Page 96 of Sapphire

I open the door and am almost bowled over by Nikolai and his crew. I can see the look in his eyes, and it stops me in my tracks.

He looks at where Reece is snoring soundly and back to me. “We have to go.” He grabs my arms.

“No, I’m not going anywhere.” I try to dig my heels in.

Then I feel it, the aching pain of being punched in the gut, and I let out a blood-curdling scream and nearly fold over on myself.

“You don’t have a fucking choice,” Nikolai spits in my face as he nearly breaks my arm pulling me out of the room.

“What’s going on?” I’m worried that they know about my phone call. “Where’s Gracie?”

They ignore me. I kick and thrash in Nikolai’s grip until Dmitri takes the butt of his shotgun, hits me in the head, and everything goes black.

* * *

Fuck, my head hurts. It feels like it’s going to explode at any moment. I groggily open my eyes and try to look around the dark space. Where the hell am I?

“You’re awake.”

Gracie’s voice filters through the darkness.

I try to sit up, but my head is spinning.

“Don’t move,” she tells me.

“What happened?”

“The police raided the palace,” Jet answers.

My body stiffens. “And where are we? Have we been saved?”

The girls all look at me.

I force myself to look around, and my stomach sinks. We’re in a van again. We haven’t been saved. Mateo and Tomas have lost me. I start crying, sobbing, heart-rending sobs. We’ve lost our only chance.

Gracie pulls me against her as she tries to calm me down, but I lose it, all the hope that I had that we could escape has gone. I’m going to die in this place, and they are never going to find my body. They are going to keep looking for me, but I will already be dead.

“Now is not the time to give up,” Ruby whispers.

“We know it was you,” Jade adds.

Looking up through my swollen eyes at the beautiful faces of my captured sisters, I see the hope they have when they look at me.

“I’m sorry I failed.”

“No, you didn’t, all those men have probably been arrested. A big dent has been made in Nikolai’s operation,” Pearl says in her perfect English accent.

“I don’t think I have any fight left in me. You know, if they find out it was me, they’re going to kill me. Nikolai will kill me.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Gracie tries to reassure me.

I really want to believe her, but I think this time I have run out of chances.

We spend the rest of the trip in silence all lost in our thoughts.

Eventually, we stop, the van doors open, and the guards pull us out.

“Sapphire!” I hear my name being called.

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