Page 9 of Twisted Prince

“They could have taken the girls anywhere from here,” Denka observes.

“Are all guards accounted for in the house?” I ask, crouching to assess the scuff marks on the ground.

Lev and Denka share a look.

“I’m not sure,” Lev says.

“Find out.” I press my middle finger to a small droplet of dark liquid marking the ground, and when I lift my hand, smearing the substance with my thumb, it comes away red. Blood.

Mel’s kidnapper, I hope, not Mel herself.

Rising, I turn to follow my men back inside. But once again, my phone rings in my pocket. The caller ID says it’s Pyotr.

“Da.”

“The girls will have to wait,” he says in Russian, jumping straight into what he has to say.

And though normally, I accept Pyotr’s decisions without question, my lips part to disagree.

“Mikhail just took off for his home in Upstate New York. He’s trying to stick his head in the sand because he knows I won’t let this one blow over.”

Or he’s decided to run with the girls to put them in his next auction.

Word around town is he’s started hosting a few exclusive events at his fancy estate up north. Only for his best, highest-paying clients. And now he has the girls he intended to sell for a pretty penny before we took them.

“You want to go after him?” I ask, hearing the conviction in his voice before he even says it.

“Yes. Maks informed me he only took a few good men with him.”

From a strategic standpoint, that makes sense. “If his goal is to hide, he anticipates we’ll be here looking for him. He wants to keep his numbers in the City to reinforce that assumption,” I note.

Still, I can’t stop the nagging feeling at the back of my mind.

Is it too convenient?

It makes too much sense for him to fly north. So, why wouldn’t he anticipate we would consider that possibility? That makes it a less-than-ideal spot for him to hunker down with a few good men.

Perhaps he thinks that with another of the Veles clubs destroyed, the product gone, and the girls missing, we will be too distracted to see the obvious. But something tells me it’s bigger than that.

“Get your men ready,” Pyotr commands. “I want them here at daybreak tomorrow. But I need you here now—tonight. It’s going to be a long one, but I don’t have enough time to make this plan on my own, and you comprehend Mikhail’s mind best.”

“Understood.”

“And, Gleb?” Pyotr pauses, silence stretching across the line. “You were right. There’s no room for mercy with the Zhivoder. I’ve been hoping for far too long. Tomorrow, I want to kill Mikhail and bring down his empire once and for all.”

“Yes, sir,” I agree, heading inside to find Lev and Denka.

4

MEL

My handcuffs spring free, and the man who kidnapped me wrenches me up off the van floor, practically dislocating my elbows as he manhandles me into a stand. The behemoth’s strong hands grip my wrists, despite my effort to curl into a ball, and his fingers tighten forcefully around my arms.

“Let me go!” I scream, trying in vain to jerk free of his grasp.

Blood still oozes from the cut on his temple where I struck him with my bedroom lamp. I should have learned my lesson from that first attempt to escape—fighting only seems to encourage him.

His sneer transforms into a snarl as he backhands me so hard that stars burst across my vision. My head snaps sideways as I reel across the pavement, losing my equilibrium completely. Then he twists my wrist violently, forcing my arm into an unnatural angle behind my back.

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