Page 137 of No Longer Mine

I ripped the duct tape from his mouth, and his head fell forward as he groaned. “Cristof. Sinclair. He is my boss. He’s holding Scarlett in his apartment in the city.”

“If you talk, I’ll do worse than kill you. I know my name precedes itself.”

That bastard.

The meat tenderizer hit the ground with a loud clank, and I turned on my heel. Don was waiting outside of the warehouse, my car was warmed up and ready. The man screamed as I left, but I didn’t care. Don opened my door for me, ignoring the pleas from inside the building. The man would be lucky if anyone found him before he bled out. I didn’t care. I got what I wanted. I always did.

“Don, we will be paying my parents a visit.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Scarlett

The two menstill guarding me were yelling at each other in rapid-fire Russian. I didn’t know what they were saying, but the clipped words and sharp gestures told me everything I needed to know—it wasn’t good.

The scarred man was gone and hadn’t returned, and neither had Sinclair Cristof. I thought for sure I would have been taken to another facility. That’s what Sinclair originally wanted, but the more they yelled at each other, the more I wondered what was happening.

The younger one—the twitchy one in the hoodie—threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know where an off-the-books place would be!”

Ah. So that’s what they were arguing about.

Sinclair had given them orders. Orders they couldn’t carry out.

It meant they were improvising now. Improvising meant cracks, and cracks meant opportunity.

I exhaled slowly, trying not to draw attention. This might be the one thing working in my favor—if they were stuck here, it gave Dimitri a chance. My heart thudded at the thought of him. I didn’t care if it made me foolish—I wanted him to find me.

I closed my eyes and shivered. I just wanted my clothes back. But I knew better than to ask. That would be an invitation for cruelty— for punishment. It was better to stay silent.

The door slammed open, crashing against the wall. I jumped, instinctively curling in on myself. A new voice filled the space. “We take her to Sinclair’s apartment. There’s nowhere else.” The accent was thick Russian. He didn’t sound like the scarred one, but he wasn’t friendlier either. “Dimitri will find her anywhere else. But he won’t dare come for her in his father’s home. Not there. We’ll have men on every floor. He’ll die before he steps one foot inside.”

A chill deeper than cold settled into my bones. I hoped he was prepared for the fight of his life.

“Time to go,” the man with the thick accent barked, appearing behind me. He hauled me upright, his grip bruising around my arm, and dragged me across the gritty floor. The concrete bit into the soles of my feet—raw from before, now nearly unbearable. Each step was its own kind of torture. I didn’t scream or struggle. Not yet. My time would come.

He shoved me forward without ceremony, and I tumbled into the trunk of a blacked-out SUV. Without my hands to catch myself, my shoulder slammed into the metal floor first, then my cheek. Pain flared hot and immediate, but I bit back the cry rising in my throat. The floor was ice-cold against my skin. The hatch slammed shut behind me with a final, echoing thud.

A second later, the side doors closed, the engine roared to life, and we were speeding away from wherever they’d kept me caged all day.

I strained to hear their voices over the hum of the road, but it was no use. All of it was in Russian—harsh and sharp, layered with tension. They still didn’t sound happy. I wondered if they didn’t like the idea of taking me to the apartment. Or maybe they were just scared.

Good.

If they weren’t afraid yet, I hoped they’d underestimated him—and that he’d destroy them for it. If not him, then me. I wasn’t done fighting. I never would be.

I closed my eyes as my teeth began to chatter. The metal beneath me was like ice, biting into my skin. It wasn’t snowing yet in New York, but it would be soon. Winter was coming faster this year, and I prayed wherever we were going was a lot warmer than the warehouse and the back of this SUV.

The SUV came to a stop, and chaos erupted—sharp voices overlapped in rapid Russian. I strained to make sense of anything, listening for even a hint of English. Nothing.

“Get her out,” someone barked, and the trunk flew open. Cold night air rushed in, biting at my skin as I was hauled from the vehicle and dumped onto my feet in a dim, empty parking garage.

“Bring her up through the maid elevator,” another voice ordered.

Two new men stepped forward and grabbed me under the arms. At least this time, my feet didn’t drag. That was the only mercy.

They shoved me into the elevator. One of them looked down at me with a smirk that made bile rise in my throat. “Think he’ll let me have a sampling?”

The other man rolled his eyes as he jabbed a number into the panel. “He said untouched.”

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