Chapter 239 241

Chapter 239 241
His voice sounds far away. But when I look up, his face is inches from mine. Bright red and spraying spit whenever he talks.

“I tapped your phone, you stupid bitch. Tracked this car, too. I know you’re the one who turned me in. You think you’re so smart? You think you can just play me and then run the fuck away?”

He reaches to grab my hair again. This time, however, it’s Princess doing the grabbing—with her teeth clamped firmly down on his arm.

Martin screams.

Princess takes that as her cue to let him go, but she snarls and braces herself in the tight space to defend me until the very end. Every inch of her is coiled and poised to strike.

“Get out! Get out of the fucking car before I shoot your fucking dog!”

I know he will. I also know he’s wasting time because he’s scared how this will look, an officer pulling his gun on a woman with her dog in broad daylight.

It takes a lot of effort to see through the haze now pounding against my skull, but I manage to open the door and stumble out. Martin grabs me and slams me against the side of the car, fondling me in some mock show of a cavity search, then slaps handcuffs on me.

I’m too dizzy to ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing. I can barely keep myself upright as he drags me over to the squad car.

“We had a good thing going, you and me.” Martin shoves me against the trunk of his car and whispers into my ear. “But you just had to go and fuck it up.”

I can hear Princess still in the SUV, losing her absolute mind. She’s barking, snarling, growling, and all but lunging at Martin who is smart to keep himself away from her. He doesn’t bother going back, but he does grab his radio with one hand while gripping my cuffed hands in the other to tell Dispatch that he found “an abandoned car with a dog inside.”

Mine, I want to scream. It’s my car. My… my dog…

He’s not letting me leave him.

“In a perfect world, Clara, I’d fuck you right here and now.” Martin grabs my ass and squeezes painfully hard. “I’d fuck you so hard over the back of this car whether you wanted to or not. But we don’t have the time and there are too many witnesses.”

He yanks on my hands again and I’m stumbling, reeling, then falling… falling… falling…

The trunk door slams shut.

I’m in the trunk of his squad car. Martin Patterson, once the love of my life and the father of my child, has officially kidnapped me.

God only knows what he’s going to do next.

46

DEMYEN

“She’s what?” I hold a hand up that Bambi can’t see. My nerves have been shot since we took off from Sochi hours ago, and this is not helping a fucking thing. “Calm down, Bam. What’s going on?”

“Clara is missing!”

I take back what I just said. Do not calm down. Do not calm down at all.

Tolya’s gaze snaps to mine when he hears the shouting clear through the phone. I take a deep breath and force myself to not leap to the most immediate conclusions. “Okay. Okay. How do we know this?”

“For fuck’s sake—I’m at the goddamn school, Demyen! It let out over an hour ago and Clara’s nowhere to be found! They had to call me to come get poor Willow who has not stopped crying⁠—”

I can hear my baby girl sobbing in the distance. Her little voice hiccups and for a brief moment, Bambi’s voice muffles as she presumably turns around to ask Willow if she wants to… sounds like something to do with hugs and bears.

“—and Pav just texted me because there’s been a weird call through LVPD dispatch about an abandoned car with a dog⁠—”

At this point, it makes more sense to put her on speaker so Tolya can listen, too. He frowns and mouths his question to me. “Dog?”

I nod, trying to ignore the nausea building in the pit of my stomach. “Did they pick it up yet?”

Bambi snorts with irritation. “Fuck if I know! Listen, I gotta go deal with Willow and see if Roxy has any ideas on what to do. When are you coming back?”

“We’re landing in just a few minutes.” I swallow hard and take a few deep breaths. “We’re coming, okay? We’ll be right there.”

I don’t know who hangs up first and I don’t care. All I care about is getting off this fucking plane and finding out where the ever-loving fuck Clara is.

If Martin is responsible…

He’ll wish I’d kill him. It would be better than what I actually intend to do.

“Yo.” Tolya nudges me with his foot as we take our seats and buckle in for the landing. “I’m right here with you. We’re going to find Clara, and we’re going to make sure your family is safe. Okay?”

I want to hug him. To tell him I’m glad he’s back and I’m sorry it took so long.

But we don’t have time for that. The jet descends, we hit smooth pavement, and as we taxi down the runway, I remind myself that this is not a time to let my anxiety and panic overrun my logic. I have to be cool. I have to be calm. I have to⁠—

I have to find the fucking switch to the hidden cache of weapons on this jet.

Because we’re under attack.

Bullets riddle the side of my Gulfstream and I’m instantly beyond pissed. The flight attendant screams and rushes back inside, her arm covered in blood from a graze in her shoulder. Tolya and I both quickly usher her into the safety of the jet bedroom, then grab our guns from the cache inside the coffee table.

The body of my pilot is blocking the way out. His copilot is slumped against the door to the cockpit. Both of them are dead, their blood splattered all over the boarding area.

Tolya shoulders past me and starts firing. After a few shouts, he quickly nods and motions for me to follow him. “Cleared a path. Let’s go!”

It’s a short-lived reprieve. As we descend down the stairs, more bullets whizz past our heads and bodies and it’s all we can do to duck behind the nearest loading truck for cover.

“Who the fuck are these guys?” Tolya shouts over the loud echoes of gunshots.

“Yakuza!”

This time, it’s literally Yakuza, not some hired stooges cosplaying as Japanese gangsters. Oleg is not around to fuck shit up by adding his mercenaries and I happen to have a few ideas as to why Raizo’s out for my head. And Tolya’s, by proxy.

I take that back—Oleg doesn’t even have to be alive to still fuck shit up. It’s his fault his two sons are now scrambling to figure out just how many pissed-off Japanese mobsters are trying to murder them because he couldn’t leave well enough alone. No, he had to go and use stolen Bratva money to pay mercenaries to pretend to be Yakuza, all while actually joining in with the real Yakuza so whatever fucking chaos he wanted to sow would just… just…

You know what? I’m done trying to figure out what the fuck that asshole’s whole game plan was.

I’m also done getting shot at.