The Bratva King's Kidnapped Bride - Page 44

Lev furrowed his brow. “Let’s say this was the Armenians. There’s no way he would have talked, right?”

I stormed back over to the body and leaned over, pulling up the shirt so that Lev could see the cuts and bruises. I waved my hand at the battered face. “Most people who’ve been with us for years would break during an interrogation like this. This kid never stood a chance of staying silent.”

Lev grumbled, starting to get it. “Fuck,” he muttered. “If that’s the case, then maybe they left us a message on him.”

“I’m sure he’s the message,” I snapped. “Isn’t it loud and clear? They must know about Katie.”

He still valiantly tried to calm me down. “For all they know, she’s an employee, nothing more. And there’s still nothing to prove they didn’t just see this guy with others tied to us and put two and two together.”

I wanted to believe him, but then he uncurled the dead man’s fist and pulled out a scrap of paper. I recognized it at once, and it was as if the Pacific Ocean somehow reached me, crashing an icy wave over me and freezing me in place.

It was a piece of one of the white bakery boxes Katie packed her lunches in with such pride and care. Part of the cheerful label was still affixed to the cardboard. Only the top half remained, revealing her name in block letters.

“It’s just her name,” Lev said, still not regaining his color as he gripped my arm. “And her old one at that. Katie Brixton, not Katie Fokin.”

I still wanted to believe. Everything he said to reassure me could have been true, and the fact they’d targeted the delivery guy might have been a coincidence. The piece of sticker left behind on its own was cryptic enough that it really could have been nothing.

But why torture the man if they weren’t angling for specific information?

“That’s the message,” I said raggedly, fumbling for my phone in my pocket. “The other half of that sticker…”

I cursed myself a hundred times for this oversight. Something so simple as getting her to change her packaging to be more discreet. It was the secrecy that kept me from doing it. Not having a reasonable excuse to make the request. This was all on me. I blindly swiped, trying to get to my contacts. Desperate to hear her voice.

“What?” Lev asked, my panic seeping over to infect him. “What’s on the rest of the sticker?”

I looked at him as the call went through to Katie, almost crushing my phone in the urgent need to hear her voice. Lev recoiled at whatever was shining from my eyes as I answered his question.

“My wife’s phone number.”

Chapter 25 – Katie

I had everything all packed up and had given the director over at the Hiring Hopefuls charity a head’s up that I’d be arriving. She was thrilled and told me they were doing a presentation later that afternoon and that I was welcome to join if I wanted. I was delighted to have something else to keep my mind off of the tension with Aleks and told her to sign me up.

As difficult as it was to go without hearing his voice, I had decided I wasn’t going to make the first move. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and it was up to him to apologize, not me. He had to come home eventually, and I hoped it would be sooner rather than later. I missed him so much I wasn’t even going to make him grovel.

Much.

I put on a sophisticated, jade green suit, with flowing pants and a fitted jacket, then wondered if I looked too much like a ‘lady who lunches’ instead of the lady who brings the lunches. When I asked Sergei, he only rolled his eyes.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked in his blunt, gravelly voice.

I’d seen him smile a few times, and that was how I knew he wasn’t nearly as cold as he had pretended to be. I’d even seen him smother a laugh once. He was on my side, and I wasn’t scared of him at all, even if he would have preferred it that way, so I’d stop asking his opinions on things like my daily outfits.

After I told him where we were heading that day, he shook his head. “I thought you were staying in.”

“That was the plan until I had all these extra meals about to go to waste,” I said. “And I already told them I was coming.”

He scowled and instantly called his boss. I snuck up behind him, trying to hear even the merest sound of Aleks’s voice on the other line. Yes, I was pathetic and already rethinking my stance on not calling first. But I didn’t want to waste what time I had left with him on some argument over him having a bad day.

Yes, he took it out on me, but I knew him well enough by now that he was certainly riddled with regret over it. Whatever kept him out all night had kept him from making amends yet, but he would.

Sergei ended his call. “There are no new instructions, so you can go about your day normally.”

He seemed unhappy about it, but that was his default mode. I tried asking him about the swarm of guards out last night, and he repeated the other guy’s answer that it was routine.

We got stopped at the gate, and the man there had to call Aleks again, putting a dark look in Sergei’s eyes that I wouldn’t want aimed at me. We were finally let through and pulled off the property.

“That part of the routine?” I asked.