Page 106 of Little Liar
They have Olivia.
My fucking sister.
A pain I can’t describe tightens my chest even worse as both eyes ping open to the burning lights and I force myself to sit up.
Dad says something I can’t understand given the panic going through me. Someone is holding my shoulders, pushing me back down. A cold sensation rushes up my arm as they inject something into a line connected to me.
Against everything in me, I stop fighting, and the last voice I hear is my dad yelling about getting someone in here now.
My eyes open slowly. I feel disorientated but more in control than the last few times I’ve tried to wake up.
There’s a lump in my throat. Constantly there, strangling me every time I hear voices beside me but am unable to tell them I’m awake.
My body aches, yet I can’t move. My fingers barely jitter as I close my eyes and try to focus.
Molly is talking about school, and Dad is explaining something about mathematical calculations. I think she’s doing homework.
“The answer is fourteen,” I hear someone say in a Russian accent.
My eyes slide open. This time I find a darkened room, a lamp to the side lighting up the small table in the corner, where Molly is scribbling on paper with a calculator in front of her.
“How did you know that without doing the calculations?” she asks, and my eyes follow her gaze to the large form in the chair beside her.
The beeping of the machines starts increasing as I stare at Adryx Reznikov.
His gaze lifts and clashes with mine.
I throw myself up despite the pain lashing at my chest, something pulling on my arm and tearing the skin. Before I can collide my weak fist with the brother of the man trying to marry my girl, Dad grabs me, putting himself between us.
“Calm down. He’s on our side, remember? Calm down, Malachi.”
“It’s normal to react this way. You went through a lot,” Adryx says, crossing his arms and bouncing his knees. “And don’t worry—you’re in one of my safe houses. No one will find us.”
Olivia, I sign to my dad.
“She’s with my brother. She hasn’t been harmed, and we’re working on getting her back.”
My eyes snap back to him.I want her back now.
“Not gonna happen,” he replies, and I feel like slicing his throat with one of the needles in a tray beside the bed. “She’s in one of the most secure buildings my father has. The Reznikov manor.”
Go get her, I sign, my hands shaking the more I think about her being stuck in there.
“I no longer have access. You see, myself and Sebastian were caught intercepting their mission, and now we’re also in hiding. Mainly because my cousin is a fucking useless idiot and had your address in his GPS tracker on his phone, and my father traced it.” He shrugs. “He already had an idea that I was working against him though, so my dear cousin is alive—for now.”
Dad pats my shoulder. “He’s helping us.”
I grit my teeth. Why?
“I have my reasons,” Adryx adds, pulling a box from his pocket and slipping a pair of glasses onto his face before taking his phone out too. “We tried to get Olivia out a few days ago and failed. She’s got a tracker in her arm now.”
My eyes widen, and I drop back on the bed, my entire body aching from being out of action for weeks. My legs are already tingling, my toes hurt, and I have spasms in my arms. But nothing compares to the twist in my heart at Olivia’s position.
“We can’t just break in and take her either,” Dad tells me, running his hand through messy hair, his face coated in a beard he’s never grown in his life. It’s three weeks of no shaving, barely sleeping, and worrying.
Why?I sign before my hands drop into my lap.
“There’s a proximity trigger. If she leaves the manor, it’ll kill her.”
