Page 9 of The Enemy's Defector
“Let’s drag them to the closet, and I’ll figure out how to have Malcolm assist me,” Joann said, grabbing the dead guard’s hand.
I took the other one, following suit to slide the corpse out of the hallway and into one of the rooms. I didn’t want to pass the buck and expect Joann to handle cleaning this mess up. Malcolm, the butler, would likely do it all, another good man who didn’t appreciate Anton being in charge. But I couldn’t be here. Killing Anton’s men promised that I’d be a wanted woman now. He’d want me dead. He’d scorn me for the damage done.
And it was that fear, that dread, that prompted me to help Joann stash these dead bodies as quickly as we could before I’d flee into the night and never look back.
4
NIKOLAI
Iwas moved again.
From one place to another, I was relocated so I wouldn’t mark a routine or begin to guess where I was.
The only difference about this torture chamber was my attacker’s identity. Unlike all the other times I was near my captors—who rotated and changed up so I wouldn’t be able to familiarize myself with any of them—I saw this man’s face. He didn’t don a mask like all the others did. He wasn’t trying to hide his head or hair or anything else about him.
Nothing particularly stood out about him as he stalked me in slow circles. There wasn’t anything unique about his ugly face, twisted with a scowl or curved in a smug smirk.
As I sat in a chair and tried to breathe through the pain ripping through my body from his hits, I struggled to place him.
And I couldn’t.
“You think you’re tough, huh?” he taunted, wiping sweat from his brow.
Wherever this place was, the heat was a factor to intimidate me. I was sweating in this sweltering room, so hot and dehydrated that I felt practically desperate for water.
Just a little longer.
Endure it.
Tough it out. Breathe through it and take it.
You can do this.
I blinked, wishing the sting of sweat in my eyes wouldn’t inhibit me from seeing this asshole better and clearer. I wasn’t sure I ever knew his name. But something about him was vaguely familiar, enough to make me wonder where I’d seen him before.
Because I had.
I’d been in this godawful, overheated room for too many hours to think straight. Maybe it was a trick. An illusion. Maybe I’d never seen him before and was just so eager to grasp at any familiarity now.
“You think you’re just a tough guy.” He charged again, ramming his fist into my face and chest with a brutal battery I had to tense and brace for.
I could slip out. I could lose this farce of being tied up. Whoever this asshole was, he didn’t realize I’d been trained in evading capture and getting out of bonds.
So, yeah. I was fucking tough to sit here and let myself be used as a punching bag. I wouldn’t tell him that, though.
Just a little longer.
The more he taunted me and talked, the more I might recall where I’d seen him before. The longer he spoke, the better my chances of a memory lighting up and making a connection. I was after intel, and if tolerating this asshole’s beating would get me answers of any kind, I’d do it.
“Not gonna say anything?” he teased as he paced back and forth.
“Nothing to say,” I replied dryly. Giving him the satisfaction of a reply wasn’t my goal, but speaking was an exercise of usingmy voice. It’d been so long since I’d spoken, I wanted to see if it still worked. If my jaw could take that movement.
Besides, that was the fucking truth. For all his postering and looking like some kind of badass torturer, he wasn’t asking me anything. There was no interrogation happening. He didn’t inquire about anything at all. Just this taunting bullshit that made some men feel bigger and better about themselves. It took a certain kind of fool to beat a tied up man just to feel like an Alpha. If that was how he got off on torture, whatever. I only had to place him—if I could.
The fact that he didn’t ask me anything further confused me. Not once, since I was taken, did any contractors or soldiers or fucking anyone ask me about something the enemy might want. They’d clearly targeted me because I was an Ivanov. That was obvious. But they weren’t treating me like a usual hostage. Whoever had put out the order for me to be taken wasn’t interested in beating secrets and intel out of me.
So, what’s the purpose?
