Katya
I was on my guard when I heard the stomping. Angry, fast footsteps marching towards my goddamn cell.
Standing so quickly left me a bit lightheaded, but I was ready for whatever crap Maxim intended to throw at me.
That miserable old woman had said a lot of things maybe in a bid to make me afraid and submissive like an obedient little tramp, but that was not me.
I did not submit to those that were inferior to me. I’d rather die fighting.
Three of them came. One aimed a gun at me, so I slowly raised both my hands in the air while another opened the cell for them to enter.
“Nice to see the Petrenko princess living in shit like a fucking pig,” the one with the gun said in Russian and spat at my feet while his comrades loosened the chain from the bolt on the wall and shoved me forward to get moving.
“Shove a dick down your throat.” I sneered back.
They shoved me to a different room in what I assumed was the underground floor of Maxim’s estate because I hadn’t passed even one window.
When they shut the door, the one with the gun gestured to me. “Strip, princess. Let’s see your royal tits.” The other two guys stood back, laughing lecherously.
“You must be joking.”
He gave me a daring look and smirked. “Then you should start laughing.”
Around the time I became friends with Paulina in high school, I was a fighter.
If somebody so much as said something that pissed me off, I’d be on them with my fists. The constant fighting was how I had gotten better at it.
You only had to throw one bad punch to learn the right way to do it.
With my father, I got into trouble for fighting just once. Around the first time I got into a serious fight during a school vacation.
He’d chewed me out in Russian, not only for starting the fight, but also for not finishing it. For breaking my fingers and needing to get treated at the hospital because of it.
That was when he’d shown me how to throw a proper punch.
One that could dislodge a jaw without making me break my fingers.
I threw punches like a madman, kicking and scratching because they were trying to strip me. Two of the men attacked me, while the third tried to reel me in by the chain leash I was attached to.
My fists connected with their faces and abdomens, but they gained on me, kneeing me in the stomach, and forcing me towards a table. I was already severely wounded, and weak, so they managed to get me in a hold.
With a switchblade, they tore my dress and exposed me to the draft in the grey room.
The one with the chain attached to my collar yanked at it violently, trying to force me on the table.
It was a long battle, but they strapped me down on the cold surface of the table, and I was writhing, tugging at the binds.
“My goodness,” Maxim’s disgusting voice echoed into the room. He was standing by the door. “It was like trying to give a bath to a wild cat. I mean, darling Katya, look at what you did to my men.”
I didn’t bother with a retort. Instead, I calmed down, stayed still, and tried to gather my strength.
There was this feeling that I would need it for whatever Maxim had planned for me.
The men propped the table up, so I wasn’t lying down anymore and was instead forced to get a better view of the ugly room and Maxim.
“No smart words for me Katya? You’ll wound my delicate heart. I’ve always thought you were… fierier… disappointing.”
Before I could even process anything, a needle was buried into my neck.
Then, they set up cameras and tools, arranging different torture weapons on a smaller stand close to where I was propped while the room swam.
“I promised Alessandro a much better episode in this series, as a man of my word, I intend to fulfill it.”
Then he rained punches on me. My jaw, my chest, my stomach. Everywhere. It was as if whatever they had injected me with heightened the pain, or maybe it was because he was mercilessly assaulting old wounds too.
I was out of breath when he took a break, my head hanging as I tried to bring air back into my lungs.
“You know,” as he spoke, I heard the distinct ringing of steel clinking against each other-the tools on the stand. “I think I really wanted to be a doctor when I was a child. That was, of course, before I found my true calling, and maybe also before I realized I didn’t have enough of a brain to be a doctor.”
He came to stand in front of me again, stroking my hair. “Wow, even in a piss cell, your hair still manages its glamour, eh?” Then he dug his fingers in and held my head up. He had a scalpel in his other hand. “How about we play doctor? To help me relive an old dream.” Then, there was a shattering explosion.
Alessandro
Dom was a force of nature, something to be reckoned with. With a talent for causing chaos, he had been the natural fit for his position in the family.
The go-to guy for anything related to knives, guns, bombs, or just plainly killing.
How he’d gotten Maxim’s mansion rigged so quickly was impressive. He knew exactly where to place his premade explosions for maximum effect.
The explosion created the perfect environment for us to invade, raining bullets on everybody on the property.
The explosion told Maxim his life was ticking down to its final seconds.
The mansion was the perfect environment for revenge. People shouting, to retreat, for mercy, shots firing simultaneously. I walked through it all, heading for rooms with closed doors, looking for Katya.
Carmina Farci, our for-hire assassin, appeared beside me as if by magic. Smiling with her mischievous bright hazel eyes.
“The universe has literally delivered this guy right into your hands, no?” I jogged up the stair to the second floor, and she followed me, gesturing at the violence everywhere.
Bullets flying, bodies dropping, weapons clashing. Somewhere close by, we heard Dom laugh maniacally, followed by a loudly shouted prayer. “See? Dom’s always having a good time, and even he is having the best time of his life right now.”
My gun, the same one I’d used in Paulina’s apartment, was silent, loaded, and in my grip. I raised and fired at anybody who tried to interfere with my search as I walked briskly through the mansion, searching for Katya.
A spectacularly foolish man jumped out from a corner with a knife. I caught the hand holding knife without even paying attention and shot a bullet into his forehead, letting him slump to the ground after letting him go.
“I’m trying to find my wife, Carmina, preferably before I lose my damn mind.”
Carmina laughed, skillfully stepping to the side just as somebody using an opened door for cover started to shoot. He only managed to shoot once before he fell, bleeding from the wounds to his heart and head. She had her double guns out.
“If that was all, then you really should be happier. I’m sure there’s an underground level, your search might be more fruitful there.”
I stopped walking and stared at her. “And how would you know this?”
“Shitheads like Maxim Triev are a staple for assassins like me. I must have broken into a million mansions exactly like this one…some of them were actually better than this, the decor here is absolute trash. I can’t explain why their dicks get hard for dungeons in basements, or why they always keep valuable things there. It’s just one of those things, you know.” A wide smile spread across her small face. “You have fun now, Ales, I have to go get some action before this party of yours ends without me.”
Then she was off, running and firing her semi-automatic handguns down the corridor. “You better save some for me, asshole!” she shouted for Dom, wherever he was.
He must have been somewhere close because he answered, “Not in this life Carmina!”
I retraced my steps and went back down, heading for the underground floor.
Assuming it existed.
If Maxim were half as smart as I gave him credit for, he’d know better than to still be here. Whether he had taken Katya with him as a contingency plan or not, if he was here, he was dead.
What I was banking on was that he would try to escape without taking Katya with him.
Carmina was right about the basement. The door leading to it was wide open, and the corridors were empty. Going deeper into it, the noise of the violence above ground was muffled, and it was possibly the quietest place on the property at the moment.
My phone rang at that moment, as I went to the rooms searching. It was Frankie calling.
“I’ve got eyes on Maxim.”
I paused, my heart pounding. “Katya?”
“No, he doesn’t have her with him.” Good. I continued walking.
“Take good care of him, Frankie. Show him some Sorvino hospitality. He’s to be our highly esteemed guest.”
I ended the call and continued combing through the rooms and cells, until finally, I found her in a dank grey room.
Katya was alone, and strapped to a table standing against the wall, half naked and terribly bruised.
Like a dying man, I stumbled into the room, something knotting tightly in my chest.
A camera was set up at the front of the room, pointing right at her. The bruises were many, darkly colored, the cuts were deep in some places. There was a stand beside her, displaying many torture tools, none of which were coated with her blood.
Her head lolled forward, and when I reached her, trying to raise her head up gently by her cheeks, her skin was cold. I checked for her pulse. The draft in the underground level was terrible, but still they’d stripped her until she was almost naked.
Maybe they would have taken this all the way.
Whatever they’d done to her, whatever they would have done to her if we hadn’t come in time, made my blood boil, but I could trust my family to act on it for me.
I had Katya again, and I was going to make sure it stayed that way. Taking one of the many knives on the stand, I cut through the straps that bound Katya to the table, and she fell limp on me.
She was bloody and dirty, but I didn’t care, having her in my arms was the greatest feeling, and for a moment, I held her there, just hugging her.
Just telling myself that I’d gotten her back.
That it wasn’t a dream, and she really was with me again.
I hefted her into my arms and carried her bridal style. She was my Kitten, my Katya, my bride.
Katya
The feeling of somebody touching my body awoke me.
I didn’t open my eyes immediately but steadily regained consciousness. At this point, passing out was almost a routine.
All my life, I hadn’t lost consciousness before, but for the past few weeks, I’ve managed to lose count of how many times I was knocked out.
Trying to sense my environment without exposing that I was awake, I listened and tried to feel.
There were hands on me, wrapping and prodding and applying cool wet substances to places that made me want to suck my teeth. That old witch was here again.
I wasn’t back in that terrible cell. The place didn’t stink like I remembered, but it smelt faintly like medicine and spirit. There was a draft, my face was cold, but the rest of me was warm, except for the places the old woman was treating.
I couldn’t point out where I was, nothing about it struck me as familiar. Not in Maxim’s room or the cell. I was lying on a bed that felt a lot smaller than Maxim’s had been, maybe a different place then.
A working theory was that they kept switching the places they held me hostage so I wouldn’t try to escape, but there was something they had overlooked.
I wasn’t restrained this time. The body ache was a bitch, but there was nothing on my neck, nothing on my wrists, nothing holding down my ankles.
The old woman moved quietly, covering my leg back because she was done treating it and coming back up towards my face level.
I was going to escape this time, and when I came back, it would be with bullets that had Maxim Triev engraved on their sides. She moved, and I risked a peek at her.
Her back was turned to me, wearing white for the first time, that was the first and only thing I noticed before I sprang from the bed and on her.
She would have screamed, but I had her in a headlock, tugging at her throat, so all she managed was a squeak.
I had a strong hold and brought my other hand up to pull at her face hard enough to break her stupid neck. The wounds all over my body were screaming, but this was my chance, and I was determined to go all out.
Before I could snap the old woman’s neck, the door opened and-
“Ales?” It couldn’t have been him…no. Maybe the injuries, hunger, and maltreatment had gotten to my brain and was making me see things. This-
“Katya, let her go,” it was his voice, that rumbling voice that did things to me. “Trust me, ok? You need to calm down and let your nurse go.”
My…what?
Nothing was making any sense, but I trusted him, so I let the old woman go and stepped back.
Blinking, I realized that it wasn’t that batty old woman. This was a younger, frightened, blonde woman in white.
My…nurse.
“Ales?” I called, looking at him with wide eyes. He just stood there while the nurse scrambled out, clutching her neck. “What’s happening?”
“What’s happening is that I have my wife in the hospital, awake after being unconscious for a whole week,”
“A week?”
“After being rescued from being held hostage. When I found you, there was an empty syringe on the ground, and the tests showed you were drugged. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t come in time.”
He came to me, and enveloped me in a bear hug, hands wrapped around me in my hospital gown.
“What are you made of that you could even move like that with all those injuries? Broken ribs, yet the first thing you did after gaining consciousness was to attempt to choke your nurse.”
He drew back and stared down at me.
“If I wasn’t impressed, I’d be a terrible liar.”
It was definitely Ales; his warm body and the charming smile were all the evidence I needed.
“I’ve been here a week,” I said, my mind racing. “We need to go. Paulina and Samantha, they mi-”
“They’re doing well. It’s thanks to them I was able to find you in time.
My friends were ok. I had been afraid Maxim would kill them now that I was gone.
Maxim.
“That’s great. But we have to go. I know where that bastard’s estate is, we should go and get him before he packs up and flees, if he already hasn’t. I made some promises that I’d love to fulfill.”
Alex laughed and drew me closer.
“I know it’s a bit late, Kitten, but I have a wedding gift for you. The very best gift you’ve received in a while, I’m sure.”