Page 13 of Midnight Sanctuary

Breathe,I tell myself.Don’t let him win.

I shove the gun harder against his forehead, causing him to fall back. “Tell me where my sister is.”

The bastard just smiles at me some more. There’s not a trace of fear on his face. “You have a sister?”

He knows that I can’t kill him now. Not until he gives me what I want. It’s giving him power, confidence. I pull the gun off his forehead and point it at his leg. When I pull the trigger and blasts his knee to bits, he howls.

I get to my feet and wipe the blood off my hands. “You think I’m playing, motherfucker?” I growl. “I will take a piece of you, one inch at a time, until you give me what I want. Each will hurt more than the last. Now,wherethe fuck is my baby sister?”

Boris snarls at me for a second. “Your sister… oh! you mean that little slut I sold to the auction rings?Thatsister? She’s long gone by now.”

My body goes cold.Not the rings. Anything but the fucking rings.

“You’re lying.”

He grins again. “Am I?”

Furious, I drop my gun and start punching. I keep punching until he’s even bloodier than before. I don’t stop until someone physically pulls me off him. I’m about to whirl around and punch the asshole who stopped me before I realize it’s Nikolai.

“Brother,” he says gently, “we don’t want the bastard dead just yet.”

“I’m going to kill him one day. Slowly.”

“And I’ll be happy to help. But for right now, we need him alive.”

My fists are aching for more, but there’s no denying that Nikolai is right. I nod and he orders the men to load an unconscious Boris into the back of one of our armored jeeps.

“Make sure to secure him down in the cellar. Restrain him with everything we have. I don’t want him to be able to even blink.”

They salute and jump to carry out my orders. Meanwhile, I drag myself up the stairs and out of that nightmare house. Slumping into the seat of the lead car, I sigh and close my eyes. Nikolai joins me behind the wheel.

“Alyssa?” I ask gruffly without opening my eyes.

“She should be almost at the estate by now. I’ve ordered Stepan to put her in one of the bedrooms and lock her in.”

“No.”

Nikolai’s eyes snap to me. “No?”

“She’s proved time and time again that she can’t be trusted. I want her back in the basement and this time, I want the door lockedandbolted. No one gets in or out without my permission. I don’t want Lev having access to her, either.”

Nikolai stays uncharacteristically silent.

“What?” I bark.

“Nothing. If those are your orders, I’ll see them through.”

“I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

He shrugs. “Lev has been asking for her since we brought him back home.”

“Exactly. He’s far too attached already. She’s not going to be around for very much longer and he needs to adjust to life without her.”

Nikolai falls back into silence. I decide to not let that irritate me. By the time we get to the house, Alyssa has been locked down in the basement and Boris has been confined to the shed cell with Alan.

But my head is a mess.

Polina’s still out there. A fresh new pawn circulating in the skin trade. And extracting her has just gotten ten times more complicated.

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