Page 154 of Corrupted Heart

My brow furrows as I nod. “Yes?”

“You know Grisha Lenkov…?”

“We’ve met,” I growl.

She trembles. “Okay, so, he came over to my apartment last night. We’re broken up, because he’s a complete asshole. But he was drunk and making a scene, so I let him in so he wouldn’t wake up the whole building.”

She chews on her lip nervously.

“He was being a drunk douche, and trying to get me to sleep with him. Eventually, he got a call and stepped into my bathroom to take it. Except, he was drunk, and loud, so I heard…”

Her face pales as she looks up at me.

“He was bragging to someone about how he and ‘the witch’ had taken the ‘Italian princess’, and how they had her now.”

Alarm bells start to ring inside my head.

“I…” she shudders. “I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time. But when I didn’t see Bianca today…”

Oh fuck.

She sucks on her lip, hugging herself and looking genuinely scared. “Kratos… I think Grisha might have Bianca. Like, maybe he took?—”

She’s not even done speaking before I’m shoving past her and bolting out the door. I slam open the theater door and race to my car. Just as I get to it, my phone rings with an unknown number.

My blood chills, my jaw setting as I answer it.

“Hello, Kratos.”

The alarm bells in my head turn into an air raid siren when I hear Amaya’s smug voice.

“I have something of yours,” she purrs.

Red swims through my vision.

“I’m going to kill you,” I hiss.

Amaya laughs coldly. “How about instead we make a trade.”

My blood roars in my ears.

“You bring me Drazen Krylov, I give you your little plaything.”

This woman’s insane. “You want me to kidnap a Bratva kingpin?”

“Kidnap or invite, your choice,” she spits. “But if you want little Bianca back in one piece, you’ll bring Drazen, alive, to the West Side development building. Penthouse floor. Tonight.”

My teeth grind. “If you’ve touched a fucking hair on?—”

“Come alone, Kratos. Just you and Drazen.”

The line goes dead.

They say fortune favors the brave. Bullshit. What fortune truly favors is a man with nothing to lose, and the woman he loves being held in danger of her life.

Breaking into Drazen’s building would be suicide. The doorman and concierge are both his men. More of his soldiers patrol every floor beneath his penthouse. And there’s no way in hell I’m scaling all the way up to break in through a window Mission Impossible style.

There is, however, a helipad on the roof. And while trying to land your own chopper on it should also be suicide, given that he has yet more men patrolling the roof, that ends up being how I get in.

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