Page 110 of Redemption

The group walked past without looking over, and she gasped for a breath, backing up, her hands finding purchase on the wall before she could stop shaking.

“Are you okay?” Rosalie asked.

“I’m going to get us out of here.” She had to. No question. No chances. Victoria came here to help them, and no way would she be hurt again.

The Russians cheered and what sounded like back-slapped from the back room. They came back, all smiles. Some puffed cigarettes. Some gulped vodka from the bottle.

What was back there? Victoria peered the opposite way from where the men went—just storage as far as she could tell. She turned to look the other direction, watching them praise the men who carried the box.

Had they shorted Mayhem?

No… That’d be a death sentence. Some gangs, maybe, yeah, that was the price of doing business. But not with Mayhem. She couldn’t imagine they’d ever let a supplier rip them off with any kind of shipment, much less a weapons one.

The majority of the Russians acted as though they were leaving to the complaint of the younger ones—two, who likely had to keep watch over the cage of girls.

Victoria took a seat, wondering if she was reading it all wrong. Why would the Russians steal from the sale? To prove dominance? Make more money? Either way, they were celebrating now. Or nothing of the sort had happened, and the sale and the backroom cheers were two separate incidents.

Rosalie chitchatted for the next five minutes as Victoria answered, trying not to read into every little thing like it was the answer that could provide their escape. Both the remaining Russians’ cell phones rang. Their semi-drunk, celebratory hellos changed to panicked questions, then rapid-fire, worried tones.

What were they saying? Even the other girls picked up on it.

“Something’s going wrong, isn’t it?” Rosalie asked.

Shit.“I think they shorted Mayhem in the sale.”

“We’re all going to die,” the bitchy lady said.

“Would you shut up?” Rosalie screamed, shaking, and her face red.

“Easy.”Oh, easy, damn it. That instantly reminded her of Ryder always telling her to calm down. “I’m going to get us out of this cage. We’re going to walk out of here.”

That time, the bitchy lady kept her bitchy comments inside, though even Victoria knew what she’d just said sounded nuts.

The chain-link fence was soldered to the bottom concrete floor and to the rebar above, but there was a window about the second- or third-floor level above. The gutter she’d fallen off was above the lone strip of grass, and everywhere else she remembered that might have a window was above a parking lot area or concrete strip. Jump or falling might sprain her leg, but that or even a break, she could handle.

Victoria tried to reach a notch in the wall to lift herself up to the barn’s open framing but couldn’t. “Rosalie, can you come here and help me up?”

“Are you insane?” she hissed.

“Probably.” Victoria nodded. “But something’s about to happen, and I have to get us out of here.”

And now everyone was going to jump out a window. Her gazed tracked to the keys to the cage door’s padlock. She’d seen the Russians use it to give their group food. But how would they walk out?

After they got outside, who knew what to do next? If Mayhem was coming back hot and the Russians were hauling backup in to defend what was theirs, this was about to be a gang war. All of this was a big guess, but she’d been in the game long enough and had grown up with a criminal as a father long enough to sense when things were stolen and about to get ugly.

She caught sight of the lighter, and her game plan formed. It would either work in a spectacular, maybe-gonna-die kind of way, or it wouldn’t, which was fine because she didn’t plan on dying. But if it didn’t work, the Russians would send her to hell. “I’m going to unlock you then make it look like it’s locked again.”

Rosalie’s face fell as her eyes rounded. “Why?”

“From in here, I’ll go out the window—”

The bitchy lady scoffed. “You’ll break your neck.”

“Thank you for your optimism,” Victoria said. “Once you hear them run out to check on things, you allgo.”

“No. No way,” the bitchy woman in the corner snapped.

“Then you stay here.” Rosalie put her hands on her hips. “If she thinks she can get us out of here, that’s better than anybody else has done.”

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