I barge out of the car before it fully stops moving.
The scene in front of me is nothing short of a battlefield. A few men are lying on the ground, their blood leaving splashes and forming pools on the filthy asphalt. Others are hiding from the gunshots behind cars.
But there’s nothing to hide from.
More accurately, we’re late.
Fuck.
Adrian motions at his guards to check the perimeter, and they comply with sharp nods. I remain in place, feet planted solidly on the ground, as my gaze roams the cars and the people left behind, whether they’re alive or with their heads down.
Every time I see a motionless body, my heartbeat explodes in my ears until I make sure it’s not Rai.
There’s no trace of her.
None. Nada.
My hand trembles around the gun, and it’s a fucking first. After taking a life when I was ten, I’ve never had my hand tremble around a weapon. Guns, rifles, and knives aren’t only weapons; they are an extension of my hand, a method to not only stay alive but to also eradicate anyone who stands in my path.
This is the first time my weapon isn’t fulfilling its role. I failed her, and so it failed me.
“Where the fuck did they go?” Kirill’s agitated voice grabs my attention, and I sprint in his direction.
Although he and Rai hate each other, he won’t be out to kill her. Besides, as much as I loathe the fucker Damien, he would make it his mission to protect the Pakhan’s grandniece.
Adrian joins me, even though he’s intently watching the scene, probably recreating it in his mind’s eye as I suspect he does whenever he visits a place.
We find Kirill between two cars filled with bullet holes, and I mean completely fucked up with bullets like in some Middle Eastern war. Two bodies lie limp around him as he punches an Albanian to a pulp. Even though the man is not small by any means, Kirill has made a bloody painting out of his face. His features are unrecognizable, eyes swollen, lip busted, and shirt soaked with blood and dirt.
Every time he punches him, the man’s blood sprays on Kirill’s shirt, face, and even glasses. That’s a first for someone who’s so meticulous and never gets his hands dirty.
“I said…” He breathes harshly. “Where the fuck is your nest of cowards? Where do you rats hide? Huh?”
The man groans with obvious pain but says nothing. If anything, he smirks, and that gets him a brutish punch to the skull.
“He won’t talk.” Damien leans against a car as his closest guard fusses with a wound in his bicep. “The others didn’t before we killed them.”
“Where’s Rai?” I don’t recognize my voice, the rage in it and…the fear. A fear so deep I can taste the bitterness of it.
Damien shakes his head once. “They took her.”
His words strike me like a thunderbolt in the middle of a raging sea.
They took her.
The Albanians took her.
Nicolo’s words from earlier and his retellings about what they did to his grandmother wrap a tight noose around my throat. It keeps suffocating me with every gruesome detail he mentioned.
I storm in front of Damien and grab him by the throat. “How the fuck did you let them take her? Where the fuck were you?”
His guard steps in to push me away, but stops with a dismissive motion of Damien’s hand. “Not that I have to fucking answer to you, but they wouldn’t have taken her if I were there. I was fighting one of them off, and when I turned around, they were carrying her and Aleksander into a van.”
“Aleksander was taken, too?” Adrian’s suspicious gaze slides to Kirill, then goes back to Damien. “Why would they take a guard?”
“Fuck if I know.” Damien dismisses the soldier who won’t leave his bleeding arm alone.
“In my place.” Kirill pants, still clutching the Albanian by the collar. “They took Sasha in my place.”
Sasha? Ah, right. Russians and their weird nicknames. How they even associate Sasha with Aleksander is a mystery.
“Still doesn’t make any sense that they’d take you or Aleksander.” Adrian stares at me even as he speaks to Kirill. “They’re usually interested in women.”
At his words, the retelling of Nicolo’s grandmother’s story hits me again, and this time, the images—the rape, the breaking, the murder, the tapes—all of them are too vivid and my hold instinctively loosens from Damien.
Bloody hell.
“He…” the guard in Kirill’s hold croaks, smiling to show bloodied teeth. “He…looked…like a woman…that guard…”
“Fuck! Fuck!” Kirill roars, then takes a few breaths, smoothing his voice even though he appears ready to murder a town. “Listen to me, cockroach, if you don’t tell me where you took him, I’m going to have you raped. I’ll assault you with so many objects until I fucking break you. Maybe then you’ll know how it feels, yeah?”
“In the meantime…your girly guard’s ass will be broken.”
Kirill swiftly yanks Adrian’s gun and points it at the Albanian’s head.
“No.” I sprint toward him and place a hand on his arm, then whisper so he’s the only one who hears. “He’s our only card to find them and he’s provoking you on purpose so you’ll kill him.”
Kirill is breathing through his nostrils even though his face remains stone cold. Instead of releasing the gun, he shoots the guard’s leg, and blood splashes onto the Russian’s glasses.
The Albanian screams like a chicken being slaughtered, but he soon goes back to smirking.
“Let me.” I slightly push Kirill back and he complies, wiping blood off his glasses with the hem of his shirt.
The Albanian is kneeling on the floor, so I crouch in front of him and adopt the tone that got me through everything, the slightly light one, the one that hides how much I want to shoot this scum’s brains out. “Hey there, I’m the good cop among all of them. Damien there would snap your neck in a second. Kirill here would torture you to death, and Adrian, well, you must have heard rumors about how he puts people in a white room, then drives them crazy without laying a hand on them. So aren’t you happy you got me?”
“She’s…your wife…isn’t she? The…blonde beauty. I bet they can tear her cunt in one day—”
I drive my fist straight into his face, and even though the need to finish him off is stronger than anything I’ve felt before, I smile and continue in a semi-restrained tone. “Focus. That was not my question. But, anyway, since I’m a good cop, I have good-cop methods.” I grab his cheek, wiping the blood with my thumb as if I’m worried about it. “What’s your name?”
“David.”
“I bet that’s not your real name, but don’t worry, part of my good cop arsenal is that I can take a picture of you, send it to my hackers, and receive an email back with all your details. Your real name, age, and even face if you went under the knife. But that’s not all. They will also find out things like where you were born and how. Were you in the gulags? Or were you perhaps ex-military turned mercenary before you came here? Did you run in Eastern European circuits, do some burglaries here and some there? All of those will be in the records, and then, I will know about your family. Surely, you didn’t come all the way here for yourself. You guys always have a sick mother living in a cottage-like home on a mountain, waiting for a check from you so they can fight off the merciless winters. Perhaps you have a girl on the side, too, or an offspring you’re hiding.”
Even though his expression doesn’t change, David swallows. One of those is correct. The mother, the woman, or the offspring.
Jackpot.
“So here’s the thing, David. For every hair hurt on Rai’s head, you’re going to watch that mother and woman of yours being raped and know you won’t be able to save them until they spit their last breaths. Only then will I grant you death. How does that sound?”
David stares between the four of us, probably searching for someone who’ll tell me not to do this, but he’s fallen among the wrong crowd. Damien doesn’t give a fuck about the methods we use as long as it gets things done. Kirill would’ve come up with this idea himself, and Adrian…well, he stands still and expressionless, almost as if he doesn’t care what’s going on.
I’m probably the only one who wouldn’t use that option. Innocent women have nothing to do with this. However, I have to make him believe I would because, no matter how much they prefer this method, they wouldn’t want it used against them. If anything, considering the horror they inflict, they know it will stab tenfold worse if it’s directed at them.
“What’s it going to be, David?” I wipe the blood from his face. When he says nothing, I stand to my feet, retrieve my phone, and direct it at him. “Smile for the camera.”
“N-no…I…will tell you,” David whimpers. “I’ll tell you.”
“Glad we agree.” I glare down at him, my voice darkening. “Now fucking talk.”
As soon as he finishes giving information and we make sure it’s true, I shoot him between the eyes.
Every second I don’t go to her, she’s in danger.
With every second, they might hurt her in ways she can never come back from.
I’ll get Rai back. I have to, even if I have to resort to methods I’ve never used before.
