The Bratva King's Kidnapped Bride - Page 54

“Are you serious?” he hissed.

I nodded vigorously, holding my stomach. “Yeah, it’s awful.”

The other one’s head shot up. “Damn it, just leave her outside for a while, she’s not going anywhere. I’m sick of the commotion while I’m trying to sleep.”

Oh, this was good. I held my breath as the screen addicted one lumbered up and grabbed me by my shirt again. As he dragged me toward the door, once again, he dropped his phone on the little table. I bit back any sound, my eyes on the mean one, who gave me a filthy look before dropping his head back on his arms. I pretended to stumble as the man holding onto me lifted the bar on the door, and holding my cuffed hands close together, I swept his phone between my palms.

A clock started ticking in my head. I had mere seconds to make my attempt. I silently thanked my old-fashioned aunt for making Jenna and me memorize at least two important phone numbers in case we lost our phones. I knew three. Hers, Jenna’s, and most recently, I’d memorized Aleks’s number.

The man took his cohort’s advice and shoved me against the side of the shack. I immediately feigned puking noises as he stepped back inside. The clock still ticked wildly in my head, so I swiped the code to unlock the phone. My wrist throbbed, and my hands felt useless in the cuffs, but I tapped in the number and held it close to my ear.

It rang only once, and I stopped fake retching as soon as I heard my husband’s tense greeting. He didn’t know the number, but he probably answered every call in hopes that it would be about me. As scared as I was, a smile bloomed on my face.

“Aleks, it’s me,” I whispered.

Then I heard a loud curse from inside the shed. Ending the call, I somehow deleted the record before dropping the phone just as both of them barreled out. My hands shook like autumn leaves in a windstorm as they rounded on me.

The mean one kicked it off my lap. “What the fuck did you do?” he shouted, spit flying in my face. I shook harder at the rage twisting his features.

The other one dove for his phone. “It’s fine. It’s still locked. There’s no way she got anything out.”

“Did you fucking call anyone?” the mean one said, shaking my shoulder.

“I couldn’t,” I said, nearly puking for real again. “I didn’t have time.” It was almost the truth since I’d barely said anything before they realized what I’d done.

“Look, there’s nothing.” He held it out with a shrug. “She couldn’t even get it unlocked. It was just a stupid, useless attempt.”

I nodded, wincing as the mean one raised his hand as if he meant to hit me. The other one clapped his hand on his shoulder, calming him down.

“Turn it off, just in case,” he snapped, heading back inside.

Now the other one really looked pissed at me because I’d robbed him of his way of passing the time. I really hoped he wouldn’t think of other ways to amuse himself that might involve me. I cringed away from him as he got close to my face, trying not to gag at the sour whiskey breath.

“You don’t have any more chances with me, understand? If you’re going to be sick, you can choke on it. If there’s even another peep out of you, I’m not stopping him again.”

I ended up back in my corner and huddled in a ball, disappointed I hadn’t been able to tell Aleks I was in the desert or describe the shack or the kidnappers at all. At least I got to hear his voice one more time. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be the last, but I’d put them on high alert. There’d be no more attempts from me. I didn’t doubt that they were fed up with me, and things would get a lot worse if I so much as clinked the handcuffs in my lap.

The mean one seemed to want to leave, gesturing angrily toward the door. But the other one showed that his phone was off, therefore untrackable. He glanced at me with bitterness and said in English, “It’s only a few more hours anyway.”

My heart nearly stopped, but I stayed perfectly still and silent, not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d scared me. But he had. A hell of a lot more than I already was.

A few more hours until what?

I curled up in a ball and got as comfortable as I could with a pounding head and aching wrist, a roiling stomach, and the inability to make the slightest noise of complaint. I somehow eventually drifted off to sleep again, despite my fear and pain.

Chapter 32 – Aleksandr

It had been more than two hours since I’d been at the office building, wrangling with the police. There had been no more information from them, but Lev’s team had managed to get to the initial location where the car the kidnappers had stuffed Katie into had gone. Max and Dimitry were out trying to convince anyone to speak to them. Ivan and Nikolai were hacking every camera in the surrounding area to hopefully pick them up again, but it was slow going, having only grainy images of the car to go on.

I hadn’t told Mila yet, not wanting to worry her since she was in San Francisco, easing some new tensions that had recently arisen up there. As for me, I was beyond worry. I paced between the computer stations Lev’s people had set up in my vast library to the bar across the room. The crystal decanters glistened in the sunlight, still streaming through the windows, but time was ticking away.

The thought of her being somewhere with those animals after dark was impossible. We had to find her before then, to prevent her from being even more scared. If she was hurt in any way, nothing would stop me from unleashing hell on every last person who was involved.

“They’re not that stupid,” Lev told me when I stalked past him. “I can tell what you’re thinking from the look on your face, and there’s no way they’re idiotic enough to really hurt her.”

I glared at him. He hadn’t seen the surveillance footage of one of those assholes punching her. Or the way she’d been roughly dragged away out of view. Her broken necklace was in my pocket, and I slid my hand in to wrap my fingers around the delicate gold heart. It would be repaired and placed around her neck again.

“They’ve hurt her enough,” I snapped, then looked at the people poring over their screens or tapping at their keyboards, working their technological magic to try to find her. “How much longer?” I asked no one in particular.