Page 59 of The Bratva's Arranged Virgin Bride
Chapter 33 - Nat
I woke up, bumping along uncomfortably, and figured out I was in the trunk of a car. Yes, training. Not that knowing helped me much. My hands were still tightly zip-tied behind my back, but I wasn’t gagged or blindfolded. That was something to be grateful for, but still not very helpful.
Too dazed to panic much yet, I was confused about why Visarrion had knocked me out and stuffed me in a trunk like that. I had only just decided to double-cross him and hadn’t made a single move yet that would make him suspicious of me. But Kolya had told me from the beginning his silent partner was trouble, and meant to make sure he ended up back in Russia where he could take care of him once and for all.
Maybe he somehow got wind of that? I sure didn’t know how, because Kolya wouldn’t have told him, and I certainly didn’t. The man creeped me out even when he was trying to be charming and professional.
No matter how he found out, ultimately, I could only blame myself for ending up in this position. Something like this was exactly why my father wanted to keep me far from a life of crime. Vissarion had to be living under a rock, and if he hadn’t already figured out who I was, I would inform him as soon as we stopped. Whatever he thought he’d get out of kidnapping me couldn’t be worth the torture he’d go through if Papa or my uncles caught up with him. Normally, they were very generous with ransoms, though, and if Vissarion played nice, he might be able to stay on the run for a month or two before they caught up with him.
Either way, I’d be fine, so I tried my best to relax and not freak out. It was a while before we stopped, and I wasn't surehow long I had been out from the punch, so I had no idea where we might be when the car finally stopped. The sound of sand or gravel crunched under the tires instead of smooth pavement, and when the trunk door swung upward, it was pitch black wherever we were.
Despite not being able to see anything except his pale skin as he loomed over me, Vissarion roughly pulled a bag over my head anyway. The air was much colder than a regular, balmy Los Angeles night, so I wondered if we had made it out to the desert. It had been almost morning when we left, so sunrise should be breaking soon, not that I’d get a chance to see my surroundings if the bag stayed on.
I was starting to really dislike this guy, and I’d never been his biggest fan.
After he hoisted me out of the trunk and I was on my feet, he dragged me forward with a firm grip on my upper arm. I’d been curled up on my side on the hard floor of the trunk for so long, my legs swarmed with painful pins and needles, and almost gave out underneath me.
Even as I stumbled and tried to tell him to let my legs come back to life, he only grunted and kept dragging me forward. I heard a door creak open, and once I was through it, he shoved me into a chair. Not a comfortable one, and it rocked precariously under my weight, but at least I wasn’t flat on my face. To my surprise, he cut the zip ties, but then, to my disappointment, he whipped scratchy ropes around my wrists, binding them to the back of the chair. My ankles were next, each one tied to a leg of the chair.
As soon as I was trussed up to his satisfaction, he whipped the bag off my head and snapped on a lone, overhead light. After being in the dark for so long, it blinded me, and Iblinked, trying to make out where I was or if anyone else was with us. It was utterly quiet, so I figured we were alone. Not sure if that was good or bad, though.
“I already know it’s you, Vissarion,” I said before my vision cleared.
“What happened to Mr. Kotlov,Linda?”
Okay, so he knew I wasn’t who Kolya had first told him I was. But did he know I was the daughter of the man who’d hunt him to the ends of the earth and then divide him into tiny pieces in such a way that he’d be alive for most of it?
I gave the place a quick glance. Nothing more than a shack with one other door cracked open to show the shadows of another room, a window that was thickly covered with yellowed newspapers, hardly any furniture except for the chair I was on, another by a folding card table, and a sink in the corner, dripping quietly. Then I turned back to him.
The way he was looking at me gave me the first real shimmer of fear. He knew who I was, but either he didn’t care or… he was happy about it? The glee in his eyes made them almost shimmer with delight.
“Yes, Nataliye, I know who you are,” he said. “I also know you’re in an arranged marriage with Kolya.”
I shrugged as best I could while being bound to the chair. “It’s just an alliance between the families.”
“Is it?”
What did he mean by that, and why was his horrifying grin getting more menacing by the second? I had to contain my rapidly growing fear and make him see the error of his ways, and fast.
“If you know who I am, you must also know you’re not going to live very long if you hurt me. It would be smarter to let me go, disappear, and pretend it never happened, or hurry up and request a ransom. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes looking for me.”
“I’d expect nothing more. I used your phone to tell your husband you needed some time alone, but we both know him well enough that he won’t respect that for long.” Why didn’t my threat scare him? Why did he look more excited, if that was possible? “In fact, I’m counting the minutes until he figures it out.”
Anger threatened to make me say something stupid, so I took a deep breath before I answered. “I told you, it’s just an alliance. You need to worry about my father and my uncles.”
He laughed, sending a chill down my spine. I straightened it, not about to show him how disconcerted his lack of concern made me. It was like he didn’t care at all about how enraged this would make my family. He was solely focused on Kolya. And because of that fact, I felt the need to make sure he didn’t get involved.
“I’m telling you—”
Vissarion sliced his hand in front of my face to silence me. “I admit when I first learned you weren’t just his assistant, I let it go because I thought it was just an alliance. I thought he was using you to gain power over your family, and therefore, you wouldn’t be of any use to me. But the raid I set up on your uncle’s property earlier showed me otherwise.”
“What are you talking about?” I hissed, worried about my uncles, but also hoping he’d keep talking so I could start to wriggle my arms free little by little.
“Oh, he jumped right in, fought with them side by side. I lost a lot of very good lackeys in the whole experiment, but it taught me what I needed to know.”
“And?” I asked, wincing against the rope burn on my wrists. I still moved them slowly and methodically, trying to loosen the knots.
“Kolya has never felt the need to prove himself to anyone, not even his own brother,” he said.
