Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
The good news was that I was still dressed. The bad news––my wrists were secured with plastic ties behind my back. Without the use of my arms it was a struggle to sit up. My shoulders were burning, burning with the intensity of a thousand suns. I must have had my arms bound for some time. On the other hand I hadn’t lost feeling in them yet, the blood supply wasn’t totally cut off so there was your silver lining. It was also cold, so cold the tip of my nose felt frozen.
Someone moaned behind me. With great effort, I turned my aching head and found Emilia lying on her side, close to the wall. Dirty, bruised, ankles and wrist bound by the same plastic ties as mine. My heart sank even further into despair. Scooting on my rear end, I turned my body and did a crab crawl over to her.
“Emilia.” Her eyes fluttered. “Emilia wake up. Open your eyes. It’s me, Vera,” I begged, my voice rising, my composure slowly but surely unraveling.
Her eyes blinked open. What seemed like an eternity later, she finally focused on me and said, “Vera?” I could tell from the dilated pupils that she’d been drugged too––with what, was anyone’s guess.
“Good. You’re awake.” Entering through a door at the other end of the room were three men. The first one was no surprise, Yuri. The second made my blood run colder than it already was, muscle man. But the last, the last was the one that held my attention. My blood went from ice cold to fire hot in a blink of the eye.
“How could you?”
His dark eyes met mine for only a moment. He diverted his gaze, staring at anything other than me. His hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, he rocked back and forth on his boots.
“Look at me, you bastard! Look at what you’ve done!” I don’t know where I found the strength to scream so loud.
“Shouting, shouting, shouting,” Yuri very calmly said. “I don’t like it.” His English was perfect again.
My eyes zeroed in on Yuri. “You hadn’t seen her, right? If you ever cared for her, even a little, get her some medical attention.” Considering the circumstances, begging him was not beneath me. I was no naive princess. I was acutely aware that there was a very good chance I wasn’t going to get out of this alive. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to beg them to spare Emilia’s.
Yuri cocked his head. “You poisoned her mind against me. She wasn’t the same. She was going to run away with the boy, the bartender.”
Stefan.
I sucked in a breath. As each piece of the puzzle came together, my fear grew proportionally larger. My body shuddered from the cold, mostly though from the knowledge that Stefan was probably already dead and buried.
“Why am I here? If you plan on holding me for ransom, you’ll be sorely disappointed. My husband and I are separated. I don’t think he’ll even notice me missing.”
“She’s lying. He cares. He cares quite a bit. I saw it myself.”
“You disgusting piece of shit.”
“Enough––” Yuri interrupted. He was about to speak again when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he motioned to muscle man, and they both walked back out the same way they came in. Only one man left in the room. Alek.
Chapter Thirty
“They were going to kill me.”
I looked up into supplicating eyes, his expression full of regret. Faithless coward. This was the first time in my life I could say that I was sorry I had been right all along. I shifted my sore legs, flexed my foot, and felt it. The small knife was still tucked into my boot. Stupid, stupid men. It never occurred to them that I may have been carrying a weapon. Now all I needed was the use of my arms.
“I can’t feel my arms anymore, Alek. You have to cut these ties…please.” Plan A was kill him with kindness and understanding, appeal to his ego. Plan B was…there was no plan B.
“I can’t, Zogu. They’ll kill me.” The sound of the Albanian term of endearment––a pet name that he knew my father always used––launched me into an indescribable rage. Had my hands been free, I could’ve plunged the paring knife into his neck at that moment. I did my best to tamp down the anger.
“Why would they kill you? What did you do?” The words were forced out between a tight lipped grimace.
“Loans…” He looked like he wanted to say more but stopped. This was a game I had to play very carefully. Alek’s true weakness was his arrogance. He dazzled me when I was a stupid young girl, easily taken in by a few big words and a pretty face. As a woman, I saw him for what he truly was––a narcissist through and through. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to showcase his brilliance. I waited patiently until he spoke again of his own accord. “I borrowed against our money.”