Page 17 of Hero's Heart

Goddamn it. Was sheinsane?

Jakob stomped over to Marissa and snatched her face in his hand. “Keep your American mouth shut, bitch.”

Unlike Sloane, Marissa had never been afraid to show her displeasure. When Jakob leaned forward, she snapped. Twisting her head, she bit into the heel of his hand, and he stumbled back with a cry.

Before Marissa could wipe the smug smile off her face, Nikola did it for her. Gone was any sense of civility. He was all carefully controlled fury as he backhanded Marissa across the cheek. Sloane gasped, watching the blood trickle from her sister’s mouth.

Nikola snatched Marissa up by the hair, forcing her to look into his own angry eyes. “You don’t touch us. Not me, not my brother. Do you understand?”

“I won’t touch him if he doesn’t touch me!”

He yanked at her hair, and she cried out again, her neck at an awkward angle. “You’re not in charge here.Iam in charge.”

Marissa had been raised to believe everything she said was true, so even though Sloane would’ve shut her mouth ages ago, her sister didn’t. “You need us alive to get your money.”

She didn’t sound so sure about it anymore, though.

Nikola was about to backhand her again, but Jakob stopped him. “It’s all right. Remember the plan.”

Nikola glared at Marissa. “If you make too much trouble, we’ll kill you both and start over with some other rich Americans. Think about that the next time you decide to attack my brother.”

He let go of Marissa’s hair, and her head flopped down. With a satisfied smile, Nikola walked over to Sloane. “Are you going to make trouble too?”

She shook her head—not sure if she was smarter or just more cowardly than Marissa.

“That’s mybábika.”

The words made her cringe, and she expected him to touch her as he bent toward her again. Instead, he withdrew a knife and cut the ropes tying her hands and ankles to the chair. She managed not to blanch when he brushed his thumb against the skin of her leg. “So soft.”

He retied her hands in front of her, but at least not quite as tightly.

Both men left, locking the door behind them, and Sloane slowly stood, hobbling around, trying to work blood back into her extremities while also wishing she had something to scrub off the feel of Nikola’s touch.

Marissa was still glaring at the door like she couldn’t decide whether to start screaming. Sloane knew trying to talk her out of it would only make her more determined to do it, so she just kept quiet and hoped the younger woman wouldn’t get them both killed.

Marissa was going to do everything she could to ensure these men regretted taking them, just by being herself. She was going to fight and scream and be as obnoxious as possible because she didn’t know how else to exist.

If Sloane wanted to make it through as unscathed as possible, she had to be quiet. The perfect captive. Not draw more attention or anger. Try to offset the damage Marissa would do.

If there was one thing Sloane knew how to do, it was keep her head down and survive.

Chapter 7

A few hours later, Callum leaned over the table, his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him. The hum of the jet engines was steady and low, a white noise filling the luxurious plane cabin around them.

Despite the fact that he’d been up all night and he probably wouldn’t be getting any sleep anytime soon, a faint thrill coursed through him—one he hadn’t felt in years. Not that he was going to admit that out loud.

They were only a couple hours from touchdown in Ia?i, a Romanian city just west of the Moldovan border. From there, they’d be driving to the meetup spot.

Dustin had provided intel on where and when the exchange was scheduled to occur. The cash—half a million US dollars in crisp, new $100 bills—was stacked in a large backpack, ready to save a woman’s life. They would be meeting in front of an abandoned warehouse in a small city in northern Moldova.

The good thing about professional kidnappers was that the money was the bottom line for them. It wasn’t personal. They’d seen an opportunity and moved on it. Once they were paid, it wasn’t in their best interest to harm their victims further.

That didn’t mean Callum was going to trust everything to go perfectly, thus Bear’s and Theo’s planned positioning. He looked over at the two men. “Let’s go over the details again.”

They both nodded.

“We’ll arrive at the designated exchange point here.” Callum highlighted a section of the map on his computer screen, and it updated to theirs as well. He wished he had this sort of technology with his deputies in Oak Creek, not that they had a lot of kidnapping and ransom situations at home.

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