Page 29 of Kingston's Salvation

CHAPTERTEN

Darius was in the middle of his “conversation” with Mia’s landlord when his cell phone began to vibrate in his jeans pocket to alert him of an incoming call.

A call he ignored in favor of continuing to remonstrate with the bound and gagged middle-aged man as he told him how bad an idea it was to think it was okay to take advantage of the five young students who paid rent on one of the twenty shitty houses the man owned and rented out. Darius had already been interrupted in this exercise once, when Casper called him with updates.

He might, during the course of this brief conversation with Mia’s landlord, have mentioned the name Nikolai Volkov. He’d only mentioned it, but the older man had paled when he heard it.

Darius had initially tried reasoning with the man, but had received only a string of verbal abuse in reply. Tape over his mouth had stopped that, but then it became necessary, if Darius wanted the tape to remain in place, to tie the man’s hands behind him too.

He frowned his irritation when his cell vibrated again mere seconds after he’d ignored it the first time, seeming to add to its urgency.

He retrieved the slim device and looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t a name he recognized. “I have to take this,” he informed the gagged man before answering the call. “Yes?”

“Ron, here.” The other man answered him just as economically. “The men on duty at your building this evening have just informed me that Miss Smith has left the building.”

What the hell…!

“Was she alone?” Darius rasped.

“She apparently had the dog with her, and a backpack thrown over one shoulder. They said it looked heavy.”

Fuck! “Did she say anything to your men before she left?”

There was a two-second pause before the other man obviously reluctantly informed him. “I’m told she said goodbye.”

Good-fucking-bye?

Well, that was something she hadn’t bothered to say to Darius before she left.

Or thank you.

Or any-fucking-thing, in fact.

“I’ll deal with the situation,” he stated grimly. “And thanks,” he added gruffly, ending the call before once again turning his attention to the bound and gagged man. “You must have a guardian angel looking out for you, because I have to end this conversation for now and be somewhere else. But if I check in twenty-four hours and the house Mia Smith shares with four other vulnerable young ladies still has a single mouse or rat in it, or there isn’t a team of workmen decorating, refurnishing, and installing a security system, then I’m going to come back here and make this conversation physical rather than verbal. Nod if you understand. Good,” he rasped when the man’s head moved frantically up and down.

“Unie ne?”

“What?”

“Unie ne!”

Darius’s brows cleared. “Oh,untie you. Are you going to get straight onto a vermin extermination company, a painter and decorator, and a security company if I do?”

“Nes.”

“Okay.” He removed the gag and cut off the zip-tie binding the man’s wrists as he sat on a kitchen chair in the luxury apartment the man called home while expecting his tenants to live in squalor. “I’m only issuing a verbal warning this time. Next time, I won’t be so lenient,” he warned darkly.

“I’ll start making those calls right away,” the freed man assured him fervently as he rubbed the red marks on his wrists.

“Make sure you do,” Darius told him distractedly, his thoughts having already turned to Mia and what the hell she thought she was doing by leaving the safety of his apartment.

He’d left her alone for the evening because he’d needed to distance himself from her for a few hours. Paying her neglectful landlord a visit had seemed like a good way to deal with both his own need and at the same time address the unacceptability of Mia’s inadequate living conditions.

One phone call informing him that Mia was no longer in the safety of his apartment, and his earlier frustration had returned with reinforcements. In fact, he was bloody furious with her for having put herself in danger.

If anyone had dared to harm her, he was going to tear London apart looking for them.

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