Reina hurt.
Reina tortured.
Reina—
I shake my head. I won’t let that happen, not now after all the distance we crossed. Besides, I promised to find her.
I fucking promised.
“What are we going to do now?” My voice is calm considering the disorder in my brain.
“My guy said he and Rai are out of this situation. It’s too risky.”
“We can’t just do nothing.”
He releases a breath. “I’m thinking.”
I pace the length of the room, my head filling with the scenarios Reina could find herself in.
Each one is more terrible than the previous.
She might have lived on the run in the past, but that was a long time ago. She knows nothing about mafia life now.
Reina is as clueless as your next normal citizen.
My phone vibrates and I retrieve it, about to silence it. The unknown number makes me stop in my tracks.
I answer, “Who is this?”
The voice on the other end is the last one I expected to hear. “Hello, Asher.”
A slap across the face startles me awake.
For a second, I’m too disoriented to realize where I am. It’s dark, strange, and smells of humidity.
Then everything crashes down on me in one go.
Daniels, the officers who spoke in Russian, and then—
My head jerks up and I freeze.
Light blue eyes stare down at me with malice so tangible I feel it crawling along my skin. He’s wearing a black suit, and his whitish blond hair is cut short, showcasing his square jawline.
I know who he is even before he says a word.
My mom’s nightmare.
The one who killed her then took my sister.
The one who killed my dad.
The one who made my childhood hell and orphaned me.
Ivan Sokolov.
I wiggle in my seat, but the tightly secured ropes keep me in place. I’m sitting on a metal chair in the middle of a sterile room. The earlier smell of humidity is replaced by something more potent: blood. No—piss and blood.
A shudder goes through me at the thought of what they do here.