Page 52 of The Bratva's Forced Innocent Bride

I don’t think I had ever begged, threatened, or bribed so many people in my entire life combined than I did to finally get a tentative address about the place Luca’s ex-girlfriend had told me about. There was no way to know if it was a legitimate lead, but it was all I had.

For all my leaning on the driver to get me to the airport, I still had to wait another hour to get clearance to fly. The minutes ticked by like they were going backwards and it was all I could do not to set the airfield on fire with the frustration boiling within me.

What was the last thing I said to Brooke before I left that morning? It had sent her into the bathroom, where I knew she was waiting for me to leave. I should have been more tenacious, should have knocked the door down, and made her face the truth of my feelings. The truth of hers. She wanted to hide how she felt about me, and I had let her, thinking we had plenty of time. What if there was no more time left for us?

I swung around, ready to snarl at my pilot as he hurried over to where I paced in tight lines, back and forth with fists clenched, waiting.

“Relax, don’t kill me,” he said, holding up his hands. “We’re ready to go.”

“About damn time.”

During the short flight, I checked in with Dima, who had assembled a team and was just about to arrive at the designated meeting spot. He assured me he’d have more information for me once he and his guys scoped out the area, and I continued to stalk the length of my jet until I was forced to sit down for landing procedures.

We got clearance to land in Santa Monica, and while it was close, time still seemed to be slogging through molasses. Traffic was probably no worse than usual, but I took it personally every time we slowed to a crawl on the freeway. Didn’t the other drivers understand that my wife’s life was on the line? The woman who’d stolen my heart might have been in pain at that very moment, and the knowledge clawed at my chest.

What made it worse was not knowing how big of a head start they had, since I was out most of the morning and had no clue when she’d been grabbed. Just one more thing to kick myself over. Dima could tell me I couldn’t have known all he wanted to, but I did know. I knew precisely what Luca was, but I still got complacent.

Never again.

By the time I met up with Dima and his team, I was about to lose it, completely at my wits’ end. How many dire situations had I been in, how many attempts had been made on my life in the past? None of it held a candle to the terror I felt when I thought I might never see Brooke again. She was so much more important than anything else to me.

“Calm down,” Dima said, showing me the map he’d drawn based on intel from the man he sent ahead to case the property.

Anyone else who tried to say that to me at that moment would have had to spend some major time in a dentist because I was ready to knock out some teeth. My younger brother’s stoic demeanor actually did calm me down, though. At least enough to be able to focus and create a plan.

“Are we ready to do this?” I asked, looking at Dima and then each of the five guys he’d carefully chosen for the extraction team.

“You’re sure about going in hot?” Dima asked.

We didn’t know for certain that Brooke was in the secluded mansion and we ran the risk of traumatizing someone who had no clue what was going on. I half hoped she was there since I had no other leads, and part of me prayed fervently that she wasn’t because of what Luca’s ex had sounded like when she tried to describe the horrors that went on in there.

“We’re going in with everything we have,” I said.

The fact that the place was off on a private, dead-end road and landscaped like a jungle with densely packed palm trees and ferns made it easy for us to get it surrounded without calling any attention to ourselves.

Before we split up to man our positions, I turned to everyone again, ensuring they understood what was at stake. If Brooke didn’t make it, I wasn’t sure I would.

“I don’t care if we have to break every window and bust down every door. Detain anyone you find inside; we’ll interrogate them later. Luca Ross is mine.”

They nodded, absolutely living for this shit, tense and ready to spring. I nodded back, full of gratitude that these killers were on my side through everything. Then I gave them the signal to raise hell, all the while praying to whoever would listen in heaven that Brooke was in there and we weren’t too late.

Chapter 36 - Brooke

For a moment, I couldn’t move; I just stood and stared at what I saw on the other side of the room. The handcuffs lying so casually by the television remote had given me pause, but this was enough to steal all the oxygen from my lungs.

It was like a movie set from a nightmare. There was another camera, much more professional than the small one by the DVD collection, set up on a tripod, aimed at a bedroom that would have seemed normal, maybe even somewhat pretty, like it was from a mid-priced hotel. Except for all the straps. And ropes. And things I didn’t want to contemplate what they were for.

Skating over that with my stomach curling into knots, I saw some sort of contraption that looked like it was out of a medieval history book. I tipped my head, trying to figure it out, and getting even sicker when I realized where a person’s arms and legs would go, and how they’d be at the utter mercy of the person who put them there. I leaned over and grabbed my knees to keep from puking, but couldn’t tear my eyes away from this completely abnormal side of the room. A neat row of knives hung on the wall behind the torture devise, interspersed with whips and long, thin chains. Next to that was an incongruous rack of clothes, from evening gowns to frilly lingerie and everything in between.

That did it, and I heaved onto the carpet. Nothing much came up since I hadn’t eaten, and I was left shaking and breaking out in a cold sweat.

Stop. Focus. I was alone, and untied. I had to get it together.

Straightening up, I made my way around the room, searching for a way out. There were no windows and the door was locked so tight it didn’t even rattle when I threw my weight against it. All that creepy stuff sent chills crawling up and down my skin, but I made my way over to search for a weapon.

The knives were an obvious choice and I pried one off the strong magnetic strip it was attached to. They were all small and slender, with intricate details on the handles, which somehow made me feel even sicker. Luca was really into this. Maybe if I was too, I wouldn’t have been so filled with hatred and revulsion, but I wasn’t. Not at all.

The names and dates on the videos made everything click and I curled up in a ball with one of the knives clutched in my hand. After a few minutes without getting sick again from wondering if I’d live through this, with nothing more than my name on one of those cases on the wall to show I’d ever been alive, I moved over near the door.

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