“Well then, let’s go.”
“You have a weapon?” Troy asks me as he inserts a mag in his Glock.
“No. What do you have for me?” he hands me a Sauer, and I check the magazine.
“Are you good?” he asks me, clearly unsure if I can handle myself.
“Hell yes. Let’s go get my wife.” Heads nod. We walk out the door, in sync and ready. My very last thoughts are a prayer for my Nikole.
I’m coming, baby. Just hold on.
Chapter Twelve
Nikole
When I wake up, I am still tied to the chair. I’m groggy. Somehow I’m both nauseous and starving. I blink my eyes several times to clear them.
“She’s awake,” a man says to my left. When I open my eyes, my dad steps into view; he has a knife in his hands. I flinch when he comes close to me. He just laughs. This is not the man I remember from childhood, and I hate that. He slides the knife under the cable and breaks it.
“Get up,” he demands.
“Where are we going?” I ask after doing what he asked.
“You’ve been asleep for six hours. I assume you need to go to the bathroom,” he says, softer than he has been all day. I hate him for messing with my mind and my heart like this.
“I do, thank you,” I say, my throat dry and raspy.
He leads me to a busted-ass bathroom where I do my business. There is broken glass and cardboard everywhere. The toilet seat is hanging on by one screw. It’s broken and jagged, so I have to hover. I use my hand to wipe the mirror and gasp when I see my face. My eyes are red, and my face is bruised. I use some water and clean up my face a little bit.
I don’t know how I am going to get out of this. Maybe I can get dad talking again. I open the bathroom door, and he’s still standing there.
“Where’s Kat?” I ask, breaking the silence as we walk back to the chair.
“She’s at school. Where else would she be?” he asks, chuckling. He’s acting like he’s sitting in the living room at home and didn’t just kidnap me.
“Right,” I say, laughing with him. It’s forced, but I don’t want to piss him off. “And mom?” I ask.
“She’s at home. She misses you.”
“Then take me home. Please don’t do this, daddy.” I am not above begging for my life right now.
“You should never have left. You ruined everything. Not only business, Nikole. Everything. You have to deal with those consequences. Sit back down.” I do so. He ties my hands to the arms of the chair again, this time using a rope. My wrists are so raw; I don’t struggle.
“Get her ready to move,” Sasha says, striding into the room. “The plane will be on the tarmac in twenty minutes.”
Fuck! I have to fight. If I get on that plane, I’ll never see Anatoli again.
Outside, I hear brakes screeching to a halt. They must not be expected guests because everyone draws their guns, except Dad, who plunges another needle into my arm again.
“Ow,” I yell.
“Shut that cunt up,” Sasha yells from the front of the room.
“Be quiet, ?????????,” Dad says. He hasn’t called me princess since I was a little girl. All that does is remind me of Anatoli. My heart breaks thinking of him.
Son of a bitch, whatever this is burns this time. My arm is on fire, and it's working even faster than last time. Darkness descends yet again.
Epilogue
Anatoli
Four Months Later
“What are you doing?” I ask my wife as I walk into the kitchen.
“Making a cake for Katarzyna. Today is her first day of school here and when she got home I wanted to give her something in case it was bad,” she says scrunching her face up. I chuckle and kiss her puckered up lips, my hands rubbing her tiny round belly. Pulling back, I kiss her forehead before walking into the bedroom to change. Looking around, I feel the same thing I have felt since we saved her from her father… grateful.
When we stormed that warehouse, I saw everything around me crashing down when I came face to face with Kerkin. My initial thought was to kill him. Slaughter him the way he did my parents before taking my sister, but then I looked in the chair and saw my love slumped over and every thought became of her. I left Kerkin and her father to the Jorgensen’s.
When I touched her limp body, I thought they had succeeded in taking my heart from me, but then I found a pulse and I knew I was given a second chance. I rushed her to the hospital and while they were checking her over, I found out she was pregnant. A baby. I was going to be a father. She had been rendered unconscious with a potent shot of Halcion which is a narcotic sleeping medicine. The doctors were concerned by what something like that could do to the baby. I was worried about both of them.