Page 130 of Punish Me, Daddy

Without hesitation, he handed it over.

I swiped it open, already punching in the number. My father picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Sloane?”

“I need you to listen to me. Stillwell kidnapped me from my own wedding. Drugged me. Kept me tied to a chair in a goddamn warehouse.”

The other end of the line went dead silent.

I didn’t stop.

“He made sure I knew it was about us—it was about me and you. About Nikolai. And about what we were doing to bring him down.”

He sucked in a breath. “Where are you?”

I turned to Ivan.

“Greeley and Wain,” he said, glancing up. “Old McAllen Freight building.”

I brought the phone back to my ear. “We’re at the McAllen Freight warehouse, Southie. Corner of Greeley and Wain.”

I could hear the sound of my father standing, probably already moving around his office, the quiet scuff of someone shuffling papers in the background.

“I want the cops here in ten minutes,” I said. “No sirens, no cameras. Send the ones on your payroll, the ones who don’t need a warrant to follow an order. He’s alive. The Morozovs will keep him busy until your people get here.”

There was a long pause.

Then my father said, softly, different than I’d ever heard before, “Did he touch you?”

I glanced at Nikolai—who was still holding himself back by the thinnest thread imaginable—and at Stillwell, slumped and pinned between Sergei and Aleksei, still wheezing through what was likely a freshly fractured rib or two.

“No, but given the chance, I think he would have,” I said.

Another beat passed.

“I’ll send them,” he said. “And Sloane?”

I waited.

“Don’t you dare let that bastard get away.”

I ended the call.

Stillwell shifted like he wanted to speak, but Sergei pressed the muzzle of his gun harder against his ribs, and the only thing that came out of the man’s mouth was a hiss of pain.

Good. Becausefuckhim.

I turned back to Nikolai and handed him the phone. He took it, but his eyes stayed locked on me, burning with pride.

“Thisis how we take him down. We run everything we have. Blast him in the headlines. Paint him as the child molester he is and if that isn’t enough,thenwe kill him. But we do it our way. Quietly. An unfortunate accident in prison. An apparent suicide. A fight that goes too far…”

I looked over my shoulder and met Stillwell’s wide bloodshot eyes.

“I’m sure we can get creative when the time comes, maybe draw it out for a while. Painfully.”

That’s when Nikolai stepped forward.

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