Page 43 of Rescued By the Convicts
Namir returned. She recognized the sound of his footsteps and his cruel laugh as he joked with the guards. The heavy thud of the tarp being tossed onto the cage sparked rage in her. Once his guards tied the tarp down, she wouldn’t be able to pull it off the cage. It would grow incredibly stuffy under the tarp, despite the sides being bars and not solid steel.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, but Namir didn’t hear her or he simply didn’t care. Both most likely.
“Sleep well, my little kuvak. We have a big day tomorrow. . . All my friends will be there . . .” She tuned out the rest of what he said, as the past three years of her life replayed in her head. She couldn’t return to that living hell.
“Melina, please say something. Tell me you’re alright,” Ivan pleaded.
His voice sounded so sincere. But he’d betrayed her. They all had. Except Reece. Was he dead? He wouldn’t have let them hurt her.
“We never meant for this to happen,” Ivan continued. “The plan was for Reece to sneak you out of Hawke’s camp before anyone had a chance to touch you. We. . . I. . . never imagined any of this would happen. You were supposed to be safe, my little bird.”
She heard him swallow, hard, and what sounded like it could be muffled crying. She’d never heard Ivan cry before. She wasn’t sure that’s what she was hearing now. Except his voice had been shaking. She felt that pull to Ivan, even now as she huddled naked and cold in the darkness under the tarp, caged like an animal, her back sticky and stinging from Namir’s knife.
“Handing you to them was supposed to divert attention away from—”
He stopped short of saying who, but she knew exactly who. Zev. The man had said all along he had a mission here, and then he’d allied himself with Hawke. Whatever Zev was up to, he must have gone to Ivan for help. A tiny smile formed on her face. Zev had trusted Ivan enough to ask for help, and Ivan had given it.
“You were never supposed to be in any danger. Or we wouldn’t have done this. Any of us.”
All of them, then. They’d all had a say. All except her.
“You should have asked me,” she said, her voice coming out as a squeak, like a mouse which is how she felt right now. Tiny and insignificant. Caged. Worthless. She’d had so little control over her life. First on Baccula, where she had escaped to her lab each day, finding solace and freedom there until she was forced to return to Namir each night. On Veenith, she thought she’d finally found some modicum of control over her life with her men, but that had been a lie. She should have known Ivan could never fully give up control. That was the leader in him. Even Jayce and Reece who weren’t as controlling had kept this plan of theirs from her.
“We needed your reaction to Hawke to be real, or he would have suspected. Zev was in real danger, Melina, but he was in too deep to turn back. We switched the plan. Instead of Zev pushing for the chance to be freed with the other criminals and work his way into the organization and whatever they have planned, we decided Jayce and I would go. Zev said if we did this, he could get you transferred to a Level 4 planet. Maybe all of us, together. A planet that has some women, where you wouldn’t be in constant danger. A chance at a life, Melina. The four of us.”
Four. Not five. Zev never planned on coming, but he was supposed to watch out for her. At least that’s what Ivan had counted on, what he had trusted. He’d trusted Zev, though, not her.
“Fuck, Melina. I never dreamed this would happen. Zev works for The Company. He has the connections, the authority. It was a gamble, but I had to take it.”
“NamirisThe Company,” she said, trying to hold back the tears. “He’s the Chief of Exports on Baccula. The entire planet answers to him!” Namir answered to very few, only the CEO of Baccula and Argus itself, the seat of Argus Company, the highest authority in the sector, the one everyone referred to asThe Company.
Ivan let loose a string of curses and started pulling against his chains in a rare show of futile resistance. Ivan was more calculated than that, but she supposed he’d been pushed too far. He’d been betrayed by The Company and hated them for it. It had taken a lot for him to trust Zev, and Zev hadn’t told him everything it seemed. Unless Zev never knew about Namir. Zev was in extreme danger. . . if he was still alive.
Breathing was becoming harder. Not only because of the lack of airflow, but because of how confining the cage was. Malina closed her eyes, trying to envision another place. Veenith popped into her mind. The bunker, being there with her men. Being happy. Except the bunker was empty now, and Zev’s and Reece’s fates remained unknown. She’d probably never know what happened to them. Though Namir would certainly torture or kill Ivan and Jayce in front of her. He destroyed everything good in her life.
“Talk to me, baby. Please. The sound of your voice. . . Tell me you’re okay,” Ivan said from across the cabin, his voice soft and desperate. Scared.
She’d never seen Ivan scared. The need to soothe him surfaced, but she couldn’t answer. She was too numb.
“Fuck!” Ivan cursed, the strength in his voice quickly returning. “From the start, I should have known something wasn’t right. You committed no crime, at least nothing worthy of Level 4 and certainly not Level 5. That asshole put you there. I should have pushed Zev to find out.”
Zev may work for The Company, but he wasn’t as high up as Namir. He never would have discovered what Namir didn’t want to be known. Ivan was blaming himself for something he couldn’t control, couldn’t foresee. She didn’t blame him for Namir’s treachery. It just hurt that Ivan and the others hadn’t trusted her with their plan.
“We were supposed to be a team, Ivan. To trust one another.”
“We are a team. No, we’remorethan a team.”
More? “We’re nothing,” she said, her throat feeling so dry. With her leg, she tapped the back of the cage, searching for the water bowl the guards usually left for her. Gone. Namir had left it out, intentionally. He wanted her to suffer. The cuts on her back and dehydration were only the beginning.
“We’re a family,” Ivan corrected with a resolve to him, like if he said it with enough gusto it would make it happen.
“You don’t know what it means to be a family,” she bit back.
Silence answered her. Perhaps she’d struck a chord with him. Not that it mattered. Namir would kill them soon, and she had no way to stop him.
“You’re right,” Ivan finally answered. “I’ve never had a family before. Only Jayce. And my squad. I know how to make decisions, to give orders, and even get my team to work together. But I don’t know how a family behaves.”
He paused, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. The idea of being a family with him and the others. . . She had wanted that too.
