Chapter 40 - Konstantin
The location I was given by Dima’s prisoner was a bust, without a soul in sight, and clearly abandoned for a while. I didn’t think it was an outright lie, just old information. Since the prisoner had gone rogue, it made sense that he wouldn’t be informed that Riku had left.
He was our only hope of finding Tati for the moment, and once I was back at Dima’s house, I was glad the man was still alive, though barely. Now he would be revived and shaken down for any other place that Riku might possibly be.
Other than that, all I could do was wait, and it was pure torment. Now I understood why Tati was so upset with me, calmly telling her there were no other options. Not knowing where she was or if she was okay was killing me.
The last thing I wanted to do was report to her father that I had returned without her, and was no closer to that rescue I promised.
But the guilt I felt for being led astray, no matter how masterful the Yakuza’s deception had been, made me go to the makeshift hospital room where Dima’s physician was still patching him up.
The grizzled old doctor, who surely had to have seen some things after a lifetime of working for the Fokin family, was subdued and listed off all of Grigor’s injuries.
Besides the obvious cuts and bruises, he had burns on his legs, six broken ribs, a broken nose and cracked jaw, various other fractures, and there was a chance he may lose the sight in his left eye.
All to try to save a woman who had ultimately betrayed him. Was that the road I was heading down?
“What do you have to look pissed off about?” Grigor rumbled, waking up as I sat in a chair beside his bed.
Plenty, and none of it I could discuss with him. He might have a stroke, or find the strength to take some more swings at me. He seemed to remember what was going on and asked where Tati was.
“I want to see her.”
“She won’t want to see you like this,” I said, getting up to leave. If he fell asleep again, I could get away without telling him she still wasn’t found, and he wouldn’t work himself up. “Get some more rest.”
His hand, swathed in bandages, with two of his fingers among the various fractured bones, reached out and grabbed my arm. “Don’t bullshit me after everything.”
I sat back down. “It was a bad location. We’re still looking.”
“There’s a tracker in her phone,” he said weakly, his chin quivering.
I had never seen my old friend shed a tear, but I’d never been around him when his only child was missing and most likely in the hands of our biggest enemy, either.
“Yeah, and it’s a shitty one,” I answered, shoving aside my own fears. “Her phone is off.”
As if to prove me a liar, my phone rang, and when I grabbed it out of my pocket, it was Tati herself trying to place a video call. “It’s her,” I said.
“It’s a trap,” Grigor said, as if I were born yesterday. “Don’t fall for anything. Look for pea green walls. The place they kept me had them.”
He was struggling to sit up, upsetting the doctor and setting off an alarm when one of the tubes hooked up to his arm came out. I hurried into the other room and down the hall to answer in another room so Grigor couldn’t interfere.
Or somehow give her coded instructions. Something still stank about this whole thing. Finding Grigor and losing Tati at basically the same time didn’t feel right. I accepted the call, and as soon as she appeared on screen, something eased in my chest.
It still felt like it was in the grip of a giant’s fist, but she was alive.
It was also clear that she was in pain and up to her eyeballs in a sea of fear.
My eyes roamed over her, sitting on a chair, no pea green wall behind her, just some generic gray window blinds.
There wasn’t a mark on her that I could see, but when she took a breath to speak, her face was taut with anguish.
Was that bastard torturing her, or was she just not used to this level of deception?
“Tati, where are you?” I asked, shoving aside my lingering suspicions. For the moment, the joy of seeing that she was still drawing breath at all overrode everything else.
“I’m with my father,” she said. I blinked, but didn’t call her out on it, only nodded.
“I was right. He’s been working against Riku all this time,” she continued, not looking nearly as pleased with herself as she should have if this was anything other than a load of bull.
She smiled tremulously. “We know where he is, Kon. All you have to do is meet us, and we can bring him down together.”
It was a terrible cover story, the worst I ever heard, even if I didn’t have Grigor in the same house with me.
Whatever the reason for the lies, she was determined to lure me out.
I silently warred with anger and fear for her well-being, finally deciding to go along with it.
Now that she was done with her speech, she looked more afraid than ever. Because I might not fall for it?
“Are you really okay?” I asked, daring her to lie to me about that.
There was the slightest shake of her head before she laughed jauntily. “Why shouldn’t I be? We could have solved this sooner if you just let me keep calling Papa when I wanted to.”
Yeah, because he definitely had his phone right next to him in that hole I just pulled him out of. I smiled along with her.
“Tell me where you are, and I’m on my way.”
With a short gasp, she rattled off an address and ended the call. I started running toward the room where Dima’s head of security was monitoring the tracker on Tati’s phone.
“Tell me you’ve got her,” I yelled, bursting into the room.
He looked up, beaming as he pointed to a red dot on a map on his screen. He was already sending me the location as it winked out. “And it’s off again. Better hope she’s not on the move.”
The address he gave me was different from the one Tati told me, not similar enough to have been a mistake in her saying the numbers. When we compared them on the map, they were miles apart from one another.
“Damn it,” I hissed.
Did I go to the one Tati told me to go to or the one where her phone was? What if she was going to meet me at the second location?
But what if it was an ambush? Both places could be crawling with Yakuza, but was that going to stop me? Hell no.
I sent a team to the location she gave me, warning them they were probably walking into a firefight. After having to run from the last fight they were in, they were amped up to crack some skulls, and started loading enough guns to take over a small country into several cars.
Dima insisted on heading out with me, and my miserable, dumbass old friend had dragged himself out of his bed for an update.
“Tell me you found her,” he said.
“Possibly,” I answered, sliding on a holster and making sure both guns were fully loaded. “We’ve got a couple of choices.”
“Well, I’ll be going with you.” He began pulling himself along the wall, a saline drip rolling behind him, and the doctor swearing up a storm as he tried to haul him back to bed.
“Like hell you will. We’ll just trip over your corpse when you expire from the ride over there. Now get your ass back to bed and let me save… your daughter.”
I was a breath away from calling her my woman. He narrowed his eyes at the pause before realizing how useless he was in his condition and letting the doctor steer him back the way he came. I softened my tone, taking pity on him, knowing exactly how worried he was about Tati.
“I’m bringing her back alive and well,” I hollered as I took off. “Count on that.”
With a team of men following close behind us, Dima and I set out for the location that showed where Tati’s phone was, not the one she told me during her call.
“You sure about this?” Dima asked.
“As sure as I can be,” I answered. If Riku had her and meant to try to ambush me, he wouldn’t want to risk losing his hostage in a firefight in case he needed her later on. Then again, he wouldn’t risk any harm coming to her if she had been working with him all along, either.
“I mean about Tatiana,” Dima said, interrupting my confused train of thought. “You sure she needs to be rescued at all?”
I suppressed a sigh. “As sure as I can be,” I repeated in a tone that kept him from asking any more stupid questions.
It didn’t matter if she needed me to rescue her or not; I was damn well going to rescue her anyway. I was getting her back, no matter if her betrayal would kill me as painfully as Riku ever could.