Page 41 of The Bratva King's Auctioned Bride

“She’s fucking crazy,” the big one muttered in Russian. Yes, I could understand that much.

He dragged me away from the wall and pinned me flat on the floor, his hand once again around my neck. This time, it wasn’t a warning. He squeezed until I was on the verge of passing out, with lights dancing on the edges of my vision, which was coming to a pinpoint. At the last second, he relented, and as I lay there gasping for breath, they hauled me out of the place and outside. Now, it was dark, but with a faint rim of bluelight around the edges of the trees, telling me it wasn’t that late. Maybe I hadn’t been stuck in that room for that long, after all.

I tried to take note of where I was, but it was just a nondescript concrete building in the middle of nowhere. A hideout or a safe place to torture people, nothing that would be on any maps. Now I went limp, my last ditch effort to make myself difficult to carry, but if they noticed at all, the two huge brutes didn’t show it.

One of them clicked a keyfob, and the trunk of the nearby car popped open.

“I’ll be good,” I swore, repeating it in Russian. “I promise.”

The bigger one snorted, the nice welt on his forehead I’d given him, but not much comfort to me at the moment. With an evil grin, he dumped me in the trunk of a car. Again. And to make matters worse, he pulled the bag back over my head. Wow, I really hated him.

Okay, I was an expert at this mode of travel by now, so there was no reason to panic. Except, I was pretty close to panicking, and hard. I had to stay calm to prepare myself for whatever came next, determined not to go out without a fight. It would have been preferable not to go out at all, but I didn’t have much hope left at that point. For all I knew, Arkadi might already be dead. If not, why hadn’t he found me yet?

Why did I have so much faith in him at all? Maybe he was glad to be rid of me. That thought hurt, almost blotting out the fact that I was thumping along a rutted road to my possible death. Tears stung my eyes, but I wouldn’t cry. Couldn’t cry, not with the bag over my head, or I might suffocate before I arrived at the next location. Although that kind of death might have been better than whatever waited for me.

The car rolled to a stop and stayed stopped, shaking me out of my despondent thoughts. The sounds of feet crunching over gravel in my direction made me tense, waiting for the trunk to swing open and rough hands to grab me again. Only one of them did, slinging me over his shoulder so that the air gusted out of my chest.

There was a brief moment of cold wind whipping my bare skin. Having arrived from Milan wearing appropriate summer clothes, I also had coats and sweaters waiting for me in my suitcases. Who the hell knew where they were now, and my shivers weren’t caused by the cold anyway.

Once we were inside, he dumped me on the ground, keeping a firm hand on my arm so I didn’t go down in a heap. As soon as my feet hit a hard tile floor, I felt someone tugging at the ropes around my ankles, freeing my legs with a few slashes of a knife.

“Walk,” the man who held my arm in a vice grip commanded.

I paused, only because I didn’t have a clue which direction to go, still blinded under the cloth sack. That earned me a smack across the back of the head as he dragged me forward. About thirty steps later, I heard him fiddling with a door lock and then a door swinging open on creaky hinges. My heart started hammering in my chest. This was the final destination, and most likely my own end.

What lay within the time I still had on this earth was unknown, and I didn’t want to know.

He shoved me through the doorway, bumping my shoulder, though I would have taken twenty punches before letting him know it hurt.

“Get changed,” he said in a dead voice. “Or don’t. It makes no difference.”

He hurriedly unlocked my cuffs, freeing my wrists and letting blood flow to my numb fingers. Whipping the bag off my head, he slid out of the room like a snake, shutting the door behind him with a heartrending finality. Locked up again, to wait. But for what?

It was futile to pound on it or jiggle the handle. Turning around, I soon got the answer to my fate. And immediately started screaming. If I thought I was terrified before, I was mistaken. This was true terror.

There was a rack of clothes waiting for me against the dingy gray wall. Loud, thumping music started pulsing from the other side of it, and the sounds of eager shouting rose up over to join it.

Another auction.

Chapter 31 - Arkadi

As I continued to wait for my team to track the first man from the list who had arrived in Moscow, I managed to calm myself down. I’d be no use to Mila in a state of rage and panic, and after I was certain everything was being done to find her, I could once again feel more like myself. I wasn’t used to not being in control.

Even when I decided to retreat from the Fokins, that wasn’t done in haste or out of fear. It was simply time to step back for a while. The battle may have been lost, but the war was far from over in my eyes. I’d lost men and property, but none of it held a candle to possibly losing Mila for good.

When I walked into the command center that was set up in one of the offices of my home, the man who was in charge of going through the city camera footage flinched and went pale. I had been yelling at them to hurry up and find the man who’d arrived more than an hour ago, ever since I’d been told he landed.

I held up my hand for him to go back to work. I was done yelling for the moment. The color didn’t return to his face, and it looked like he might need to throw up as he approached me.

“Someone else from the list you gave us has arrived,” he said, leading me back to his computer.

On the screen was a still image of a man I had never met but knew well enough by reputation. He owned a good chunk of the oil drills in the Middle East, and just as many of the local politicians in that region. He had no royal blood but considered himself a prince and lived a lavish, debauched lifestyle.

The tight rein I had on my panic was slipping out of my grasp again. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Put a tail on him,” I said, my eyes glued to the screen as my fists clenched.

“We already had a team at the airport.” He tapped some keys, and the screen cycled through several images of the city. “It looks like this is his destination, though we can’t confirm yet.”

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