than the last time I had seen him.
He barely glanced at me that time, probably a year or so ago, and I had scampered to stay out of the way of whatever important thing he had to tell Papa.
Papa.
What would he have thought of my valiant effort to run away?
Would he have been as proud as I was at my uncharacteristic bravery?
Closing my eyes, I relived those glorious seconds when my bare feet pounded on the rocky pavement, my vision tunneling with an overload of adrenaline, but still leaning forward and running like my life was the prize.
Fat lot of good it did me when Kon was bigger and stronger and faster, and had more experience in this kind of thing than I did. Why the hell did he grab me, and more importantly, why was he at Riku’s building in the first place?
Was he following me instead of the other way around?
My father wouldn’t have been proud of me at all; he would have been yelling his head off at how foolish I had been to run off all by myself. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? I was by myself for the first time in my life.
My father was gone, really gone, not just off on a business trip.
My only family, the one who was always there for me.
A phone call or a text away. He always worked so hard to give me everything I wanted and needed.
Working for the very man who had me tied up and left to get jostled around on the floor as he ignored speed bumps and took corners without braking.
Papa did everything Kon ever asked. Things he’d never let me in on, and now Kon had left him to rot.
I would have started yelling every obscenity I ever learned in both English and Russian if the asshole hadn’t put that tape over my mouth.
Instead, I just scowled at all that thick, wavy hair.
On top of everything, the asshole was as handsome as a film star.
The same age as my father, but he looked ten years younger, and they couldn’t be more different.
According to Papa, Konstantin should have been dead multiple times with the way he rushed into new ventures, or defied enemy boundaries, or just plain took whatever he wanted. And yet, my father had always followed. The good soldier.
What would he think of Kon taking me?
I hoped his luck was at its end and I’d see his downfall at last after this was over. Whatever this was. I couldn’t even ask what this was all about with the tape over my mouth, but I could curl up enough to kick the back of his seat.
“Come on now,” he said mildly, as if I were no more than a gnat buzzing in his ear.
He pulled into an underground parking garage, and all I saw was the top of a high-rise building before we turned in.
We could have been anywhere. Once he was parked, he got out and hauled me out and over his shoulder like a bag of grain, the weight of his hand burning through my skirt as he kept it clamped over my backside.
There was no chance of rescue from some kind and curious stranger, because we went in through a private entrance and into a small elevator that whisked us straight to the top floor. The elevator opened into a richly paneled entryway, and Kon keyed in a code that opened the only other door.
The moment we were inside the luxurious apartment, he set me down on my feet and took the tape off my mouth with a little too much gusto, making me wince with pain.
He pursed his lips at me, as if silently asking me what I expected.
I resisted the urge to kick him, mostly because he didn’t cut the zip ties, and I didn’t want to give him the idea to tie my legs as well.
“You’re more dangerous than I ever thought possible,” he said, rubbing the small red bump on his forehead.
I scowled as the pain in my own head flared in sympathy. My heroic attempt to defend myself had only knocked me out, and I was positive the bump on my head was much bigger than his. The same way I refrained from kicking him, I kept myself from making a crack about how hardheaded he was.
He loomed over me, close to a foot taller than me, and much, much broader. His mocking smile flattened, and his eyes turned hard. “Tell me where your father is.”
All my restraint flew out the window. I went ballistic, all the pent-up fear turning to anger at this man who was at the core of it all.
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” I spat. “You of all people should know since you’re the one responsible for his disappearance.”
He snorted, back to mocking me and my pathetic attempts to stand up for myself. “You’ve changed, Tati.”
The bluster I was clinging to drained out of me, leaving me as deflated as a three-day-old birthday balloon. “Everything’s changed,” I said, my voice cracking.
Tears burned, but I jerked my head away, blinking rapidly to keep them at bay. There was no way he’d see me cry. Breathing out hard, I sucked in more air, letting it all out with shouted accusations.
“You betrayed him. You were the one they wanted dead. And now—”
His big hand flattened across my mouth, pressing the strip of tape back into place. He held his palm there for a moment, glaring at me until I stopped snorting like a bull about to charge.
“Let’s talk about betrayal, shall we?” he asked, infuriatingly calm. Ice cold. His gray eyes were as opaque as a stone wall, the only thing that alerted me to his deeply controlled anger. “Your father ran off with some money of mine. More than a million dollars.”
He nodded when my eyes flew wide and continued, so smug and sure of himself, I wanted to headbutt him all over again. “On top of draining the business account, he’s probably now working with the very people you were foolishly trying to get in to see.”
My mind went blank with rage at hearing that, and I rushed at him, grunting behind the tape and making such a fuss that he wrapped his arms around me and clamped me to his chest so I had to stop flailing at him with my bound hands.
“If you calm down, I’ll let you speak,” he said, his voice rumbling up from his chest against my ear, which was plastered to the smooth cotton of his shirt.
His arms were like steel bars, caging me in place. I had no choice but to go still. His hands slowly moved across my back and then up my arms. Placed firmly on my shoulders, he moved me back a step and finally peeled the tape off my mouth again.
“There’s no way Papa stole from you or was working against you,” I said, struggling to catch my breath after being clamped against Kon’s rock-hard chest. He was like a furnace, and I was just as hot in my anger at his accusations.
“And if whoever was in that building truly had something to do with his disappearance, then you ruined my plan to find out what happened to him.”
That was the worst of it, finding out I was on the right path, only to be dragged off. His big hands landed on my shoulders again, and he leaned in close.
“You have no clue what’s going on,” he said, voice full of menace.
“Yeah, no shit. That’s the point of being in LA.” I was shocked at my impertinence, not used to speaking out against people in power, but at the moment, I refused to think of Kon as one of those people.
He clearly wasn’t ready for it either, not from meek little me.
A brief flicker of amusement crossed his face before he rearranged it back into a dark scowl.
His fingers bit into my shoulders, and fear started to slide up my spine.
I didn’t really know this man at all, did I?
He could be anyone. My worst enemy. If so, fear was the last thing that would help me, so I focused on my anger.
There was plenty of that after the things he accused Papa of doing.
“You are not equipped to deal with the Yakuza,” he said. “Or the Fokins, for that matter.”
If that was supposed to be a threat, I was too mad to care.
I thrashed like a fish on a line to get out of his grasp, but he only pushed me through the modern living room and down a wide hallway.
My bare feet slapped against the parquet floor as I tried to dig in my heels to keep from being propelled forward.
“Would you prefer to be carried?” he asked mildly.
I stopped dragging my feet, and we ended up in front of a door. Taking one of his hands off of me, he opened it and ushered me into a bedroom that could have rivaled any four-star hotel I’d ever stayed in. All I could focus on was the huge bed he dragged me to.
My spit dried up, and my heart hammered in my chest as he grabbed my hands. A knife appeared in his hand as if by magic, or maybe I was too focused on trying to stay conscious to notice him taking it from his pocket.
The blade slid under the zip ties, and then they were off, silently falling to the thick carpeting.
With a light shove, I was sitting on the bed, but Kon was already halfway out the door by the time I got my hands up to fight.
The door shut as soon as he was out, and the definitive sound of a lock clicked from the other side.
Even knowing the truth, I flung myself off the bed and ran over to jiggle the handle anyway.
I was locked in. At least twenty floors up, so no use even checking the windows.
Exhausted and defeated, I slid to the floor and rested my throbbing forehead against my knees.
All my false bravado was spent, along with my options.
There was no use holding back the tears any longer, and they came in a flood.