Unwanted Sacrifices (Russkaya Mafiya Book 3) (18 page)

“And my mother?” I grit, snatching up a hammer.

I nod to Viktor and he holds Chek’s other hand still, against a small side table as I drive the hammer down onto the top of his hand.

“Aghhhhh, nyet, nyet, nyet, please,” he sobs, but my hatred only grows with his pathetic tears. He’s hurt probably hundreds of women and yet he can’t stand the discomfort now.

“My mother?”

“Nyet, your mother, the master took her himself. I don’t know what he did to her, only that your sister was left alone to clean for years, and then he brought her to me because he had a buyer.

“And Brenna?”

“Wh-wh-who?”

“The middle one of my little sisters, Brenna. What did you do to her?”

“There was no one named Brenna. I’m sorry. She either didn’t come to me or they changed her name.”

I nod at Viktor again, taking another of Chek’s fingers from the hand I had hammered. He bellows, “I speak the truth! Only the truth! Forgive me, please, forgive m-me.”

“There were three of them!”

“No, Nikoli, I only ever saw two of them, I swear it. I swear, two, one big, one little.”

“Two had blonde hair; one had brownish-red hair like my mother’s.”

“No, I only ever saw the blondes, I promise.”

“And where is Sabrina?”

“I do not know.”

Viktor grabs the hammer and slams it down on Chek’s junk, making the man puke again.

“Errmmm, huhhh-huhhhh-sh-she is with the master, sh-she belongs to Mamama-Minski.”

“Good boy, Chek!” Viktor says jovially and I grab up the torch, slamming the bottle into Chek’s head.

“Where the fuck is this master?” I bellow, but Chek stays silent, his eyes trained on nothing.

Tate turns to me, “I think you broke him, moy brat.”

I can’t reply, only huff out heaving breaths to keep the tears away. I just heard about my family, finally after all of these years, I have some answers and it feels like the world wants to tumble down on me.

These people are sick; I need to find my little pixie.

HOPE

I grip onto Beau’s
hand so tightly it’s probably cutting off his blood supply.

“Where are we going?”

“Shh, keep quiet!” he grumbles.

The hallway’s dim and cold with weak lights placed in sporadic places. As we pass the doors, I notice random supplies outside them, towels, blankets, buckets and others have cleaning supplies and mops propped against the doors. The ones with blankets each have a loaf of bread placed on top and it brings a bad feeling to me. I bet there are people in those rooms. Not just regular people, but women like me who are being tortured and held against their will.

I jerk on Beau’s wrist until he stops. He turns to me in a rush, his eyes wide and mouths, “What?”

“We have to save the others!” Whisper shouting, I point at all the doors.

“We can’t, come on!”

“Beau! We have too, please?”

“I’m not here for them, Sabrina; only you. Many of them can’t even move. We’ll send someone once we’re out of here, you have my word.”

At his promise I nod in agreement and he takes off running down the hall pulling me along again. Even if he doesn’t alert someone, if I’m able to figure out where we are, I’ll definitely be reporting this to the authorities. What these people are doing is not only illegal, it’s vile.

We both hear a noise and he jumps into a little grooved out area tucked into the wall, shoving me in first and placing his body in front of mine. Pain explodes through my back from my wound but I force myself to choke it down.
I need to be brave.
Fortunately, the lighting’s so bad, and with us in all black, we probably blend right in with the dark corner.

Footsteps pass by and I think I hold my breath the longest I’ve ever held it before.

“How do you know where to go?” I poke him and mumble when I’m confident I don’t hear the steps anymore.

“I work here,” he mutters back. I figured that, but it’s still painful actually hearing it come from his mouth. “Come on.”

He tugs me along and we sprint through another hallway. This one has better lighting, and I can almost make out the names on charts hanging beside each door. We pass an open doorway with another guard but he has his back to us and never bothers to check it out if he had heard us running.

It seems like this place goes on for miles and I start to grow tired easily from not getting any exercise or the right amount of vitamins recently. If he’s really here for me like he says, then it makes sense why he kept telling me to concentrate on getting better, but who could he work for? My father perhaps or maybe a different man is trying to kidnap me now? I seriously doubt my father would go to the trouble of hiring someone to find me. I’m pretty confident he’s one of the people who wanted me here in the first place.

“Psst! Which family do you work for?” I mumble and he shakes his head.

“No one! I’m American.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t work for someone; I saw your markings on your hands.”

He shrugs, “I like tattoos.” Suddenly he whips me down another hallway, this one with a white tiled floor and white painted walls. It’s so stark it burns my eyes, causing me to blink a million times taking it in.

A guard rounds the corner, walking towards us, staring at his phone. I stutter to a stop but Beau doesn’t slow down, just grips my hand tighter as he uses his free hand to aim his gun and shoot the man in the head. I shuffle along behind him like a disoriented tail of some sort.

“Holy shit!” I gulp as we pass him by. “Should we just leave him there?”

“Fuck, you’re right, but where would we put him?” He stalls and looks around, stopping at a door in the corner. “Over here! Grab his feet but don’t hurt your back,” he orders, and to my surprise, I listen, and help him as he pulls the body to a door.

He takes out a plain key card, swiping it over a piece of the wall next to the handle. To everyone else it looks like there’s nothing there, but when the key hits a certain area, a blue light shines and the door unlocks.

“Holy crap, where are we?” I grunt as he scoots the guy into the closet.

“Perfectcore.”

“Perfect what? What kind of name is that?”

“I’ll explain it to you later once we’ve gotten out of here.”

“But wait, why are you helping me if you work here?”

“The job was a front so I could find you; my dad got it for me when he asked for my help.”

“Why would your father want me? Oh, wait, was he a buyer?” I gasp, getting upset all over again.

“God no! He’s not a saint by any means, but he wants to make amends for some things he did in his old life. Now stop talking and come on!”

Beau peeks his head out the door and then motions for me to follow once the coast is clear. He doesn’t grab my hand this time and I actually have a chance to get away if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. I think he’s really here to help me, so I plan to stay next to him like white on rice.

We make our way down another hallway. Beau tries to get me to run, but I can’t, I’m too exhausted already.

“I’m so sorry; I’m going to get us caught!” I whine, almost in tears at the notion of having to stay here longer. God knows what Chek will do to me if we get caught.

“It’s okay, and no, you’re not spending another day in this place if I have anything to do about it. Now shush.”

I swear if he shushes me one more time I might attempt to punch him. I may be tired but I’ll muster up what little energy I can to get him to stop that annoying sound.

We hear two men approaching us, speaking Russian and there’s nowhere for us to hide this time. Beau comes to a halt, moving me so that I’m hiding behind him and holds his gun up, ready to shoot. I’m more confident about trusting him now that I see he’s literally put his life in front of me to save mine. Not many men would do that for a woman they don’t know.

Two guys a little bigger than Beau stride down the hallway, but they’re not distracted with their phones like the last guard and notice Beau right away, yelling at him to put his gun down in Russian.

“Nyet.” Beau barks back angrily and shoots. He hits one man and the other guy gets a shot off before Beau is able to kill him as well.

“Fuck, those gunshots are probably going to alert more men; we have to hurry!” he pants, gawking at me with wide hazel eyes.

Nodding, I pull my big girl panties on and push aside the winded feeling I’m experiencing to move my feet as hard and fast as I can to keep up with him. We leave the dead bodies in the middle of the floor where they fell and storm the rest of the way down the hallway.

We turn the corner and are forced to come to a stop. We’re at the very end of the hall and faced with two nondescript white doors.

“One’s an elevator; the other is stairs. We can’t take the elevator. It has cameras and we’ll be stopped the moment they see our masks.”

“All right then, I’ll do my best to follow.”

He swipes his card over the wall again and the door clicks open. We’re through it and barreling down flights of stairs so quickly I feel like I could sit on my butt and slide down. After three floors I have to stop, pulling on Beau.

“I-I’m so-sorry. I can’t go anymore. I feel as if I will pass out, my head…it’s light and dizzy.” I hold my forehead with one hand and grip the railing with the other.

“Can you hold on?”

“Yeah, I believe so.”

“Climb on my back then and I’ll take you down, you just have to hold on, and close your eyes so you can concentrate and not get sick.”

“Sure,” I utter breathlessly.

He steps down a stair and I carefully climb onto his back, wrapping my hands and legs around him as tightly as possible without choking him. I lay my forehead on his strong shoulder, resting my eyes and I start to bounce as he takes the stairs two at a time now without him having to wrench me along.

It hurts as my bones are jostled all over, but it’s better than the torture they put me through in this hellhole. I can tell each time he hits a new landing, as he has to take three regular steps. We get to the fourth and his body comes to a stop, him panting, “All right, climb down.”

I slide over his back, opening my eyes to take in the dark alleyway before us.

“I don’t get it, we were in concrete halls, then all of the stairs, and I didn’t even feel us go through a door.” I glance back and there is indeed a door—a very big, steel door that I should have heard and felt us go through.

“I’m pretty sure when you closed your eyes towards the end you passed out. I had to hold your hands on my neck to keep you balanced.”

“You were holding me?”

“Yeah, if you don’t remember that then you definitely passed out. Your body still has a lot of healing to do. We were in the very middle of that building behind us on the seventh floor.” He points upward. “The owner had a complete level built of concrete to hold you securely—crazy fucker. We still have to hurry, but we should be able to walk quickly now and arrive at my flat before they realize you’re missing.”

“Okay, the sooner we’re away from here, the better.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

We remove our masks and then hold hands like an excited couple hurrying home together so we don’t bring any unwanted attention to us. After a swift ten minute walk we arrive at a plain, brick building with a black side door. We go through it and up a flight of stairs to get to his place.
What is it with foreigners and stairs?

Beau and I arrive inside; the apartment’s only decorations are a few very nondescript essentials. A brown suede couch, coffee table, laptop and pop-up bed.

“Charming,” I slip and he chuckles.

“It served its purpose. We won’t be staying here anyhow.”

“We aren’t?”

“Nope. You lie on the bed and get some rest. I’m going to shower and change. Oh, and whatever you do, do not go out that door. They’ll be looking all over the country for you and I don’t want them finding you when I’ve barely gotten you free.

The pop-up bed and couch look like heaven on earth compared to the concrete floor I’ve been sleeping on. I make myself comfortable on the fluffy couch while he heads down the small hallway.

I must drift off because when I open my eyes, Beau is busily clicking away on the computer in a fresh set of clothes. I’m finally starting to feel a little rested. I’ve been so exhausted and my body hasn’t felt normal at all. With the extra sleep, my mind’s getting quicker and I no longer feel like I have to lie down for long periods to get a little energy.

“Errerrm,” I clear my throat, waking up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting us a jet.”

“A jet? Just who are you and who sent you to find me exactly?”

“Oh yeah, my names Beau. My father, he used to be a part of the Bratva. You’ve probably heard his name before—Victor.”

A gasp escapes me at that name, “Holy shit! Your father? You’re a Masterson?”

“Yes, my father, and no, I go by a different last name.”

“Oh my God! You’re Tate and Viktor’s cousin?” I practically scream and he nods.

At his nod, I leap off the couch and tackle him in a huge hug. “I fucking love your family! Thank you, my God, thank you so much for coming and saving me! Where is my Nikoli?” I ramble excitedly.