Page 13 of The Enemy's Defector
For you, Father.
All in memory of what you stood for.
Tears slipped from my eyes, hot and bitter, as all this bad news was absorbed. It was one thing to suspect that Anton was ruining the family, but hearing confirmation of it and living through the experiences of witnessing the crusade against the Ivanov Family was something else.
Dan and Igor finished their drinks and left without checking the house. If they were on the hunt for whoever killed Dmitri, they were clearly slacking off, but that didn’t surprise me. Until my uncle was home, they’d procrastinate for as long as they could. Because that was the kind of organization Anton ran.Under my father’s rule, the soldiers and men were hardworking and loyal for the sake of wanting to support the family. With my uncle’s takeover, the incentive to get his approval was nothing but a chase for sucking up and not caring about thefamily.
As soon as they were gone, I sat up more and pried the lid to my laptop open more.
It was time to get down to business.
There was not a single chance to delay here.
Not only was I endangering myself to be near the mansion so close to my uncle’s return, but I alsohadto find Nik. I had to do all I could to find him and prevent him from being one “piece” to destroy in Anton’s greedy game of ruining his enemies all so he could rise higher.
I’ll never let you get away with it.
I wouldn’t take a break in standing in my uncle’s way. That was how deep and dark my hatred burned and festered for him.
Yet, the more I hacked into security cameras and tried to find an indication of Nik being held somewhere my uncle knew about, I couldn’t trick myself into thinking that my loathing for Anton was the only reason I was on this hunt.
I’m coming for you, Nik.
Iwillfind you.
I’d never had to go looking for him. As childhood acquaintances, we’d been in each other’s lives from the beginning. Now that we’d forged a delicate friendship that exploded with passion, I had to ride the momentum of leaving my name, my family, my memories and hope that I could have a place with him after I freed him.
Be patient, Nik.
I’m coming for you.
Whether you want me to or not.
6
NIKOLAI
They didn’t stop moving me around. Every other night or so, they’d relocate me. The only constant was the expectation to be beaten. Never to be questioned. Just toted around. Hit and kicked at. Then rinse and repeat.
How much fucking longer will this last?
What’s the goddamn point?
Accumulating injuries would become a problem for me. Sooner or later, my body would struggle to recover and stay strong enough to last until the next beating. And the next. And the one after that. While they never pushed me so hard to the extreme that I feared for my life, I felt stuck in a rut of surviving to see another day, staying with it and being cognizant to listen to anything else these captors would reveal.
Now that I had been taken out of the overly heated room and never returned to it, I hoped for another chance encounter with the unmasked man who’d given me a clear sign that he knew what happened the night my father was poisoned. Or both nights.
It was a week later, though, before I saw that man again.
I couldn’t begin to guess if he was just one of those cocky, smug assholes who thought he was invincible or if he was that much of a rebel not to follow his supervisor’s orders. But he showed his face again. I recognized it. I could latch on to this degree of familiarity and then wait to learn more.
It was a growing worry that I was being relocated and transported too much, but just spotting this one guy again, I paid attention and wanted to believe I was getting closer to some answers.
“Well, well, well,” he taunted once I was dropped onto the floor of another grimy holding cell. This one wasn’t a furnace. It was damp and chilly, suggesting that I was in another basement level.
“Lookie here. It’s the tough guy again, huh?” His fist found my face, smacking it backward from the impact of his hard jab.
Once more, he did his superior-man routine. Punching and kicking me, he tried to show how big and strong he was to be able to rough me up while I was tied to another chair. As if it was such a challenge to attack a constrained person.
