Alessandro
There wasn’t any sound when the video ended. The sounds stopped coming when Maxim had the balls to put his hand in Katya’s beautiful hair and run his nose along her throat.
“Ales!” Frankie has his hand on my shoulder when I come back into myself. He had a worried look on his face.
Maybe I wanted to say something. Maybe he wanted to say something, I wasn’t sure because it felt like all the threads holding my mind together had loosened and now everything was rolling everywhere, like a handful of marbles thrown on the ground.
Somebody was about to say something when my door burst open. Dom was already up with his gun aimed, but it was just my secretary, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“For goodness” sake Dom, lower the gun,” Frankie said. “What is it?” he asked my secretary.
Millie swallowed and tried to talk but kept stammering. “Th -the hospital called, s-sir.”
I shot up from the couch. “Yuri?” There was a stable rotation of my men that kept guard over Yuri’s room, switching shifts, and making sure even the doctors and nurses were never alone with Yuri in the hospital room.
But she was already shaking her head. “Then-they said somebody was asking about the Sorvinos.”
I furrowed my brows. “Who?”
“Samantha Thomas.” It was one of Katya’s closest friends.
We were at the hospital in less than an hour, and found
Samantha in the emergency unit, having her injuries treated. Deep and shallow cuts, bruises all over her body, a black, busted lips.
She looked terrible. When she saw us coming, she left the nurse and started limping toward us even with her ruined, bare feet.
She stumbled and almost fell, but Frankie was fast and caught her before she could hit the ground. Clinging to him, she cried, begging for help.
“Paulina, please, you have to save Paulina. I don’t know what they’ll do to her when they find out I escaped,” she cried, “You have to save her, please.”
I went down to the ground, one knee on the floor, not minding my suit pant at all, so I could be at eye level with her. She was sniffling and looked too broken, crying for her friend.
I knew Paulina and Samantha were like sisters to Katya, it angered me that Maxim had left nothing untouched, but I wanted to reassure her, to calm her down.
I spoke as softly as I could to keep her calm. “Nothing will happen to Paulina, alright? You are both very precious to Katya, and I will protect whatever is precious to her. But first, I will take you to a private room, have a nurse treat your wounds, and then you can tell me everything you can remember. Ok?”
Samantha sniffled. She was shaking terribly, and maybe it was because Frankie was such a big man, but she looked terribly small in his arms. She nodded her head and tried to stand up from Frankie’s arms.
“Don’t worry, let me help you,” he offered and helped her stand.
I hadn’t known how Katya was taken. The war was on, and she had been overlooking some of it when I’d gotten the call from my guys from the hospital where Yuri was that she had called them and was supposed to have been with them over an hour ago. Then I’d tried her phone, and it hadn’t even rung. Switched off.
It was as if she’d just disappeared.
Now, I knew that she’d gone to Paulina’s apartment to visit her and Samantha, because the police had been harassing them. She’d gone to reassure them, but they’d been interrupted. Maxim’s men, disguised as police officers had gone to Paulina’s apartment to take Katya away and held Samantha and Paulina hostage.
“…she managed to lure them away, pretending that her manager was going to pay them a ransom for her. That was how I got the chance to go through the window and escape. I didn’t have any money with me, and I’d rushed so no car key either.”
Her feet were getting bandaged now, the sores and wounds numerous. “You walked here?”
“I ran. I needed to get to you guys quickly but didn’t really know where to go. After everything, I couldn’t go to the police station.”
“That’s smart,” Frankie commented, “the Trievs have very strong connections in the police force. We’re still trying to weed it out.”
“So, they are still there?” I asked, getting up. My heart was pounding, my hands itchy. This was the breakthrough I had been searching for.
Samantha nodded. “They’ve turned the place into some kind of horror dungeon where they drugged and tortured us. They’ve started to use it as some kind of base. They were just two at first, but now there’s more of them, and I think even more were coming.”
I nodded. The more, the merrier, I had a lot of tension I needed to let out.
“So, are you both planning on staying here or are we going to kill some Triev goons?” Dom asked, posted by the door. “Our boys are already gathered and ready.”
“She said there might be a lot of them,” Frankie added sensibly.
Dom laughed. “I doubt it’ll be something we can’t handle, especially not after Maxim’s award-winning documentary.”
Katya
It smelled rank in this place. Like vomit, stale piss, blood, and a corpse. I was chained to the wall with a leather collar linked with steel chains and sat on the ground with my arms around my knees.
It was difficult to breathe, and the foul smell made my stomach turn. But I wouldn’t be throwing up anything, not since I’d already thrown everything in my up in a puddle five feet from me, close to the severed hand and ear I’d stumbled upon.
I watched them both lay there, closer to the bars of this cell, rotting away, and shuddered.
Somebody had died here, and maybe I would too.
I even with the gun firing at me in Paulina’s apartment, I hadn’t believed I’d die. Get shot and be injured, maybe, but death hadn’t been on my mind.
Now it was.
Maxim would rip into me like the madman he was. Before Alex or anybody else would find this place, I’d have been long gone.
I didn’t want to die. If there were a clear choice, I’d choose to do whatever it took to remain alive.
Unless the condition for staying alive were anything even mildly related to forgiving Maxim, in which case, I’d drink the poison.
It was cold down here, and I was still in the simple brown dress I’d worn to Paulina’s. Funny to think that I’d almost debated between this and a spaghetti strap mini dress.
The dress had a sleeve that went halfway down my arm. I still shivered, but I was grateful for it.
Cold, hungry, and with injuries from Maxim’s movie and the beating I’d gotten for putting up a fight when they’d dragged me here, I still managed to rein in my emotions.
He could batter me like a rag if he wanted, I had no plans of giving him anything. No deals, no tears, not even a fucking scream.
High and dry until my last breath, and I’d die knowing that Alex would make him pay.
I’d told him to burn it all to the ground, but I knew that once he got a hold of Maxim, he’d make the bastard beg for death.
The couching fits came again, forcing me to lurch forward on my knees and hands, coughing and spitting out blood.
I kept coughing, even as I caught the sounds of somebody coming towards the cell. Keys jangled and hinges squeaked as the cell gate was opened and shut.
When the fit resided, I still stayed in that position, just breathing. Every cough had tugged on my intestines, and they needed time to slide back down.
“If you attack me again,” the creaky voice of the
German/Dutch elderly woman, “it will be the last time I will tend your wounds. A scarred girl is not one he’ll keep alive. You can ask the last girl to be locked in here.”
I pushed myself back into a seating position, wincing because the pain all over my body was blinding plus, I was starting to develop a raging headache.
“Yeah, we had that conversation right before you came in. She knows how to tell a great joke.”
The woman glared down at me, the same as the first time we’d met, and then went down on her knees to set the first aid box down.
“I’d thought you were a smart girl, but you resisting Mr. Triev has shown otherwise,” she said, grabbing my arm forcefully. All the care she’d given it the first time was gone in the scuffle when they’d chained me to this damned place, and now she couldn’t care less.
Still, it was the best form of treatment I could get, so I allowed her to handle me roughly.
“If you just do what he says,” she continued with that froggy monotonal voice, “it would be better for you. He is capable of violence far above your nightmares.”
My head was against the damp wall, resting because I was hungry and weak, and had no strength to give smart remarks to the nonsense.
“I think there is something wrong with him sometimes. His bloodlust is terrible, and I’ve seen him tear into a girl with the stick of a broom. Ruined her insides and left her for the men to clean up.”
Not a word came from my mouth, but I would have liked nothing more than to give the older woman several punches to the face.
Maybe bash her head against the wall and knock a few teeth out.
But I was saving my strength for when Maxim came back. There was bound to be a round two, I knew it.
Alessandro
Breakthrough.
The heavy weight in my chest lifted slightly. But that weight was immediately replaced by the thirst I had for revenge, and I was glad for it. The men that had been involved in Katya’s kidnapping were still in Paulina’s apartment, a lowrise two-story luxury apartment building.
That was why Samantha had been able to scale down through the bedroom window without breaking any bones.
Dom had already gathered the muscle we needed, but I insisted on them not rushing in.
I would go in first, after we had replaced Samantha, so they didn’t do anything go crazy on Katya’s other friend.
“What’s the status?” I asked Dom through the phone. Samantha had wanted to go back, but her injuries were brutal and many, and I wouldn’t allow that. So, she was in her hospital room, and we were waiting for everything to be ready.
Dom made a humming sound into the phone, as if he was looking through something. The instructions had been very clear.
In place of Samantha, Frankie had suggested we could take somebody vaguely similar back to Paulina’s, and when everything was in place, we could storm in.
She hadn’t been clear on the number of people in the apartment, and some of the information seemed confusing. Probably due to her injuries. We didn’t know the exact number of Maxim’s men in the apartment or their plan.
The only clear had been that some men disguised as the police had come in with guns, and they’d taken Katya away while one had stayed behind. Then there’d been a struggle, both in the apartment and outside with Katya.
But Paulina had been knocked out, and Samantha was subdued, and after the noise coming from outside had settled, more of them had entered the apartment, dragged them into a room, and beaten them. Especially Paulina because she was a model and actress, perhaps she had more worth, and they were thinking of getting some ransom money.
They also wanted to take ownership of the apartment and use it as a front for the Trievs while it was under Paulina’s name.
They were planning on expanding.
We couldn’t be sure of how many would be in the apartment, especially because it wasn’t a small property. We needed somebody that could pass for Samantha, briefly, and Dom knew someone who would fit the bill.
A stripper in one of the Petrenko strip clubs Katya managed. He shrugged when I looked at him, but the stripper’s resemblance was passable, especially after Samantha suggested they add the bruises with make-up.
She said they’d locked her in Paulina’s workroom and left her there after beating the crap out of her.
All their attentions were on Paulina because she was the cow they wanted to milk.
All these steps were necessary because Maxim was a cunning bastard. The men couldn’t suspect the stripper wasn’t Samantha until we’d confirmed their numbers and stormed the place.
I had every intention of getting my wife back within 24 hours.
“We snuck her back in time. I can hear them kicking the living shit out of her, they must have just gone in to check up on her. She’s good at this though, currently, we know there’re at least two guys in there with her, maybe seven or eight more close by, she can’t hear where Paulina is to know how many more are in the apartment. There are more, but probably not many more.”
I stood and Samantha shot up on the bed, I had to gesture with my hand for her to calm down. “I’ll come now, try to get the complete number, and if they’re expecting any more goons.”
“Sure thing, big brother.”
I cut the call and looked at Samantha’s expecting face.
“What happened? Is Paulina ok?”
“Don’t worry, we’re going to storm into the apartment the moment I get there.”
“Ok, thank you.” She relaxed a bit before looking up again. “And from the people in Paulina’s apartment, you’ll be able to get where Katya is?”
I nodded. “Everything will be over tonight.”
She nodded and laid back into the bed, turning to look toward the window on the other side of the room. With a voice that seemed far away, she said, “I hope she’s ok, and that they didn’t treat her as bad as they did Paulina.”
I looked at her for a while before heading out, leaving three men to guard the door.
Fourteen men in all were waiting for me, not all of them with guns.
I went up the elaborate steps with a gun, loaded, ready, and with a silencer.
The two at the door had bullets in their head before they could register who I was, and I knocked on the door.
Behind me, Frankie and Dom, and behind them were a few of the men Dom had gathered.
The whole thing didn’t last two minutes. In the main living room, they dropped like flies with muffled shots on the lightcolored carpet, staining it with their worthless blood. They weren’t shot to be killed, so as they dropped, my men nuzzled them and dragged them out. “I counted eleven,” Frankie said behind me.
In the kitchen that was separated from the living room by a line of counters, Dom opened a can of beer. “Maybe it’s because of the closed bedroom door and the girl being tortured behind it?”
“I will hit you with the butt of my gun,” Frankie answered.
The door wasn’t locked, but what was behind it made me stop in my tracks.
Even Frankie drew a breath behind me.
“Hey! You better stop there,” one of the men shouting a threat, raising his gun, the others scrambling around for weapons.
I took steps into the room, my eyes on the bed where Paulina lay, almost lifeless. I remembered how she’d looked at the wedding. Even though she didn”t hold a candle to Katya, she was beautiful.
Had been.
Frankie was already saying something, but I couldn’t hear him. The white noise in my ears muffled his voice and made it sound distant when I kicked the door behind me. “Don’t come in.”
“Ales, we need them alive to que-”
The door shut and cut him off, and I turned the lock without looking away from the men.
They must have recognized who I was.
This was what Samantha had meant when she’d hoped Katya wasn’t treated as terribly as Paulina.
There was only one bullet left in my gun, but that was all I needed.
The door thudded wildly as I let loose all the frustrations of Katya’s kidnapping on them. I was holding one of them up by the neck against the wall, lifting him up so his feet were off the ground when the door burst open.
“For fuck’s sake, Ales, we need to find where Katya is. I told you not to kill them.”
The one I was holding up was the only one living, just barely, but I intended to put that to an end soon enough.
“Frankie, get Paulina to a hospital.”
“Fucking shit!” Dom exclaimed behind me. In Russian, he called two men to take her to the hospital soon. “Overdosed her on the drugs too, by the look of it.”
“She’s on her way to a hospital now, Ales, let that one go.”
“Why?” I tilted my head, staring right into the swollen eyes that were leaking blood from the cuts around them and tears. He wasn’t even fighting back anymore. “We have eleven of them alive, one more won’t be missed.”
He sighed. “We have nine alive, you killed the two by the door.”
“Fine. I will allow this one live, but only if he can prove himself useful. How about it?” I smiled at the max choking in my grip. “Tell me where my wife is.”
An hour later, Dom was out, happier than I’d seen him in a while, to gather more men. We’d gotten Maxim’s location and I was going to get Katya back.
My hands were dirty from torturing, and I wiped violently with a handkerchief that would never be white again.
“Aren’t you glad I interfered before you killed him?”
I finished cleaning my hand and trashed the handkerchief. “Relieved more like, but still, thank you.”
Frankie smiled. “Revenge at last?”
I smiled too. My brothers knew me so well.