"Who do you think?"
"The Night Wolves?"
The guard laughed. "You can't possibly be that stupid. They're gone. Done. Finished. Your husband and his friends saw to that after Derek tried to rape and kill you in your store."
Mama's sharp intake of breath surprised the guard. He twisted in his seat and laughed at her. "What? She didn't tell you that Derek Blake and his goons broke into her store and planned to fuck her bloody on top of all those pretty white dresses?"
"You're disgusting," I spat at him. "You leave my mother alone!"
"Or what?" The gun was back against my belly. "Huh? You're not exactly in a prime negotiating position here, sweetheart."
I gritted my teeth and kept driving. He stretched out his legs and waved the gun around as he spoke. "You backed the wrong horse, sugar. You should have found yourself a nice, rich cartel husband instead of that giant Russian fucker you chose."
The cartel? What in the world did the cartel want with me? I was nothing. I was nobody. Sergei wasn't even in that life anymore. There was no leverage to be gained from kidnapping me or Mama.
My mind raced as I tried to remember every snippet of news I had read over the last few months. There had been that shooting that had nearly killed strip club owner Besian Beciraj. Sergei had explained that Besian was actually the boss of the local Albanian outfit and also one very wealthy loan shark. He hadn't gone into the details behind that shooting other than to say it had been a cartel assassin gone rogue.
Hadn't there been a link to Hadley Rivera? I had met the insanely rich graphic novelist once or twice at artsy gatherings with Vivian. They ran in similar circles around Houston. Hadley had been at the wrong place at the wrong time when that same assassin had taken shots at her and Finn Connolly.
A few weeks ago, there had been that awful mess on the news about all those cartel associated gangsters who were killed on the same night. There had been nearly twenty deaths across Houston and dozens more south of the border. The papers had called it an internal coup. When I had asked Sergei about it, he had simply shaken his head and admitted that he had known nothing. He had wanted it to stay that way too.
Now Nikolai's kind offer to have someone keep an eye on his friends' wives didn't seem so simple. Had he known there was a threat against me? A sickening thought twisted my gut. Was Erin okay? Had they tried to grab her too? What about Vivian and the baby she carried?
"You ever been to Cabo? I'm thinking that's where I'm going after I make this delivery. I'm going to take my money and run, you know?"
I gawked at the guard. "Are you insane? Are you really trying to make small talk with me while you have a gun pointed at my babies?"
He pointed the gun toward the dash. "There? Happy?"
Before I could answer, Mama shocked me by slamming the sharp tip of her thickest knitting needle into the guard's throat. She screamed like a woman possessed as she embedded her makeshift weapon into his neck. The gun fired, the sound so deafening in the enclosed space that I feared I would never be able to hear again. While the guard choked and slapped at his neck, he waved around the gun. I grabbed his wrist while stomping on the brakes and shoved the gun toward his window. He fired again, blasting out the glass.
Ears ringing and head throbbing, I tried to keep the car under control while watching for that gun, but it was too hard. We spun out of control and veered off the road. We hit a tree so hard that Mama was knocked unconscious when her head whacked the window. My seatbelt and the exploding airbag saved me and the babies. The impact caused the gun to fly out of the guard's hand and out the window.
Panting for air and coughing on the caustic dust now so heavy in the air, I unbuckled my seatbelt with trembling hands. I couldn't hear a damned thing because of the gun shots, and my stomach was so queasy. I managed to get my door open and spilled out of the car and onto the grass. Holding onto the door, I dragged myself into a standing position. My shoes had been knocked off and were jammed up under the pedals, but I didn't even care.
I walked around to Mama's door, using the car for support, but I couldn't get it open. Adrenaline left me shaking and sick. Somehow, I worked up the courage to reach through the shattered window to touch the guard's neck. I felt for a pulse but there was none. He was dead, killed by a knitting needle of all things.
Desperate for help, I walked back around to the driver's side and tried to reach my phone. It had fallen between the guard's feet. Dizzy and sick to my stomach, I weakly stretched out my arm. My belly kept getting in the way, and I put a terrified hand to my bump when I realized I hadn't felt the babies move since the wreck.
"Oh, God. Please." I ran my hands over my belly and pressed down to see if I could elicit a response. Finally, blessedly, I felt one kick and then another. Both babies started to wiggle, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
But my joy was short-lived.
Two SUVs and an oversized floral delivery van barreled toward me. My heart sank when I realized this wasn't a friendly rescue. No, this was my nightmare come true.
I stumbled away from the car and thought about running, but how far would I get? Even when I wasn't pregnant, I could hardly make it two blocks without huffing and puffing. With twins inside me and bare feet? I wasn't going to make it to the first tree before these goons caught up with me.
Placing both hands on my belly in a protective gesture, I gulped and waited. If I could stay alive, Sergei would find me. He would move heaven and earth to bring me and the babies home. Men poured out of the vehicles. I thought of my mother. She was still alive, but these men didn’t know that.
One of them approached me cautiously. He had his weapon pointed toward the ground and seemed to pose no immediate risk to me. Deciding that I had to at least try to save my mother, I sobbed, "They're both dead."
He glanced at the mangled car and the bloody mess in the front seat and didn't investigate further. "Come here."
I forced my feet to move. When I was close enough, he grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the delivery van. The doors were jerked open, and I was roughly hauled up and handed over to a pair of heavily armed men standing guard over a small collection of prisoners. The bloody, bound and unconscious men on the ground looked familiar enough even with the hoods covering their faces. Boy and Danny didn't move, and I prayed they were all right.
My gaze moved to the bench seat on the left side of the cargo space. With her wrists squeezed by zipties, Erin stared up at me with such fear on her beautiful but bruised face. Whoever had given her that black eye and fat lip was a dead man. When Ivan found her—and I knew our men would find us—he was going to unleash that beast he had corralled away when he left the mob.
Shoved down next to Erin, I didn't protest when they bound my hands together or hooked my ankle to a bar with a pair of handcuffs. They weren't going to get any more tears out of me. I was alive. My babies were safe.
And Sergei was going to find us.
Erin reached for my hand. It was awkward with our bound wrists, but we gripped each other's fingers and held tight. We shared a look that communicated what we were both thinking.
These men were going to pay.
Chapter Twelve
"Did we leave a bag in the locker room at the arena?" Ivan searched through all the gear they had unloaded.
Pausing his inventory check, Sergei glanced around the stacks of bags and crates in the gear and locker room at the warehouse. He counted them up and nodded. "We're one short."
"I'll have to contact the organizers and see if they can ship it to us." Ivan fished his phone from his pocket and checked it for the hundredth time.
Sergei smiled because he had been doing the same thing. "She still hasn't returned your call?"
"No." Ivan dialed again and held his phone up to his ear. "That's not like her."
Sergei's thoughts turned to Bianca and her mother. He hadn't wanted to pester her too much, especially after her meeting with Adam Blake. He still didn't like it, but he had promised to give his su
pport. He had called once to let her know he was back in Houston. When she was free, he trusted she would call.
Heavy, running footsteps echoed in the empty gym. After hours, there shouldn't have been anyone else in the building. He glanced at Ivan who frowned. Both men turned toward the door in time to see Ten burst into the locker room. Ivan's phone hit the ground with a thud as the sight of Ten's bloodied, bruised body registered. Sergei couldn't believe the man was still walking. He had a fucking gunshot wound in his shoulder and what looked to be a laceration from a knife arcing across his chest. The blood spray on his jeans wasn't his own.
"What the fuck happened to you?" Ivan grabbed a towel and rushed to Ten's side. "You need a hospital."
"Later," Ten growled. "They ambushed us at Vivian's studio."
Sergei's stomach dropped to his knees. "Is she all right? The baby?"
"Fine. They're both fine. I got her to the boss. She's in a safe place." Ten shook his head and put a bloodied hand on Ivan's shoulder. "Arty is in the hospital. Two of his crew members are dead."
Ten glanced at him, and an invisible fist knotted Sergei's stomach. "Boy and Danny are missing. Their SUV was found on the road near the prison. Bianca's car was crashed into a tree. There was a dead prison guard in the front seat. Your mother-in-law was in the back—alive."
Sergei's heart pounded in his chest. "And my wife?"
Ten shook his head. "She's gone. Taken." He looked at Ivan. "With Erin."
No sooner had the words been spoken than Ivan erupted in a fit of rage unlike any Sergei had ever seen. He hefted up an entire bench and swung it at the row of lockers. Sergei flinched when Ivan picked it up again and tossed it against the lockers for a second time. The metal crunched loudly, and the bench clattered as it bounced on the concrete floor. He grabbed one of the locker doors and ripped it off the hinges.
Fearful for his friend, Sergei grabbed Ivan by the shoulders and jerked him around. "Stop! Enough!"
Ivan reared back, and Sergei stiffened for a punch that never came. His friend got control of himself before he crossed that line. Breathing hard, Ivan clenched his fists at his sides. "I swore I would protect her. I promised her no one would ever hurt her again."
"So did I." Sergei pushed down the guilt that threatened to take him out at the knees. Even after he had tried to do everything right, he had still failed Bianca. Like Ivan, he had walked away from that life and reformed himself—but it wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.
Ivan snarled at Ten. "Where the fuck is Kolya?"
"He's waiting for us." Ten's black eyes practically gleamed with murderous intent. "It all ends tonight."
A cold ball settled in the pit of Sergei's stomach. This wasn't a war the boss had started, but it was one that he was going to finish. This was a mess that Maksim Prokhorov and Romero Valero had tipped off with their power plays and intrigues. Sergei had purposely ignored the rumors he heard around the gym and on the construction sites. He hadn't wanted to know what those two old fucks were up to down south, but now? Now he was furious. The consequences of their games had spilled onto the streets of Houston.
Tonight those streets would run red with blood. Innocent or guilty, it wouldn't matter. As Sergei slid behind the wheel of Ten's SUV, he felt the enforcer's blood soaking into his jeans. It wasn't the first time he had had another man's blood on his skin. It wouldn't be the last.
To save Bianca and their babies, there was no line he wouldn't cross tonight.
* * *
Shaking with cold, I ignored the throbbing in my hands and my dry mouth. My bladder screamed to be emptied. Every movement the babies made was sheer agony at this point, but I was glad to feel the reassuring kicks and stretches. I glanced around the refrigerated room where they were holding us. Erin's teeth chattered together, and she squirmed incessantly to try to stay warm.
We had been pushed into this freezing cold room after arriving at the abandoned dairy plant. The scent of sour milk hung ripe in the air. I wasn't sure what was being hidden away in those vats now, but knowing the cartel? I guessed drugs or guns. Maybe both.
On the far end of the space, Boy and Danny sagged against their bonds. They had been strung up by their wrists and hung from meat hooks. I prayed that gagging and blindfolding them was the worst they would do to the men. I didn't think I could hold it together if those cartel guys started to beat or torture them.
"What do you mean he's not coming?"
Erin and I glanced at each other as a man's booming voice filtered through the open door of the refrigerated room. We listened carefully as the men who had taken us captive argued outside.
"This is bullshit. He ran? Ran where?"
"I don't know, man. The word is coming down the chain that El Jefe disappeared this morning. He went underground. He's gone."
"And no one thought to fucking tell us before we crossed the Russians?" The man who seemed to be in charge sounded panicked. "What if he didn't run? What if they got to him? I never trusted Salas or Contreras. Lalo and Hector were the only two who survived those attacks last month. I still fucking think they shot each other to make it look like they had been attacked too."
"Who cares? Either way, man, we're fucked. The guys we sent after the boss' old lady never made it back. We lost the guard which means the rest of the guys we paid off at the prison are going to squeal. Our men outside? How long do you think they stick around once they find out Lorenzo didn’t send reinforcements?"
"What do we do? Cut them loose?"
Erin and I exchanged hopeful looks.
"Fuck that! They've seen our faces. We slit their throats and go."
Oh, no. Please. Please not that. My bound hands rested on the curve of my stomach. Frantic, I looked around the room for something, anything, to help us out of this.
"Man, I got no problem killing the two soldiers, but the girls? One of them is pregnant. I don't kill babies."
"Do you know who Ivan Markovic is? Do you know what he'll do to you if he finds out you punched his wife? He'll rip your balls off and shove them down your throat. And the other one? I saw her husband fight once. He cracked a man's sternum with one punch. One. Punch." The man chortled loudly. "No, I'm not sticking around for that show. We kill them, and we go."
Erin and I tensed as the two men came into the room. The light-skinned blond already had his knife out. The other one, the man who had approached me on the side of the road, glanced uneasily around the room. His distaste for killing us was clear enough.
"Look, Chris, maybe we should think about this," he pleaded. "They're worth more alive than dead." He looked at Boy and Danny who had gone still when the men had entered the room. "The girls at least."
"What? You want to ransom them back, Juan?" Despite the derision in his voice, Chris lowered his knife. "You think they would pay?"
"Ivan Markovic is rich, right? And the other one? Sergei? He's in tight with Kalasnikov. That's lots of deep pockets we can rob."
Chris seemed to consider it. "What if they won't pay?"
"Then we sell them," Juan replied with a shrug. "The skinny one is really pretty. I bet Tran would pay good money for some young pussy like that. She's…what? Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Not as good as the teenagers he likes to pick up on Spring Break, but she's fresh and clean."
"And that one?" Chris pointed the knife at me. "I doubt the market for pregnant whores is very high."
"No," Juan agreed, "but I bet we could make nice money off those babies. I heard people pay tens of thousands of dollars for newborns. She's got two of them inside her. You could have one and I could take the other."
Listening to them talk about my babies like they were puppies to be sold to the highest bidder made me sick. Next to me, Erin shuddered with disgust. How in the world did men get this cruel? How did they become so devoid of feeling that they could discuss trafficking one of us and selling babies on the black market as easily as if they were talking about a football game?
"Keeping her alive is the easy
part," Chris said as he knelt down in front of me. The knife came dangerously close to my belly, and I whimpered. He seemed to enjoy my fear and pressed the sharp edge against my shirt. "What happens when the babies are ready to come?"
"We could have them taken out. It can't be that hard to find a doctor to do it for us. When it's done, we let her bleed out."
Chris glanced back at his cohort. "Seems like a waste. She might be able to make more money on her back." Standing up, Chris grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet. "Get the skinny one. Let's go."
Juan snatched up Erin and dragged her into a standing position. He gestured to Danny and Boy. "What about those two?"
"We'll send the others back here to watch them. We tell the guys we're taking these two to a new drop-off spot. Let them be the ones to greet the Russians." Chris roughly shoved me forward. "Because you and I both know that cleaner they keep on their payroll will find this place sooner or later."
Kostya. I didn't know the silent, brooding man very well, but Vivian seemed to think he was the most dangerous soldier among Nikolai's men. Could he find us so quickly?
"Go!" Chris kicked my backside, and I stumbled forward. "I'm not carrying your fat ass."
Glaring back at him, I silently called him every curse word I could think of in that moment. Dizzy and cold, I made my feet move toward the doorway. I passed through the thick, wide plastic strips that hung there—and was promptly grabbed by two brawny and very familiar arms.
Sergei!
Before I could even process what had happened, I was passed into different arms and pushed up against a concrete wall. The hallway outside the refrigerated room was dimly lit. Dazed, I blinked rapidly and finally realized it was Nikolai who now shielded my body with his own. I glanced toward the door I had just exited and watched as Chris walked out, completely unaware of the retribution that awaited him.
Sergei snatched him by the front of the shirt and lifted the heavy-set man as if he were a sack of potatoes. He slammed Chris against the wall across from me before punching him in the ribs. The man cried out in agony as his bones were cracked and crunched like an empty soda can. Still, Sergei didn't stop.