Page 58 of The Russian's Forced Bride
My phone slipped from my grasp, but Maxim was swift at catching it before it fell and broke into shards. I buried my head in my hands, feeling my body heat up and my heart burn.
Joaquin Saavedra. He really did it this time.
I was going to beat that fucker to death. But like Maxim had said earlier, I needed to be calm. Nothing good came out of my emotions going haywire. I wasn’t that angry child anymore who resorted to violence to feel something other than rage.
I wasn’t the boy who spent days locked in a room as a means of building control—scared and afraid.
I’d survived and lived through the darkest times of my life. This was just another test to prove that I’d grown.
“He sent a photo,” Maxim’s voice cut through. His gray eyes assessed me for a moment as though checking if I was in the right state of mind, and with a nod, he handed me the phone.
The photo featured Arlette strapped to a hospital-like bed. Her eyes were covered with a black cloth, and her skin was ridiculously pale—almost like she was dead. And then a gun was pointed at her head by someone covered in a mask.
Maxim was right. They weren’t going to kill her. They needed me there. I was their target. Since the Bratva already controlled Jaxon Whitmore’s empire, they didn’t have much need for Arlette anymore.
I inhaled sharply, switching off the phone and tucking it into the breast pocket of my suit jacket as I turned to dish out orders to Maxim, who looked ever prepared to go into battle.
“Get a car ready and gather some of our men. I don’t care what time of the day it is—round them up. Joaquin is going to regret fucking with me.”
Maxim smiled—a slow, sadistic one that now mirrored the one on my face.
I had gone easy on the bastard, preserving his life. But now the plans had changed. He didn’t know just how psychotic I could be. And I was going to do just what I’d threatened to do.
I always kept my word.
Chapter 20 – Arlette
I felt cold.
A piercing cold that caused my joints to ache uncomfortably.
There was no warmth, and I couldn’t smell Rafael’s scent around me like I usually did. Instead, I was suffocated by a pungent scent that forced its way into my nostrils, causing me to gag.
My pulse then quickened as my eyes flew open. The room was dark—too dark and unfamiliar. Its width was nothing more than a cubicle, and I suppose it was once a storeroom of some kind, as dusty, cobwebbed shelves lined the walls. A few chained cuffs hung from the ceiling just above my head, and when I tried moving my body, I realized my torso had been bound to a metallic chair I was supposedly sitting on.
Panic surged through me as my eyes immediately started to search for an exit of some kind. The walls were sludgy, lined with scratch marks and patches of dried-up blood, with the ceiling dripping murky water onto the ground and sputtering onto my bare feet. Bugs swarmed almost every inch of the room, a few crawling up my leg, the hairs on my body bristling as I struggled to contain the scream trying to gnaw its way out of my throat.
And apart from the gigantic metallic door that stood inches away from me, the only other possible exit was a clerestory window just below the ceiling, which allowed only a dull ray of light to filter into the room.
It didn’t take me long to realize I had been kidnapped. The memories of last night came flooding back to me.
I went to the movies with Brandon, and then we had dinner. After that, he drove into a grim part of town, where wewere kidnapped. Some parts of my memories from last night were blurred, so I couldn’t remember just how much transpired.
But where was Brandon?
My mind intentionally seemed to be blocking off a particular memory about last night, but I could still see those faces that hovered above me before the abduction.
The faces of those men had been sadistic, a murderous glint in their eyes as they brandished their knives and stared me down, right until I passed out. I hoped Brandon was okay. He wasn’t a part of this world, and this wasn’t how I wanted him to be introduced to it.
He was innocent.
I had to find a way to get out of here.
My body felt sore from sitting upright for too long, and my stomach churned in aggression at the cold and the rancid smell seeping into my system. Then there were the bugs that kept creeping on me, inching closer and higher to my face. It wasn’t healthy for my baby to be in this situation, and if I so much as tried to shake the bugs off me, I was certain I’d fall over.
How was I going to get out of this situation alive?
Just then, a click resounded on the door, like it was being bolted open, and then it creaked forward, revealing the one person whose presence filled me with both anger and a foreboding sense of dread.
