Page 144 of Captive Audience
“I tried. Got hit. Leg’s a mess.”
I clawed at my hair. Rage. Panic. Not enough air in the room.
Less than an hour ago, I’d told Asha I loved her. The words had slipped out and caught me off guard, but I’d meant them. Now, they felt like a curse.
Because an enemy had her.
And I knew what they’d do. They’d hurt her to hurt me. The very thing I’d tried to protect Asha from and my worst fucking nightmare all rolled into one.
I had to find her.
“Where?” I snapped.
“Fifth Street tunnel. North end.”
“Hold tight. We’re coming.”
I was already moving. Heart pounding, vision narrowing.
Tonight, three Russians would die.
I’d carve them down to bone and make sure the last thing they saw was my face.
53
ASHA
Iwoke slumped forward, chin on my chest, neck aching. My wrists were taped to the arms of a wooden chair. My mouth was dry as ash, and my head pulsed with a dull, nauseating throb.
Moonlight spilled through a grimy window, cutting pale stripes across the room. Graffiti marked the decaying walls. Rusty pipes hung from the stained ceiling. The air stank of piss, animal droppings, and mold. Men’s voices echoed in the building, too far away for me to make out any words. A handheld radio crackled outside.
This must be an abandoned industrial building, unused for decades, if I had to guess.
My foggy mind clawed at fragments of memory.
Drinks with the girls. Rook showing up. Feeling dizzy, then…nothing. Blackout. Which meant I’d been drugged.
I flexed uselessly against the tape. My dress was filthy, my feet bare. Each shallow breath turned to mist in the cold, damp room. Whoever had taken me didn’t care if I froze.
No sign of Daisy or Beth. I prayed they’d gotten away.
Dammit, Rook had been right. Every single warning, every argument about my safety. He’d been trying to protect me, and I’d been too stubborn to take him seriously.
Our last conversation replayed in my head—Rook telling me he loved me. The raw truth in his voice had been impossible to deny. And now, all I wanted was to be back in his arms, the onlyplace I’d ever felt completely safe. He must be going out of his mind with worry. Was probably tearing the city apart this very minute to find me.
And he would find me. Unless?—
No. Rook was alive. He had to be.
I wasn’t willing to picture a world without my gangster in it.
Men’s voices came from outside. Harsh, Slavic. Russian? Or Belarusian? I was no linguist, but I imagined those languages sounded similar. I cursed the ogre gang, because they had to be in on this.
The door opened, and two men ducked inside.
One was mid-twenties, beefy, and blond.
The other was older, taller, with close-cropped steel-gray hair and a thick scar through his eyebrow. He wore a fur-lined leather coat over black tactical gear. The red hammer-and-sickle tattoo on his neck had faded with age. He was the kind of man you didn’t mistake for a soldier. He was the one giving the orders.
