Still, no response.
I was foolish to leave her alone. The people who frequent this home are not trustworthy. I should have kept her locked and caged in my room where no one could get to her. No one except me.
“Sadie?” I ask, prowling around the perimeter of the room. “Where are you?”
While I walk, I hear a knock and a muffled voice calling. I freeze, trying to decipher where it’s coming from. Is it her? My pulse quickens as I look around the room. The furniture is vacant, but on a couch lies a stock of books in English. Books she likely put there. Dimitri either didn’t see them or lied about it.
“Sadie?” I call out. Louder this time. When I hear another muffled cry, I can tell it’s coming from behind a closet door. I step to the door and try the handle, but it’s locked.
“Sadie?” I knock on the wood. “Are you in there?”
This time, the responding muffled cries make my heart pound. She’s behind this door.
“Why the hell are you behind this door? Are you alright?” My voice is thick with emotion, my accent barely intelligible English. I try the knob again, but it’s no use. It’s locked fast. I curse and kick the door.
“Who locked this?” I shout but her response isn’t clear enough.
“Stand back from the door,” I order, hoping my words to her are clearer than hers to me. “Now!” I take a few steps back, turn my shoulder to the door, run and ram my shoulder, hard, against it. It doesn’t budge. Cursing, I step back again, rear back, and let loose a powerful kick to the center. To my relief, the wood splinters and the door topples to the side. Another swift kick brings it down completely.
I step through, intent on finding her and dragging her ass out of here, when I see her huddled form in the corner, sitting on the floor. Her knees are tucked up against her chest, her wide eyes fixed on me.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” I thunder. I take her by the arm and haul her to her feet, ready to beat her ass for hiding in here. “I told you to stay in the library.”
I’m so relieved at finding her unharmed, I crush her to my chest so fiercely, I can hear her struggling to breathe.
“There’s like no oxygen in here,” she gasps. “I almost passed out.” She takes deep breaths, filling her lungs with the clean air that rushes in from the open door. “And he’s a monster,” she gasps, pushing away from me. “That Dimitri is a monster.”
“Hush,” I hiss. I can’t have him hearing her speak like this.
The door lies in ruins on the floor as I take her arm and drag her out of the closet. I need to inspect her to make sure she’s okay, before I spank her little ass for making me worried. I sit on one of the overstuffed armchairs in front of a coffee table, and haul her onto my knee, then take my phone out of my pocket. I call Vladik, Filip’s twin brother. They function as the security for our small team. He answers on the second ring.
I tell him briefly where I am and what I need. As long as Dimitri doesn’t come down here before our meeting, Vladik’s men will have the closet door repaired before Dimitri sets foot back in here.
“Give me twenty minutes,” I tell him in Russian. “I have some business to attend to here, first.” I glance at the time on my phone. I’m meeting back with Dimitri in forty minutes, and I don’t want to arouse suspicion by being late.
I swing her around on my lap so that she straddles me, one leg on either side. Though her eyes flash in anger, there’s something else in those depths that tugs at my heart strings. She looks furious but afraid.
I grab her chin firmly between my fingers and hold her gaze to mine. “You tell me why you disobeyed me,” I growl. She deserves punishment for making me fear for her safety.
“I didn’t,” she insists. “You told me not to leave the library. I didn’t leave the library. How was I supposed to know I would get locked in there?”
I growl, a warning to her, but she doesn’t heed the warning.
“And I meant what I said. He’s a monster!”
“Sadie,” I warn.
“He is! If you’d seen how he treated that woman who came in here—”
“What woman?”
“She was cleaning in here. He got mad that the closet door was open, I think. I don’t speak Russian, but he gestured to the door and hit her face.” She cringes. “God, he’s terrible.”
“He’s no worse than I am,” I say with pursed lips. “I don’t want to hear another criticism against him.”