I held open the door and watched as Olivia gingerly got out. She was moving like she was in pain. She stood beside the vehicle, her bag clutched to her chest and her head ducked down.
“Eyes forward,” I said in Russian to anyone who dared look at her. Respectfully, my men looked away, pretending not to see the state of her face.
I led her upstairs, using that time to get my emotions under control. But when I opened the door, and she moved inside, I had to swallow down all the anger and rage that came back up when I looked at her.
Her eye was starting to swell, and her cheek was bright pink from where that asshole’s fist had connected. Her lip was puffy and cracked, and dried blood was smeared beneath her nose.
I wanted to kill the fucker who hit her. I took a deep calming breath. “We should get some ice on that eye.”
She blinked at me but didn’t speak.
I growled at her. “Olivia. Tell me what you need.”
Her lips trembled. “I’m scared of the police.”
“You don’t have to go back to them.”
Those big brown eyes were two deep pools of sadness, threatening to drown me in emotion. I watched as she fought to gain control of herself. It was touch and go, but she didn’t start to cry even though I knew she wanted to.
“Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“No, thank you.”
I took a couple of icy gel packs out of the freezer and put them on the counter. “Use these on your eye. It’ll help with the pain.”
She eyeballed the packs but made no move towards them.
I looked around. “I’m going to go downstairs for a few hours. Find some food, have a drink. Take a bath. Do whatever you need to do. No one will disturb you or come in here, okay?”
She nodded. I resisted the urge to gather her in my arms and hold her. Not understanding why I felt that way, I looked away from her.
“You’re safe here, okay? Just get comfortable.”
Without saying a word, she turned and moved to the bathroom.
I strode across the bay, rage in my veins. Viktor was walking towards me.
“Where are they?” I snarled.
“In the third bay.” He fell in step beside me. “What do you want me to do?”
“Make sure I don’t kill them.”
The men were sitting on metal chairs, arms cuffed behind their backs. Both of them were still passed out, heads hanging over their chests. I walked over and grabbed a power hose. I turned it on full blast, soaking them with ice water until they were awake and gasping like fish.
I dropped the hose and walked over to them. “Tell me about the girl.”
One of the cops spit on the floor. “Do you have any fucking idea who we are? We’re cops!”
My fist connected with his face. I watched with satisfaction as blood spurted out his nose. “Wrong answer. Why were you two assigned to her?”
The other guy blinked at me. “What do you care?”
I hit him twice as hard. He groaned and spit out blood. “You’re going to pay for that, motherfucker. You’re a dead man.”
“Why were you two put in charge of her?”
The other cop looked up at me. “No one wants to protect her. She’s just some dumb slut that no one cares about.”
Crunch. My fist connected with his nose.
He groaned hard.
“Try that again.”
He lifted his face and looked at me, true fear in his expression for the first time. “People on the force are scared. They know she’s a target, and the last four cops got either shot or killed. No one wanted to work with her.”
That made me pause. “Cops can’t refuse to work with someone just because they are scared.”
He spit blood on the floor. “Not officially, but suddenly all the supervising officers were busy and didn’t have any men to spare for the job.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why you two?”
He smiled, his blood-coated teeth looking gruesome. “I owed Detective Klaassen a favor, and we got stuck covering the ungrateful bitch.”
That did not sound like they were involved with Bunko. I stepped back. “Introductions are over. Now which one of you assholes tried to rape her?”
One of the cops lifted his head and motioned to his friend. “He did.”
Viktor and I stood back while they squabbled.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You’re the one who messed up her face.”
“You were the one to suggest we use her.”
“It’s not like you were complaining.”
Resisting the urge to pull out my gun and put a bullet between their eyes, I motioned for Viktor to take over. I knew if I worked them over, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from killing them. As much as these two assholes deserved to die, two dead cops would only make our lives harder.
I stood with my arms crossed and watched without emotion as Viktor worked them over first with his fists and then with a metal pipe.
When he was done, they were barely conscious.
I walked up to the man who had been on top of Olivia when I entered the motel room. I grabbed him by his hair, slick with blood, and yanked his head back.
“Who are you?” he gurgled.
“I’m the guy who’s going to fuck you up if you talk to anyone about tonight.”
“I’m already fucked up, man. I need a doctor. Please help me.”
I looked over his face with indifference. “Tonight will feel like a spa treatment if you mention me.”
“I don’t even know who you are!”
I lifted his driver’s license and badge. “But I know who you are.”
His eyes widened.
I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “Where did the girl go?”
“What are you talking about? She’s with you.”
I yanked his head back harder. “Try again.”
His eyes were white with fear. “We got jumped tonight. From behind. We didn’t see anything. When we woke up, she was gone. We don’t know who she went with or where she went.”
I dropped his head and stepped back.
I turned to Viktor. “What do you think?”
He shrugged, indifferent. “I think they can take a bit more.”
The one cop started to cry. “I can’t take anymore. Please. I’m begging you.”
Ignoring them, I looked at Viktor. “When you get bored, drop them off somewhere and call 911.”
He cracked his knuckles. “I’m not bored.”
“Try not to kill them.”
Viktor smiled coldly. “I got this handled.”
I washed the blood off my hands and thought about my next steps. When Olivia had called me, Viktor and I had been driving back to the warehouse. The sound of fear in her voice had pissed me off. I used a contact to figure out where her call had come from. We had pulled up to the parking lot of the motel and stood, looking around, not sure where she was.
The bloodcurdling scream from one of the upstairs rooms had made my blood run cold. When I kicked in the door of the room, and I saw that animal on top of Olivia, it had taken all my energy not to kill the man then and there.
The state of that cheap motel room, with its empty beer cans and overflowing ashtray, had enraged me. I thought, when I put her back in the hands of the police, they would have done their best to take care of her. Instead, she had ended up at the mercy of two corrupt cops who didn’t deserve to walk another day on this earth.
I walked back upstairs and knocked on my own door before taking my time to let myself in.
I stopped when I found her sitting on my couch, wearing a pair of yoga pants and a big sweater. She held an ice gel pack to her eye. Her other eye was wary, watching me.
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
I walked towards her and set a bottle of pills on the coffee table, and then I walked to the kitchen to pour her a glass of water. I set that down on the table beside the pill bottle and lowered myself into the chair across from her.
She was staring at the bottle. “What’s that?”
“They are called T3s. Acetaminophen and codeine. They will help with the pain.”
Her tongue touched her bottom lip gingerly, tracing over where the skin was split. “I had those when I hurt my leg.”
I wanted a drink, but after what she had witnessed tonight, she didn’t need to worry about another man drinking alcohol in her presence. “You don’t have to take them, but they are there if you want them.”
She set the gel pack down, giving me a clear view of her puffy eye. It wasn’t swollen shut, but the skin beneath her eye was starting to turn a bluish purple. She struggled with the pill bottle but couldn’t get it open.
I leaned forward and held out my hand.
She gave me the bottle and avoided my eye contact as I opened it and dropped two in the palm of her hand. “Start with two. If you need more, we can give you another in a few hours.”
She swallowed them with the water. I studied her. She looked incredibly fragile. Her wounds would heal, but tonight had created a deeper wound, one that pills and gel packs couldn’t touch. “Did you eat?”
Her voice was husky. “I wasn’t hungry.”
She looked exhausted. She should have eaten.
“What happened to them?” She interrupted my thoughts.
I didn’t want to scare her with what had happened downstairs, but I also thought she needed to know that I had taken care of the men who had hurt her.
“Viktor and I dealt with them.”
She stared at me, unblinking. “Are they dead?”
I thought about Viktor and his metal pipe. “They are about as close to being dead without actually dying.”
She took a deep breath. “Are you going to get in trouble?”
“They won’t talk about you or me.”
Her eyes looked around my place, avoiding my gaze. “What do you want for helping me tonight?”
“What makes you think I want something?”
She played with the gel pack in her hands. “Everyone wants something.”
I thought about that. “I want you to get a good night’s sleep.”
She lifted those brown eyes to mine, searching my face. “Is that all?”
I knew what she was asking, and it pissed me off that she even had to ask. “That’s it.”
She looked nervous. “If I have to do something, I’d rather, you know, have to do it with you.”
I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms. “Are you saying that if you had to choose between getting fucked by me or those dirty cops, you’d pick me?”
She flushed hard. “I think you’d be nicer about it.”
The irony of that statement wasn’t lost on me. I focused on her bruised face. I would never touch her. She was too fragile, too vulnerable, and not right for the games I liked to play. “I’m never going to fuck you.”
Her breath sucked in. “You’re not?”
If I did, I’d tie your hands behind your back and make you kneel on the bed, and I’d do things to you that would make you beg me for more.
“You’re not my type,” I lied, as my cock stirred in my pants.
She avoided my gaze. “Are you going to tell the police that I’m here?”
“Not unless you want me to.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Then the police don’t need to know.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “Why do all of you speak English to each other?”
“You mean, me and my men?”
She shut her eyes for a long moment. “Shouldn’t you all be speaking Russian or something?”
That was an interesting question. “Habit, I guess. All the men working for me are from Russia, and when they first came to Canada, they needed to learn English, so we made everyone speak in English.” I shrugged. “Now everyone speaks English, so we just alternate back and forth.”
She opened her eyes. They were unfocused. “I feel weird.”
Shit. I usually took three of those pills at a time. I hadn’t calculated how tiny she was when I gave her two pills. “It’s the codeine. It has a sedative effect.”
“I remember now that my doctor told me to never take more than one pill.”
“You’re going to sleep well tonight.”
She was fighting to stay awake. “I can sleep here. If you let me.”
“You can have the bed.”
She looked damn cute as she opened her eyes and tried to focus on the bed. “It’s too far away.”
“You need some help?”
“Would you mind moving the bed a bit closer?”
A short laugh ripped out of me. I stood up. “Let me help you get to bed.”
She lifted her head and gave me a dazed look. “You have very pretty eyes.”
“Thank you.” I bent over her. “Can I carry you to bed?”
“I’m not sure you can. I’m heavier than I look.”
I reached down and easily lifted her slight body. She felt so delicate and soft in my arms. “I think I can manage.”
She stared at me as I crossed the room. “You’re an alarming man, Andrusha.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re one of the bad guys.”
You’ve got that right. I laid her down on the bed and pulled the covers over her body.
She flailed her hand twice before managing to grab mine. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She stared at me with a glazed look. “I didn’t want my first time to be like that.”
I frowned, not understanding. “Your first time what?”
She shut her eyes. “Having sex.”
WTF? “Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”
“It’s not a crime,” she mumbled.
I stood there, watching as her breath evened out, and then she was out for the night. How was it even possible she was a virgin? She was a stripper.
I studied her sleeping face. I knew I could make her feel better than she’d ever felt in her life. I could show her things she’d never dreamed of. I could make her want me and need me until I was the only thing she wanted and needed. And in doing so, I’d make her my own.
Is that such a bad thing?
Unlike the women I dated, who understood how far they could go before they were past the point of no return, this one would not heed those internal warnings. She’d give of herself until there was nothing left to give, and I was enough of a bastard that I would let her.
Self-disgust washed over me. She’s a fucking virgin.
I stared down at her peaceful form. She couldn’t stay here. Now that my dick was interested, that option was no longer on the table. The best option for her would be to go on the run. I could give her money and help her figure out her best shot at escape. Then I’d shut the door on this mess and never think of her again.
I picked up the bottle of vodka and, with one last glance at her, I headed for my office. I needed to get drunk.
