Page 15 of The Bratva's Weakness

We hop into my fleet of black SUVs and race the few miles to Katie’s house. When we pull up, I see the Mercedes I told Allie to use parked out front. I breathe a sigh of relief, hoping that means she just lost track of time with her friend.

I approach the front door, and it’s immediately opened by a red-haired woman dressed in scrubs and looking like she has been crying.

“Oh my god, are you James?” she asks, her voice quaking with each word.

“Yes. Katie?” I ask and she nods.

“Allie came over her to tell me all about you this morning, and I asked her to lock up because I had to run to work. I had just pulled into the hospital when I checked my doorbell alerts and saw her being knocked out by some man in a mask. I rushed back here as quickly as I could. I was just about to call the cops.”

“No cops.” These fuckers were mine to deal with. “Can you show me the footage of her being taken?” I ask and she nods, pulling out her phone and replaying the scene. I see Allie plugging a combination into the door lock, and my chest tightens when I see a masked man walk up behind her, knocking her on the head with the butt of his gun. A moment later, a silver van pulls into the driveway and I immediately know how to find these fuckers. The idiots didn’t even bother to cover their license plate, fucking useless.

“Can you send this to me?” I ask Katie. She says yes and I rattle off my phone number before quickly dialing the head of my security team. He’s former FBI and no stranger to pulling plate numbers. He sends me an address along with pictures of the warehouse the van is registered to. I know then and there that’s where they’ve taken Allie.

As I’m turning to leave, Katie stops me.

“Jim… my brother, I think he’s caught up in something shady. He’s who Allie was supposed to pick up from the airport the other day, when she accidentally kidnapped you. But it was weird, he didn’t even seem upset to not have a ride when I toldhim what happened. He seemed almost relieved?” She pauses before swallowing and continuing. “I’m not sure if this means anything to you, but he was on a ‘business trip,’” she puts the words in air quotes, “to Colombia and has been acting so shady ever since he got back, just total silence which is very unlike him. I’m worried.”

Fuck, if he was coming back from Colombia he could very well be involved in all of this.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say to Katie, not wanting to confirm her suspicions in case I’m wrong. “I’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.” She nods, and I jump back into the SUV, once more racing to my find my girl.

Chapter Nine

Allie

Please let James get here soon. I need him.

Those thoughts keep racing through my mind as the door finally creaks open. The man who enters looks vaguely familiar to me and I can’t quite place him until he comes closer, and I notice the eyes that match his sister’s perfectly.Jim.

My stomach drops, but I try to hide the recognition from my face. I fail instantly. He catches the look of knowing and stops in front of me.

“I guess you know who I am, huh, Allie?” he asks, his voice deeper and more menacing than I was expecting.How can someone like this be related to someone as sweet and wonderful as Katie?

“Yes, Jim,” I sneer back at him, not wanting him to catch even a whiff of my fear.

“To think, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t got mixed up at the airport. A shame really, considering I saw you right outside. But as soon as I saw you go up tohimI knew I had to watch it play out. When his driver showed up to pick me up after you’d taken off, I thought there was no way I could be that lucky.”

He looks down at me with a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes, and I’m suddenly quite scared of him. But I can’t let him see that, can’t let him see even a second of vulnerability from me.

“But I was,” he continues, “and my luck didn’t run out there. When I asked the driver for O’Connor’s address to “thank him” for the ride, he gave it out willingly—O’Connor may want to look into getting rid of him if he’s so concerned with security, by the way—and when I pulled up later that night, I was shocked to see the blonde my sister described was still there. That’s when I knew we had some leverage in this deal.”

I gasp at the revelation; no wonder the gem deal was causing James so many issues.

“How did you even get involved in this?” I ask him. I remember Katie mentioning he does something in finance, but I’m finding that hard to believe at the moment.

“My company handles the deals of several, shall we call them, elite enterprises. I was dispatched to help with the gem deal in Colombia when the team there determined they would be able to get a better end of the cut. My one goal was to work your little boyfriend to get him to pay more byany means necessary.So here you are, Allie.”

I hate the way my name sounds on his tongue. He is vile and money hungry and everything wrong with this world. I hate that my mistake has led us here, but I’m happier than ever that I picked up my James instead of this asshole.

“Now,” he says after a moment, “why don’t you tell me why exactly his family needs access to these gems?”

I remain silent, suddenly feeling very glad that James never told me the full details of the gem deal because I can’t even feel tempted to tell this asshole anything.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Allie. It’s up to you,” he says, stepping even closer to me. I notice then that his hands are wrapped in black gloves and a shiver of fear courses through me.

“Come on, Allie, a beautiful woman like you should have no trouble getting men to spill their secrets.” He strokes a glove covered hand down the side of my face and I’m instantly repulsed by his touch. I lean back. His lips curl in disdain as he leans closer, his hand starting to move lower.

I rear back before his hand can wander further and do the one thing I can think of to get him out of my face—I spit right into his eyes. He jerks back as my saliva hits him, letting out a laugh that doesn’t have a hint of humor in it before wiping the spit away.

---