Chapter 8

Viktor

Iwas very distracted as I walked away from our holding cell and emerged into the larger complex. I liked Emma. I liked her spirit as much as I liked her intellect and looks. If she had caved in, wept, begged, I wouldn’t have respected her as much. But as it was, I almost admired her. She really was nothing like her uncle.

The whole place was a decommissioned movie studio I had bought and converted for my purposes. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floor as I walked. When I looked up at the high-domed roof, I couldn’t see it for the shadows. The whole area was too large to even light properly.

Holding prisoners was just one of many uses I had for the place. The cavernous main studio was full of classic cars from my uncle’s old collection. I had been selling them off since his death, aside from a few gems like his Silver Cloud that I couldn’t bear to part with. We didn’t have a showroom, so when we had buyers in or took photos, we made do with a sound stage and creative backdrops.

I fished out Emma’s phone and turned it back on. Thirty missed calls, ten texts, three phone messages. Most of them from her uncle. I couldn’t unlock her phone to check them, so I called Alexei on my own.

He yawned in my ear. I heard puppy snuffles and the crunch of kibble in the background. “Hi, boss, good morning. What is it?”

“I have a phone for you to crack. Shouldn’t take much. By the way, do you have anything from that license plate number I gave you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Another yawn. “Like you thought, it was straight from Graves’s motor pool. So I went poking around his employee duty roster and who checked it out last.”

“Mm, all right, good.” I walked outside to the lot and got into my coupe, which was parked just steps from the door. “So, who is our man?”

“James Layton, former Navy SEAL and head of their security team. I’ll send you the details.” I heard a click and then some typing. “Not much about him online besides his job and military service. He seems to be smart enough to keep a low profile.”

“And smart enough to run when wounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. Is he registered at any hospitals? Perhaps we should pay him a visit.”

“If he is, it’s under an assumed name, and a CCTV search didn’t pick his face out at any of the local ERs.” The rattle of typing was undercut by the faint slurps of a puppy drinking. “Either that or Graves has his own doctor with a setup outside the normal hospitals.”

“He’s a billionaire. He could arrange it.” And not just from some back-alley patch, either. A man like Graves could have a whole operating theater set up somewhere, and the legitimate doctors to staff it.

“Graves definitely knows that we have his niece and great-nephew, from his communications traffic.” More typing. “My guess is, Layton rang him from his car as soon as he could.”

I grunted acknowledgment. I had spent half my morning cleaning up the mess from Layton’s escape, including making some strategic payments to certain law enforcement and media interests, gathering information, and spreading disinformation.

The cover story was now fabricated from rumors about an attempted armed break-in at Emma’s house that had led to a conflict between members. Predictably, Graves disdained the police too much to give a statement correcting those rumors. His own secretiveness was working against him—while keeping too many people from coming sniffing around my business.

But this Layton person bothered me. He seemed to have all the competence that his boss lacked. He had nearly shot me twice from his perch in the trees, and my incapacitating him had been down to luck in the end. Having him present during the exchange, when we freed Emma and the boy and put a bullet in Graves’s brain, would definitely cause complications. Especially if we weren’t able to locate his sniper’s nest in time.

“Layton is going to be trouble,” I predicted. “Find out as much as you can. I want to see if he can be bought off, or distracted, before we go forward with the meet with Graves.”

“You got it, boss.” Puppy sneezes in the background now. I fought a smile. Maybe being a dog dad would encourage my youngest lieutenant to grow up, and stop James Deaning around Hollywood quite so much.

He hesitated. “How are our guests doing?”

Some would have thought Alexei soft. Too sentimental to be one of us. But his kind streak had been a touchstone for me more than once. I needed a kinder viewpoint at times, and I knew it. The fearsome reputation I enjoyed, my position, everything I had gained in my career, they had come with a cost.

I sighed as I put my phone on speaker and started the engine. “The kid’s scared but being brave. As for the doctor, she is…”

Her face flashed into my mind, full of anger and determination fighting fear. I remembered the protective way she’d put herself between me and the boy. The steady way she’d held my gaze. Her calm defiance in the face of a situation where her only hope was the mercy of others.

“Intriguing.”

Yes, that was the right word—although the moment I said it, I felt my throat tighten awkwardly. She intrigued me. Not just with her physical attractiveness, but with her mind, her spirit. Her strong will.

Some men couldn’t handle a woman with a backbone. Soft, inadequate men like that needed women to make themselves small so that they could feel big. But I had never been so insecure, so weak. No. Her will and brilliance did not detract from my own.

It only made me want her more.

I coughed into my fist, realizing how that must have sounded. “She has a lot of courage, and she did her best to help the boy cope with the situation. But she’s angry. Very angry. And I cannot say that I blame her.”

“No, of course not.” He let out a sad little laugh. “How are we sending the ransom message?”

“Anonymous email. He’s online almost constantly.” So far, almost everything had gone to plan. Hopefully this would too. “Asking for five million for both, delivered personally.”

I pulled into traffic, ignoring some idiot who blared his horn at me when I wouldn’t let him cut in front. Alexei was saying something about liquid assets. “Nonsense. Five million is pocket change for this man. He’ll have at least that much available.”

“And if he balks about showing up alone?”

“We send him a finger in the mail.”

He sucked air. “Jesus. Viktor!”

“Not hers, you asshole. We have connections in the coroner’s office, remember? He just has to think it’s his niece’s. The idea is to scare him, not mutilate her.” Sometimes his mind went to the absolute worst conclusion no matter how I phrased things.

“Oh.” He hesitated. “How long do you think this will take?”

“The ransom demand is going out in two hours. He may guess who we are, especially since he was apparently spying on his niece and got a look at me. But I’m not concerned. Considering how closely he has her watched, he won’t stand by and leave her in our hands any longer than he has to. It may take a few days, but he’ll cave.”

“And what happens at the meet?”

The van in front of me stopped short and forced me to pump the brakes. I hissed through my teeth in annoyance. “We send the girl and the kid home. And as soon as they’re out of sight and hearing, I’ll put a bullet in Graves.”

The faint echo of glass breaking rose in my memories, along with the image of my brother slumping over.

“Possibly several bullets.”

***

It was a long day. I had to have Tolya bring our captives their lunch, because after sorting out and sending the ransom demand, I had my usual business to deal with. Tasks to assign. Offenses to address. Kalashnikov had been spied moving guns in, via bakery trucks. I would have to come down on him for breaking our treaty to make a quick buck.

The whole day, as I dealt with my duties and waited on Graves’s reply, my mind kept going back to Emma. Emma, whom I intimidated without meaning to, but who would not let herself be silenced, no matter how diplomatic she felt she had to be. Emma, whom I desperately wished I’d met under almost any other circumstances.

If I had, I would have already asked her out. But instead, here I was, forced to be the villain of the piece—in her eyes, anyway. I knew that would probably ruin any chance in hell that I had to get her into my bed, if it hadn’t been ruined already.

Too bad. Because I couldn’t get that first sight of her out of my mind. The shine of her hair, her bright, clever eyes, her stylish dress sense, the careful way she chose her words.

I hated that she would associate the very sight of me with fear and anger from now on. The kid, too. There was no starting over when your introductory move was to kidnap someone out of their house and keep them as hostages. There was no way I could think of to make up for or distract from that.

My day ended at six sharp. I bought a variety of Chinese takeout, hoping they would like it. Knowing Tolya, he had cooked them lunch. I didn’t have the time, so chicken lo mein, spring rolls and egg drop soup would have to do.

I didn’t know why, but my stomach tightened as I parked in the lot and headed into the decommissioned studio. I glanced around as I entered, but nobody seemed to be around to notice me, aside from the cars whipping by on the highway.

The tension only grew as I went through the double doors and walked down the soundproofed hallway to our holding cell. I had redone it for our current guests, the advantage of having it here was that we could reset the room, decor, furniture, and all, according to how we wanted our captives to feel.

Last time, it had been a rotten new member who had been skimming off the top of his take and needed to be persuaded to confess. He had spent two nights in a concrete cube with no furniture and the panel lights turned off. That had cracked him by itself, no torture needed. He had confessed eagerly just to get out of there.

Now, the room was an imitation hotel room, nice enough so that those inside might get bored, but they wouldn’t find it a torment.

Hopefully, anyway.

I knocked on the door before unlocking it, just giving them a polite warning. When I opened the door, Emma was sitting with Nick on the bed, arms around him. They both watched me warily as I walked in.

“The terms have been delivered to your uncle,” I said softly as I set the food aside. “Hopefully it will not take very long for him to decide to cooperate.”

Silence for a few beats, and then the Doctor said, “He’ll cooperate. We’re the only family he has since losing my mom and dad.”

“I certainly hope that you are right. I assure you that this entire situation was a last resort.” Hopefully she would never learn that I had killed four men and wounded another in order to kidnap her and the boy. Especially since her uncle had sent them there without her even knowing it.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say to you,” she said breathlessly, exasperation in her tone. “Are you expecting me to forgive you for this? Are you trying to gaslight me? Hoping I’ll get Stockholm syndrome or something?”

I hesitated, but then set my jaw and pushed on. It would not do to seem weak in front of her or the boy. “None of the above. In your shoes, I would be pissed at me right now, and worried about my survival. But you’re not the person we want to get to. You’re just the only one we could grab who has such strong ties to him.”

“And what exactly did he do to you, that has you coming after him like this?” she demanded. Nick peeked at me, then looked away. Something in his face and eyes was unnervingly familiar.

I stared at her, wondering how much to share. None of it was her business, after all. But what was her business was just how despicable her precious uncle really was. She needed to know. And as strange as it was to admit it to myself, I needed her to know as well.

“Your uncle had my younger brother killed,” I said quietly.