Page 66 of Heart of a Devil

I pull her to my chest and hold her tight, engulfing her whole body in my arms and wishing I never had to let her go, not even for a minute. My arms are empty without her in them, and my skin feels sad when I release her. I smooth a wild strand of hair away from her face and hold her chin, spearing her eyes with mine. “I love you. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Let me know where you end up with Taylor.”

“Don’t rush back—if you need to take your time with this asshole, take your time. He worked for Volkov, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s guilty. I don’t give a shit about him, I only care about finding Caroline and Nicky. And Seb? I love you too.”

Chapter

Thirty-Eight

LAUREN

Five hours have passed since the showdown in the woods, and after accompanying Taylor to the hospital and making sure he was stable, I am yet again trudging through a forest. It’s full night now, the place illuminated by moonlight, the branches painting eerie shadows against the dark backdrop of a star-studded sky.

We are making our way around land that Ivan Volkov owned through a shell corporation near Dover. In the end, torturing the last man standing back at the cabin wasn’t much help because he was hired muscle who knew very little. A mess of blood, broken bones, shattered teeth, and missing fingernails, he was willing to betray his own mother by the time Seb and Sasha finished with him. From what I’ve heard, torture is one of Sasha’s very favorite things, and he’s quite good at it.

Still, all the guy knew was that Volkov kept a place in Kent, near the ferry port. It was a waypoint for his illicit cargo before leaving the country or upon entering it. The guy did solve at least one mystery by telling us about the tracking device that was placed on Seb’s SUV the day before.

The new nugget of information about Dover was enough for Sasha to mine his contacts in the criminal underworld, and nowhere we are—desperately searching for a little boy that we all know is probably dead. Or worse, I remind myself. He could be in the hands of predators who will turn his young life into a hellscape of abuse.

Unable to put one foot in front of the other if I allow myself to think like that, I shut the thought down. It won’t help Nicky, and it certainly didn’t help Caroline. We already found her body, and it was a sight I will never forget in a million years. She was dumped naked on a dirty mattress, like a ragdoll with her limbs splayed and twisted at unnatural angles. Every inch of her body was striped with whip marks, and blood was crusted between her legs. Her once-pretty face was caved in, almost unrecognizable, beaten to the point where her facial bones had collapsed in on themselves.

I was almost sick right then, and it was only Seb’s steadying hand on my back that stopped me. He hadn’t wanted me to come with them, obviously, and now I understood why. He’d wanted to protect me from this.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, turning me around to face him as his men covered her with a discarded blanket. A small show of respect for a woman who had clearly fought to the last.

“Me too,” I replied, my breath shuddering against his chest. “We let her down. I’m going to feel awful about that later, but now isn’t the time. Now, we need to find Nicky.”

After turning the ramshackle house at the center of the compound upside down, we found nothing—no trace of him at all.

“He isn’t here,” Sasha announced sadly. “I fear he has been taken.He could be anywhere, with anyone…”

I know from Seb that Sasha’s own childhood was one of pain and torment, and he was visibly distressed.

“No.” I shook my head firmly. “We don’t know that. There are more buildings here. Shipping containers. A lot of land. Wedon’t give up until we have nowhere left to look. Until we’ve searched every inch of it, all right? We owe him that much. We owe Caroline that much. And if he’s not here, we keep on looking. I don’t care how long it takes or where that search takes us—we find him. We find the sick bastards who have that child, and we end them. We donotgive up.”

I only realized at the end of my speech that I was yelling. Gabriel, Alex, Jacob, and a few others whose names I don’t know were all staring at me. Tough men, all of them, and I was screaming at them like they were children.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Seb said, looking back at them and daring them to disagree. “We will tear this world apart to find him.”

Sasha laid one hand on my shoulder and smiled. “So fierce. And also so correct. We do not give up.”

That was a couple hours ago, and since then, we have torn through every part of this evil place. We found the remains of other women, some recent and some skeletal, rotting in one of the shipping containers. The sight and smell were enough to make these men gag, and we stood at the door, shouting Nicky’s name. When no answer came, Sasha walked inside the pit of death and checked for signs of a much smaller body. When he emerged again, he was whiter than a sheet, but he shook his head and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

A basement that had obviously been used for rape and torture was found next, chains hanging from the bare brick walls and blood-stained blankets scattered on the filthy floor amid used syringes. “This is where they would have been broken,” Sasha announced, his face calm but his eyes furious. “Beaten. Abused. Addicted. Treated as garbage. All in the name of profit.”

“No more, mate,” Seb said, guiding him out. “Volkov’s gone, and we’ll make sure all the women we found here get a proper burial.”

“Volkov might be gone, but there will be more to take his place. There always are, like mushrooms springing up in shit. But thank you—for the time being, his death will have to be enough. As for Nicky, I think we only have the woods left to search.”

Now, we’re here, walking a grid across the darkened land, all of us exploring our own patch in an attempt to cover a lot of ground quickly and thoroughly. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of a flashlight in the distance and hear the voice of one of the others as they call Nicky’s name.

“Nicky!” Seb yells, kicking aside a dense patch of bramble and checking behind it. “Nicky, buddy, it’s Seb—if you’re here, give us a shout.”

I echo his cries, carefully clambering over the obstacles that mother nature has put in our way, desperate to hear a reply. We’ve been out here for a while, and it’s getting harder to cling to hope.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Seb says, trailing behind me. “And if he is…”

“No. We don’t give up. Ever. Promise me.”

He pulls me to a stop and wipes away tears I didn’t know I was shedding. “I promise you, Lauren. I promise you.”

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