Page 75 of The Russian's Kidnapped Bride
It’s rapid. Dangerous.
The Lukovs.Mikhail.
Rounds continue to fire, zinging off steel and surely ricocheting in every direction.
My heart is in my throat, and that chaos seems inescapable. Inevitable, even.
The sound of a body slamming against the back wall of the can jolts me to my feet, and I’m up before I even have the chance to process it. There’s shouting in multiple languages—English, Russian, and what sounds like Italian. The gunfire is constant, sounding more like a war than anything else.
Standing there, my whole body sings with adrenaline, and I realize this is it.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
Pushing the pain in my head aside, I move.
My legs shake at first, and I have the balance of a freshly born deer, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t focus on anything else but getting out of there. The rope around my wrists still burns and digs in, but I don’t care. It won’t mean anything if I die here. Or if anything happens to Mikhail and his family because I managed to get caught.
Stumbling out of the shipping container, I squint through the agonizingly bright floodlights, but the moment my eyes adjust, that’s when it all sinks in.
I’m not just hidden behind someone’s safe house or a backwoods property.
No…it’s a scrapyard of some kind. Full of row upon row of old containers. Some are stacked so high that they form a wall.
Pausing on the spot, I glance around while my breath sounds especially loud in my ears.
There’s nobody around the container. No guards waiting to take me out—not with this chaos.
Something in me wants to stay put and to wait it out while I clutch onto the door. I want to hope and pray that Mikhail somehow finds me. Running out there would be suicide with all that gunfire.
But at the same time, I’m even more of a risk as a sitting target. And I need to warn Mikhail. I have to find him.
Before I can lose my nerve, I pull in a big breath and push my way out, breaking into a run.
The yard is seemingly endless, creating a labyrinth of containers beneath the night sky. Trying to create the most difficult path to follow, I weave in and out of them, looking in every direction before hustling forward.
My lungs burn, and my heart feels like it’s about to give out, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Even though I don’t know where I’m going, I know I have to go. I have to push even while my head aches.
Bullets fly somewhere behind me, so close that it sends a ripple of fresh fear through me. Someone yells, and I can’t tell if it’s one of Mikhail’s men or not, and I don’t stop to check.
I keep running, only stopping to catch my breath while I glance around before continuing.
Container after container, I sprint like I know this place, even though I don’t. Even though I’m surely getting lost deeper and deeper in the maze of steel.
My short heels are long gone, as they weren’t even on my feet when I woke up. My soles feel raw from the loose chunks of concrete I run over, but I don’t care. I push through it anyway, moving as fast as I can.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear Mikhail’s voice. First in Russian, then in English. It’s muffled, but it’s him. I know it is.
That’s all the hope I need to run faster. To not give in.
Chapter 26 - Mikhail
The rundown storage yard is an endless sea of steel and winding pathways.
Standing just outside the open gates, our headlights cut through the dark while our men flood in, guns raised and ready for whatever might be ahead. The air is heavy with tension and the acrid smell of rusted metal while we breach the perimeter.
After Nikolai ran the plates and tracked down the vehicle that drove off with my wife, it led us here—a remote lot outside the city that’s both scrapyard and shipping container wasteland.
