Page 46 of Seduced By the Russian

"I know where they could be," Kuznetsov said after making a million other calls with his contacts and allies amongst other cartels. He gave Nikolai a description and asked whether he needed reinforcement. The leadership families wouldn't hesitate to give that to Nikolai because even if some of them hated his guts, he was still a part of them.

That, and the fact that they would give anything to partake in bloodshed.

Telling them that he could handle it with his men, Nikolai ended the call and drove straight to the hideout located on the outskirts of Long Island, bringing his car to a fast halt at the driveway, not caring if anyone heard him. He didn't even sample the building first to check if anyone had a fucking sniper pointed at his head, and Dmitri cursed loudly beside him as he aimed and fired at the shadow of a figure lying on the roof.

"Go ahead," he steered Nikolai on, covering his back. "The men and I will handle things out here.'

Nikolai knew he could trust them with his life. They had always been there for him.

Inside, the house was pitch dark, yet Nikolai trudged on, trusting his instincts which were ninety-nine percent always right. He heard footsteps from his opposite end, and he ducked into a corner, waiting for it to pass. They seemed to be headed to the entrance of the hideout, where his men must have been causing a scene already.

When he could hear nothing more, Nikolai came out of hiding, his eyes already accustomed to the darkness. He went in the direction where he had heard the footsteps come from, and it led him into a dimly lit hallway that smelled of urine and death.

Suddenly, Nikolai's feet picked up the pace when he heard a faint whimper. He found Lisa huddled on the floor in the corner of an open room with her arms wrapped around her legs. She lifted up her eyes to him in fright, and a shadow of relief crossed her expression when she realized it was him.

"Nikolai!" she gasped as he ran into the room and pulled her into his arms. Lisa struggled with the knowledge of what Nikolai planned on doing with her, and the fact that he had come here to rescue her. This was what she meant each time she said he confused her, only that she never expected it to get this serious.

"Sh…" Lisa hadn't even realized that she was crying until Nikolai patted her back gently and squeezed her in his arms. "I'm here now. I'll always be here for you."

Lisa wanted to yell at him to quit making promises he couldn't fulfill, but this wasn't exactly the appropriate moment for it. He pushed her softly away from his arms and touched her body frantically, searching for any wound. Nikolai swore in his mind that if he found even just a scratch on her, he would burn the place to the ground, and that was in addition to what he already had planned.

Coming up with nothing, he got up and carried Lisa in his arms, walking out of the dark room. She flinched when his hands mistakenly grazed her feet, and Nikolai remembered the blood from her shoes they found in the woods.

"Fucking bastards!" he swore violently, tremor coursing through his bones. Although Lisa knew they probably deserved everything that would come to them, she was still scared of what Nikolai would do.

When they got back outside, everyone was in a frenzy as both groups battled. Nikolai edged to his car in the middle of the chaos and pulled the door open, dropping her carefully on the seat like he was scared she was going to break into pieces. Certain that it was safe to leave her to herself, Nikolai returned to his men.

Dmitri had already gotten the leader of the small mission to kidnap Lisa, and he was now on his knees in front of Nikolai as the rest of his men tried to gather the others. Nikolai was furious, because he had hosted this man in his mansion before, and he had sat across the table from him, looking at him like he wouldn't dare cross his path.

He had some fucking guts.

"Who the fuck sent you to get her?" Nikolai said with an eerie calm, grabbing a gun off Dmitri.

“No… No one…” he stammered like the fucker he was.

"I know you’re stupid enough to think that you would do something like this and get away with it, but do you really want to cover up for the idiot that sent you? Is it worth your life?"

"Russian Bear… I swear on my late father's grave…"

"I don't care about him."

"I swear on my life, no one sent us."

On a regular day, Nikolai wouldn't bother with these questions. But not today. He needed to know why this happened.

"The Petrova Bratva struck a deal with us. You were supposed to be taken out of the way so we could control the areas you are in charge of for the distro, but they walked out of the deal."

"And you thought the best way to get back at them was to take their daughter. How dumb!"

"We…" he winced in pain from where Dmitri had broken one of his legs. "We thought you didn't give a fuck about her. If anyone had to come here to fight for her, I thought it would be the Petrova."

Nikolai wanted to think they were right, but he had gone past that now. His standing there was enough evidence. "Whether Yelizaveta is worth anything to me or not, you still should never have thought about picking anything under my roof."

"Russian Bear…"

"Shut up!" Nikolai commanded, stopping till he was on the same level as him. "This is the last mission you are ever going to go on, and I'll make sure your Boss gets the message. Before dawn, your body and those of your men would be properly shipped to the rest of your cartel. It should be enough warning to them to back the fuck off. And if it isn't enough, they can dare me again. My family loves violence, and I would not hold them back."

Lisa was watching the scene from the hood of the car as she stepped outside. Oddly, everything looked so familiar, and like a switch suddenly flipped in a dark room, everything came flooding back. She remembered her kidnap, which happened the exact way her dream had gone. She had fallen before a black cloth was put over her head. Lisa didn't know what had happened after that, or how she had gotten into the system, but she remembered her real name.

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