Chapter 9

Emma

No.

That single word echoed in my head as I stared at our captor. Nick shuddered and moved closer to me as he stared as well.

Not my uncle. There was no way.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted, cheeks flushing with anger. “My uncle took me and my sister in when nobody else would. He raised us. He made sure we had the best of everything. There’s no way I’m going to believe that he ever had anyone killed. You have to be mistaken.”

He nodded resignedly. His gaze swept over me, and then he seemed to make a decision. “I can understand why you would be reluctant to take my word on it,” he said calmly. “But I have copies of his correspondence with a local hitman that says he did.”

“You expect me to take your word for that?” I snapped, my anger slipping my control for a moment. “I’m not inclined to believe men that take me, and a five-year-old, hostage.

“No, of course not.” he hesitated for just a split second before plowing on. “I expect you to look into it yourself, including reading those correspondences.”

Our gazes locked, I could see a strange mix of exhaustion, determination, and hope in his eyes that I didn’t understand. Why was it so important to him that I believe him?

“This has to be mistaken identity,” I mumbled, dropping my face into my hands. “There’s just no way.”

Nick was patting my arm worriedly as he leaned on me. As Viktor drew closer, calm and just as damnably handsome as ever, I wanted to slap him, to keep him at arm’s length. But I knew that would have been stupid.

“I’ll supply you with the proof,” he said firmly, his tone so confident that I half believed him. But the implications of that made my heart clench. My uncle wouldn’t order someone killed like a damn mob boss. That wase something I would have expected more from a man such as Viktor.

My uncle was good. My uncle was loving. He was sometimes a little clueless about how to show that love, but he was the closest thing to a protector that I had ever had. I couldn’t possibly believe that he’d wanted someone murdered enough to go through with it.

And yet...

“Fine,” I snapped, already fed up with hearing him talk. “I’ll take a look at your proof. But expect me to take it with a grain of salt the size of a soccer ball.”

He blinked, seeming startled that I’d kept my sense of humor despite everything. A small chuckle escaped him, a smile ghosted onto his lips and away again.

“Very well,” he said calmly. “I’ll be back with the evidence you need in just over an hour.” He gestured toward the takeout bag on the table. “Please. Have something to eat and drink. I’ll see you when I return.”

I nodded at him, and he turned on his heel and walked back out. It took a lot of determination for me to focus on the floor, and not drink in the set of his shoulders and the shape of his ass as he strode out. The fact that he was hot, was the most confusing and disorienting part of all of this.

Aside from the idea of my uncle somehow being a murderer, that is.

“I’m hungry,” Nick mumbled into my shoulder as soon as the door closed and locked behind our captor. He lifted his head slowly. “Do you think they brought us those dumpling things again?”

“Liked those, huh?” Keeping affection in my voice was tough. Under the surface I was still boiling with anger, and under that, knotted up with fear.

The big man in the chef’s apron who had brought our plates at lunchtime had seemed almost apologetic. He had moved slowly around us, his craggy face cracked by a small, sad smile. Like he was doing everything he could not to scare us more. I got the sense that he’d made the meal with his own hands. But I hadn’t understood why he’d seemed worried he’d scare us. These were supposed to be big, tough gangsters. Why would they care whether their kidnapping victims were safe, or comfortable, or fed?

“Those were called pelmeni and no, that was lunch. Looks like Viktor grabbed us Chinese on the way over.” I checked the bag, hoping to at least pinpoint what neighborhood we were in. But he must have thought of that, because the address printed on the bag had been heavily inked over by markers. I couldn’t even guess what was under those black censor bars. Crap.

Once again, this Viktor guy was one step ahead of me.

The lo mein had hand-cut noodles, one of my favorites. There were only a few places in the city that did hand-cut noodles, mostly in the richer areas like Beverly Hills or Hollywood. Some of the suburbs. I could count the restaurants capable of Chinese takeout this good on the fingers of one hand.

Maybe I could figure out where we were being held, from that.

As we sat eating, Nick looked up from his noodles and said solemnly, “Do you think that man is gonna kill us?”

I froze for a moment. Nick was talking like the kids from my sessions. His tired, hollow tone, the plaintive note to his voice, the way he didn’t look at me. At his age he shouldn’t even be considering something like that. Trauma. This is traumatizing him. The very thought made my blood boil even more.

“No, honey, I don’t.” I kept my voice as firm and even as I could and did my best to catch his eye. He finally looked up at me reluctantly, and I smiled at him. “If they were just going to kill us, they wouldn’t put us in a fancy room and feed us. That takes work and money. They don’t want to hurt us or do bad things to us.”

“And they stole us because the man thinks Uncle Charles killed his brother.”

I winced. These were not things I should have had to discuss with Nick quite yet. But then I simply nodded. “They want to make Uncle Charles pay to get us back. Once he does that, they’ll let us go.”

He looked up at me. “What if Uncle Charles doesn’t wanna pay for us?”

I hesitated. I remembered being his age, mom and dad freshly dead, my sister too young to speak or remember them. Uncle Charles had rushed to us, in the aftermath of the accident to take us in. He had visited us at the hospital. His face had been the first familiar one I’d seen when I’d woken up from being sedated.

A man like that would never let us down, no matter what these damn weirdo Russian gangsters thought.

“He’ll pay,” I reassured. “He won’t leave us stuck here. I promise.”

***

True to his word, about an hour later Viktor came back with a stack of printouts. “We have not yet received any kind of response from your uncle,” he said solemnly, the smallest hint of tension in his deep voice. “But I have provided what you requested.”

I nodded and took the sheaf of papers from him, trying to ignore the little jolt that went through me as our fingertips brushed. “This is over twenty pages of material.” I started shuffling through it, glancing at each page before moving on. “Why hack his email?” It was such a violation. I wondered if he’d done the same to me.

Like Uncle Charles tries to do.

The thought came unbidden, and I felt a flush of embarrassment and anger. I was depending on Uncle Charles to get us the hell out of this. I couldn’t afford to be angry with him right now.

“I do not know what kind of man you think I am, but I do not go to the trouble of kidnapping people without due diligence. I had to make sure that your uncle was the man we’ve been looking for.” He tapped the top sheet in the pile. “These dates place the conversation a week before my brother was murdered.”

I looked down at the paper. December fifteenth, almost three years back. The last Christmas I’d spent with my sister. By Easter, she would be dead and gone, leaving me with her two-year-old son to raise.

Strange that this big, scary gangster, the man who had kidnapped us, lost a sibling the same year that I had. “I’ll read through it all,” I promised, wondering why I was doing so. “But you said you were having trouble getting in touch with my Uncle Charles.”

“My intent was to have you call him on your phone so he would know it was you and hopefully, pick up. But we’ve been watching his penthouse and his online activity, and he seems to have gone very quiet for some reason.”

I felt a chill trickle up my spine. “I’m willing to try it anyway.” Why wasn’t he answering? Had something happened? Or was Viktor playing some kind of sick game with me?

“Just please let me try,” I said, and heard my voice crack on the last word, and hated myself for it.

He shot a sharp look at me, lips pulled into a thoughtful frown. “I see. Very well. Give me ten minutes.”

While he was gone, I started reading.

There were four sections to the papers he’d given me, records of financial transactions going through a bank account in Barbados, two online conversations, and the electronic paper trail that tied it all back to my uncle. It looked legitimate. Viktor had really shown his work. But I absolutely couldn’t believe this was real, and that disbelief only grew as I started reading through the conversation. My uncle, and the man he’d clearly hired to kill Viktor’s brother were talking about the details as easily as if he was ordering a new carpet for his office.

This can’t be my uncle, I thought, as I placed the print offs on the coffee table. I looked up at where Nick, sleepy from stuffing himself, was nodding off over one of the comic books he had found in a cabinet. Whatever was going on, Viktor had to be wrong. The man making these arrangements, whoever he was, had nothing to do with my family.

But how could I possibly prove that to Viktor?

Maybe there’s a way. I would start with the phone call. If I could just get my uncle on the phone, if I could just hear his voice and talk to him, I could get us one step closer to being safe.

I forced myself to keep reading. The more I did, the less I believed that the callous man behind the murder of Viktor’s brother could possibly be Uncle Charles. He had never exactly been affectionate or kind toward us, he was distant and very busy. But we had wanted for nothing. The man funded my doctorate, for pity’s sake, even though he hadn’t wanted me to leave and go to school. He was there for me. He always had been.

But then why was I scared of what would happen once I made that phone call?

Viktor tapped on the door again, then unlocked it and stepped inside. He had my phone, its sparkly lilac case looking odd in his hand. “Here you are.”

I wanted to snatch it away from him suddenly. His having it in his possession felt like yet another violation. Yet another reason to want to slap him across his aggravatingly handsome face.

Too bad that was a good way to get myself killed.

I took it carefully and checked it. It didn’t appear damaged, and it was still charged. I unlocked it while he watched me like a hawk, knowing I didn’t dare try anything. Not with Nick’s safety hanging in the balance too.

I called my uncle’s cellphone.

It rang and rang, and every time the little whirring noise in my ear felt like a violin bow dragging against my taut nerves. I started shivering. Come on, pick up! I disappeared out of my house! You’re always watching me! You must have noticed, pick up!

I heard a click and almost dropped my phone. “Uncle Charles?” I asked, my voice breaking with relief.

A second later his voicemail greeting started playing.

Oh no. No, no, no, come on, you never turn off your phone. Pick up!

Please pick up. You have to. Cold jags of terror tore through me as the calm computer voice droned on. Then the beep.

“Please, we’ve been kidnapped! They said they sent you a ransom demand. Uncle Charles, please, you have to talk to them, you have to get us out of this!” My voice was shaky, high with fear. I couldn’t help it anymore. “Please, please call me back!”

I sat down heavily, not quite sure there was a chair under me until I fell into it. My whole body felt numb. I stared at the phone.

Then I set my jaw and called again.

And again.

And again, grinding my teeth, feeling hot anger well up from deep inside of me. He had never ignored my call, not when I had been younger, nor decades later. He always, always picked up. This was the first time, ever, that a call from me had gone to voicemail.

And it was when I needed him the most. When Nick needed him the most.

“Is something wrong?” Viktor asked quietly.

I swallowed hard, took steadying breaths, fought the tears that were threatening. I couldn’t let myself look hurt or vulnerable around him. That would just be blood in the water to a man like this, no matter how polite and considerate he was on the surface.

“He’s not answering. It’s- it’s the first time ever. He could be in a meeting or something, but then he’d text me that and call me later.” I was talking too fast, too shakily, like I was pleading with him. Maybe I was.

Nick stirred and rolled over, blinking up at me. I bit back my terror and struggled twice as hard not to cry.

“I see,” Viktor said, that tension deepening in his voice. “Try not to let that frighten you too much yet. He may yet respond. I will be waiting for his call.”

He took the phone from my shaking fingers. It took everything I had left not to protest. It felt like losing a lifeline. A talisman of the normal life I was trying so hard to get back to.

“What’s going on?” Nick’s small, chirping voice made me flinch a little.

“Nothing,” Viktor said, but the strain stayed in his tone. “Do not worry, little one. We will get to the bottom of this soon, and then you can go home.”

Before he walked out with my phone and locked us in, he got me to make one more phone call, this time to my office to say I needed to take some personal days due to a family emergency. As soon as he was gone, I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me. My heart was pounding, my emotions were in turmoil. I pushed myself up unsteadily from the chair, painfully aware of Nick watching me.

“Are you okay?”

“I just need a shower,” I mumbled, before hurrying into the bathroom and closing the door.

It was the only place where I could hide my tears from him.