Page 59 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

She nods, her hair bouncing around her face, and I desperately hope I’m not going to regret bringing her along for this. Then again, it’s not exactly like she gave me a choice in the matter.

I get out of the car and walk toward the shack, preparing myself to see Fiona inside, alive or not. Anton is right behind me, his gun already in hand. Before we go in, I glance at the SUV. Anya is in the driver’s seat. Viktor has his gun out, and he’s glancing around them, clearly keeping a lookout. It’s unlikely anyone will be able to sneak up on us here. It’s just desert for miles.

Taking a deep breath, I reach forward and push the door open, stepping back quickly in case it’s rigged to an explosive.

When nothing happens, Anton and I press forward.

The inside of the shack is dark, and I reach until I find a light switch. I pull it, and a single bulb illuminates the space. It’s empty—just walls, a ceiling, and a floor.

A floor with a hatch in it.

Anton and I climb down, moving through the tunnels, clearing each space. There’s nobody here. Just dripping water, creeping mold, and the particular claustrophobia of being in a concrete, underground space.

That is until we get to the room at the end of the hallway.

“Oh, fuck,” Anton says, looking around me. In the center of the room, in a sizable puddle of blood, is a small, blinking tracker chip and what appears to be a fresh piece of human flesh. I turn around, putting a hand to my mouth. Normally, gore wouldn’t bother me. But that’s obviously come from Fiona, and I can’t bear to think of how much pain she must be in right now.

“Dude,” Anton says, stepping further into the room, and I force myself to turn around again. There’s a tablet on the ground next to the tracker. I pick it up as soon as I see the image there.

It’s Fiona, tied to a chair, her head slumped forward, her hair stringy. I can see a bloodied bandage around her arm.

“Can you track this?” I ask, my voice rough with a mixture of relief and hate. It’s a kind of relief I’ve never felt before, to know that she’s awake. But it’s mixing with my hate of Allard, which is becoming more potent with every passing second.

“Yes,” Anton says after collecting the tracker. “I’ll need my stuff. It’s in the SUV.”

He cleans it on his shirt as we climb back up the ladder and return to the SUV. My entire body is on high alert as we leave the shack, and I’m glad to see Viktor and Anya still in one piece.

Anya floors it as soon as we get in, sending us back against the seats. Anton lets out a not-very-manly cry, grabbing the headrest in front of him to try and stabilize himself.

“Slow down!” Viktor says, and she lets up, but not before we all have a collective heart attack. I look behind us, seeing the huge cloud of dust that little dash through the desert caused.

“What the fuck was that?” Anton asks, in a half laugh, half exclamation, righting himself and pulling his laptop from his backpack.

“I thought that’s what you wanted me to do,” she says, looking at us through the rearview mirror. I can’t help it—I let out a peel of laughter.

“Did you see anyone coming after us?” Anton says, opening his laptop and giving Anya an incredulous look.

“No, but Boris always says to be better safe than sorry.”

“I really wish I could hear what you guys are saying,” Viktor mutters. “But I think it’s something to do with Anya’s hot-roding.”

“In this case, I’m not sure what constitutes safe and what constitutes sorry,” I mutter, then, glancing at the navigation screen as it located us and placed a little arrow on the map to show our location, “just keep heading West until Anton can send coordinates to the navigation.”

“What did you find?” Viktor shouts.

“They…removed the tracker,” I say, watching Anya wince. I raise my voice so Viktor can hear, too. “But there’s a live stream showing Fiona tied up somewhere. I think it’s a callback to my live stream of the wedding.”

“Yeah, because that turned out so well,” Anya says, rolling her eyes.

“Hopefully, Anton is going to be able to track it,” I say, leaning back and glancing at Anton’s screen, though I don’t understand it at all. “Right, brother?”

“Working on it.”

“Could you tell if—if anything else had happened to her?”

I swallow. I only had a brief glance at the screen before Anton took the tablet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Allard had knocked Fiona around a bit. That seems to be his strategy with women—no matter who they are or how much he claims to care about them.

The only thing that comforts me is knowing that Fiona is likely plotting her revenge right now, so I won’t have to much planning myself, just assist her in carrying it out. My hands tighten into fists when I think about James hitting her.

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