Page 57 of Bratva Bastard

Grunting, I turned over, smacking his face. In my defense, I didn’t realize he was right there at the edge of my bed. Glancing at the clock, I groaned, rubbing my eyes.

“It’s fucking 5 a.m., Dimitry. What the fuck do you want?”

He held out the phone, three figures on the screen.

“Gemma?” I asked, suddenly alert as I hopped up, covering my boxers with the blankets. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t give a shit, but that was Dimitry’s wife. “Did you find out anything?”

“I’m at the hotel right now with Ilya and Wanderson,” she said, moving the phone so I could see the setting and people with her. Her bodyguard and the security guard from the hotel. “I figured if anyone could help us, it would be this guy.”

Wanderson said, “Crissy is like a daughter to me. I want to help you find her.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding to Wanderson. He must’ve just started his shift within the hour, judging the difference in the time zones. “Wait, why isn’t Andrei with you?”

Gemma shrugged. “He’s been gone a lot the past few days. I haven’t seen him around much.”

“Gone?” Dimitry asked. “Where the fuck did he go?”

“We can talk about that later. Sorry for waking you, but you have to see this,” Gemma said.

“Don’t be. Wake me up any time you have information on Crissy.”

Gemma breathed out a sigh of relief—that or she had gas again, being pregnant and all. “Then, you’ll be pleased to know, we found something. But you’re not going to like it. It’s bad, Maxim. Really bad.”

I held my breath, preparing myself for the worst. My heart pounded in my chest, so loud that it almost drowned out the others. “Is she…” It was hard to say the word, but I forced it out. “Dead?”

“No, but she was kidnapped. Show him,” she said to Wanderson. She turned the phone to the computer screens, boxes covering multiple screens with various cameras on the hotel’s property.

Wanderson pointed to the date, marking three days prior. “Crissy hadn’t shown up for her shift the last two nights, so we checked the camera for the night before that, to see what happened after she left her shift.”

The screen was paused, the frame frozen, and he maximized it to make it larger. He pressed play, and all I saw was an empty parking lot. There were cars and whatnot, but no people.

“Just past midnight, after Crissy got off her shift.” He clicked to another camera and played a video that showed her leaving the bar, then he cut to a camera on the side, where she was seen walking past the pool.Shit, they must’ve got our romp in the water on camera.Then, he clicked back to the camera in the parking lot.

“Crissy was walking to her car, pulling out her keys, unlocking the door. From the darkness, a man emerged, grabbing her and shoving a cloth to her face. Her body went limp, and he dragged her away.”

I rubbed my eyes, ensuring I’d just seen that correctly. “Fuck,” was all I could say.

“Wait, there’s more. Dimitry, you need to watch this, too.”

The man went back to pick up the keys, and when he bent over his shirt pulled up, revealing a tattoo on the side. But before I could get a good look at the tattoo, a second figure entered the screen, walking up to the man and smacking him in the back of the head, motioning to something off the screen—probably Crissy.

The man turned around, revealing Andrei.

“I fucking knew it!” I shouted. “I knew that son of a bitch was lying.”

Dimitry’s face contorted into an anger I’d never seen. He wanted to kill Andrei with his bare hands. No guns, no Bratva. Just Dimitry’s hands around Andrei’s neck. I knew because I wanted the same. I wanted to watch the life drain from his eyes.

“Go back to when that guy picked up the keys,” he said to Wanderson, who backed up the footage and paused it when the man was bent over. “Can you zoom it in?”

Wanderson zoomed in on the footage and as soon as we saw it, we knew who her abductors were, based on the insignia he wore on his lower back.

“Fucking Sorokin,” Dimitry said under his breath.

“Sorokin?” I shouted. “Fucking Andrei! He’s the backstabbing son of a bitch who’s been working for Sorokin! I say we fly back to Brazil and kill the motherfucker.”

“Maxim, wait,” Gemma said, grabbing my attention. “I know you want to kill Andrei. Trust me, I do, too, but the important thing right now is to find Crissy. She was taken to god knows where, and we need to find her. We can deal with Andrei after.”

Dimitry placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry.I’lltake care of Andrei. We have the perfect solution for a man like him down in the basement. Just leave it to me and Misha. They don’t call Misha the Beast for nothing.”

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