Taking Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 1)

by Wild, Nikki

  “The letter,” I suddenly acknowledged. “You sent the letter after all, didn’t you?”

  Hannah merely smiled.

  “So smart you are,” she replied condescendingly. “It was an easy way to slide back into your life… I knew that you’d be preoccupied with trying to figure that shit out out, and it would keep you from asking questions when I needed to get close…

  “A lot of things were me, Hunter,” my sister chuckled menacingly. “All seemingly random, scattered pieces that distracted and occupied you, helping me drive Sarah towards chasing the case… I needed you in California. I couldn’t have done this without you, brother…”

  “Hannah,” I growled. “You could have asked me for your help and I’d have given it. I need to know why you pulled all of this bullshit.”

  “Why?” She laughed. The sound sent goosebumps trailing across my skin. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why…

  “It was because of you.”

  I didn’t – couldn’t – understand the logic.

  “Hannah… what happened to you?” I pleaded, desperate to find out what happened to my beloved older sister. “I signed my life into servitude to save you… I broke into another country and assaulted a sex-trafficking cartel to pull you out of Hell… why the fuck are you doing this?”

  The eyes that fixated on my gaze belonged to my sister, but the burning hatred behind them spoke of something else… something darker inside her, uncoiling near the surface.

  “I never asked to be saved, Hunter.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

  Her lips curled into a smile that inspired a level of fear I hadn’t felt in ages. “I am serious, little brother,” she cooed mockingly. “You think you know everything… But you don’t even know what you fucking did to me.”

  The tension in my body released. I wondered how long I had been holding my breath.

  “When I was kidnapped by those Mexican fucks, they wasted no time in sedating me. I spent most of my time barely functioning, handcuffed to a bed in a filthy fucking house with only a bedpan for company. They used me for their own pleasure. They did things to me that you could never imagine…”

  “I remember,” I agreed, closing my eyes to relive that painful memory – something I never allowed to focus on. “That’s how we found you.”

  “Right,” she continued, “but you weren’t supposed to find me. Did it even occur to you that I might be right where I wanted to be, Hunter?”

  “What?”

  “They had a very special guest coming… someone who could supply them with the weaponry needed to expand their operations. They were funneling all their money from the sex trade into this single deal…”

  “…Soroka Sarkonov,” I realized aloud.

  “No, Hunter. A competitor. A dangerous man who desperately needed to die… Someone who stood on the wrong side of Soroka Sarkonov.”

  “You were there to fucking kill someone? We found you half drugged out of your damn mind Hannah. They were going to sell you to the highest bidder!” I shouted angrily.

  “Exactly. And the special guest was the highest bidder. I was going to be inside the deepest reaches of his organization, picking him apart piece by fucking piece… This was my one chance to get close to the asshole, and I gave up my fucking dignity to do it! I gave up everything!

  “You can guess what happened next.”

  “…We came in and wrecked the place,” I answered. “I rode down there and saved your ass.”

  “You kidnapped me from my future, Hunter. You let my biggest competitor live, and focused all your attention on a piss-ant little cartel. Do you have any fucking idea how many people died because of what you did? Friends, associates, business relationships scattered to the wind… The man I was going to kill has done terrible things that I could have stopped! It took me years to get back what you’d taken from me. Years to strike back at my enemies…”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my mind swimming.

  “I’m talking about death and destruction, Hunter. I’m talking about the men I’ve so carefully destroyed in the years since your little rescue effort. I’m talking about the men who fear me… the ones who respect me… I’m talking about the men who shake in their fucking boots when someone speaks my name,” Hannah replied viciously.

  “No,” I whispered. “No, it… it can’t be…”

  “In your misguided fucking generosity, you destroyed my life once, but I won’t let you make the same mistake twice, Hunter…”

  Hannah stepped forward from the deepest shadows, but it wasn’t my sister standing here. Yes, it was her face, her features, her voice… But the girl I thought I knew was nowhere inside this woman.

  How long had she been hiding her true identity?

  How long had my sister been keeping this from me?

  The low light made her silhouette into a shifting creature. A clutching fear grasped at my heart as I sensed nothing but malice in her predatory approach…

  Hannah stepped forward again, sending chills down my spine. The woman who I had known as Hannah Hargreaves, my entire life, but who had been living an ominous double-life stretching back more than a decade…

  “Thank you for helping to find my box, dearest brother,” came the wicked voice of Soroka Sarkonov. “Now, get out of my fucking way.”

  Sarah

  Everyone in sight seemed shocked at the revelation, and it was easy to see why. Hunter’s sister wasn’t some victim hiding for all these years… She’d been running one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world!

  Hannah was Soroka Sarkonov!

  But… HOW?

  “What is in that box, Hannah?” Hunter asked, his face still stricken with a confused and angry look.

  “Pure vengeance, Hunter… A Dong Feng 31A. China’s finest three-stage ballistic missile. Three hundred kilotons of nuclear hellfire. This weapon is going to allow me to put an end to my competition once and for all…”

  “What in the hell are you going to do, Hannah? Blow them all up? These kinds of people don’t live in the middle of fucking nowhere. You’re talking about detonating a nuclear bomb in a fucking city!” Hunter replied angrily.

  “I’m talking about sacrifice! You have no idea what this man is planning. You have no idea what he is capable of. A few innocent lives are a price I’m willing to pay.”

  Hannah almost looked as if she had a spark of happiness beneath her restrained exterior, but she managed to keep it contained.

  I felt sick. My stomach was turning as I struggled against my bindings. I needed to get free. Hunter had a gun, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to get to use it…

  Hannah seemed to notice this.

  “Relax, Sarah. Take it easy,” she said, moving closer. The gun was still trained straight at my head as Hannah pulled a knife from her belt with her free hand. I gasped as she brought it up between my hands, cutting them free before bending down and doing the same to the tape wrapped around my ankles.

  “She’s lucky to be alive, you know… I could have left her with Talon, and I don’t think she’d still be in one piece, little brother…”

  As Sarah stood back up, she wasn’t aiming her gun at me anymore. She was aiming it squarely at Hunter. In the distance, the thrumming sounds of a helicopter began to reach my ears.

  “I’m willing to let you have your precious girlfriend back,” she laughed wickedly. “And I’m not even going to make her beg for her life anymore.”

  I fought the swirling nausea inside.

  “Think about Sarah,” our enemy told him darkly, smiling viciously. “Think about your unborn baby.”

  “There’s nowhere to go, Hannah. You’re not driving out of here,” Hunter shouted, the low thump of the helicopter slowly building in intensity.

  “I have no intent of driving,” she replied, casting her eyes to the sky. The faint outline of something big was moving our way. It didn’t take me long to realize it was
some kind of heavy lifter.

  “You can’t let her do this!” I shouted, but I was immediately silenced as Hannah smacked me hard across the face. Pain seared my cheek, and the uncoiling nausea rose. I knew the rosy outline of her hand would be visible for hours.

  “You have no choice, Hunter. You ruined my life once, and I won’t let you do it again,” Hannah said, returning the knife to her belt and pulling a different object from her pocket. This one was a small grey lump of plastic. I recognized it immediately as some kind of old style cellphone, and I watched in horror as she flipped it open.

  “One press of this button, and I send us all to hell – you, me, your woman, your baby, and all of your fucking Dragons hiding around us.

  “One tiny little slip of my thumb, and everything you’ve worked for is gone, just like what you did to me in Mexico. My only regret is that you wouldn’t live to see it.

  “Now back the fuck off!”

  My eyes were locked on the phone as I hyperventilated. Maybe it was a mother’s instinct to protect her child… Maybe it was just being a goddamned idiot. With my hands and feet free, I quickly thrust myself forward, smashing into Hannah’s arm and sending the phone flying.

  “H-Hunter,” I gasped as Hannah spun, letting my own momentum send me sprawling to the ground. She followed me down, grasping at my hair as we tumbled.

  She was trying to bring the gun up against me, but I struggled with strength only adrenaline could provide.

  My hands were clawing and grasping, pushing her wrist aside just in time to hear a shot ringing out just inches away from my face. A piercing, ringing deafness hit my ears. Dirt scattered against my cheek as she fired again, my whole body rolling and bringing her gun hand awkwardly down against the ground.

  The gun twisted from her grasp, and I could barely make out the distant, sickening crack of her finger as the trigger guard bent it backward and sideways.

  “You fucking bitch!” she screamed, pulling her hand free, her index finger pointing in the completely wrong direction. Seconds seemed like eternity as the sound of Hunter’s boots on the ground became distantly louder.

  Hannah was bringing an elbow down hard against my face, a scream of pure vicious anger coming from her mouth… only to be cut off suddenly as the darkness became blindingly bright.

  I rolled, my eyes trying to adjust to the blinding light that was sweeping across the ground. The roar of the helicopter throbbed over the ringing sound in my ears.

  And that’s when all hell broke loose.

  Machine gun fire rang out in the night, and I watched in horror as bullets began slamming into the earth, cutting me off from Hunter and the rest of the Devil’s Dragons. Return fire exploded from all around us. With no shadows left to hide in, Hunter’s club was firing wildly at the huge machine hovering above us.

  I was in a battle for my life, and the whole world was exploding around me.

  I couldn’t stop.

  I head to survive for the sake of my baby.

  Fueled by endorphins, I drove a fist into Hannah’s side, my hands moving to block her return blows. I had some self-defense training from the police academy, but this woman was on a completely different level. She expertly picked apart my attack, blocking three punches before smashing my head straight back down into the earth.

  Dizziness washed over me as my eyes went blurry.

  Hannah’s grip loosened as she pulled herself away from me. She was scrambling against the dirt, her knee driving painfully into my chest as a parting gift. I didn’t have time to react as the blinding light that bathed us suddenly rolled away. I gazed to the sky again, watching as the spotlight spun upward, the huge beast of a flying machine rolling unnaturally toward the hillside.

  “It’s going down!” I heard one of the Dragons shout as I spun back around toward Hannah. She was pulling herself to her feet, and even with the world spinning around me, I could spot the telltale grey lump held tightly in her hand.

  The phone!

  THE BOMB!

  My body was on autopilot, fingers clawing the ground and desperately trying to put distance between the container and myself…

  Coming to rest against something that didn’t belong…

  Something hard, something metal, something my mind had been intimately conditioned to recognize and use on instinct from my time served on the force…

  “It’s over, little brother! Tell your men to stand down!” Hannah screamed, her voice punctuated by the horrific sound of the huge helicopter slamming into the ground a few hundred yards away.

  The mighty blades swung and obliterated themselves against the mountainside, before being consumed by an explosion that lit the night sky.

  The gunfire had ceased, but my ears were still ringing loudly. Hannah crossed the distance between us, reaching down and grasping me by the hair with her still intact left hand. My fingertips curled around the small but remarkably heavy object beneath me, the dangerous lines of the weapon so very familiar.

  I knew the weapon by feel alone.

  It was a Glock 19.

  The same handgun I was issued when I first joined the force. Efficient. Reliable. Deadly. I’d fired thousands of rounds from a gun just like this one, and as my scalp screamed out in pain, my hand was tingling in anticipation.

  “You’re not driving out of here, Hannah. You’re not going anywhere!” Hunter replied, his voice full of obvious pain. My heart screamed out and my body recoiled as Hannah tugged at my hair again, lifting my chest up from the ground and twisting my neck in an unnatural direction.

  “My patience is over!” She screamed out. “I am getting in that fucking truck, and now… Now, I’m taking your girlfriend and your unborn goddamn brat with me... You move a muscle and I’ll break her fucking neck. You come near me and I’ll blow us all to fucking hell!”

  I felt her anger swell as she yanked my hair a little harder. Furious, animalistic rage had overcome this woman who had seemed so badass at first, so vested in the interest of my pregnancy and my place in Hunter’s life…

  “You stupid, goddamn idiots!” She continued to snarl. “I gave you – both of you – a fucking chance to get out of this shit unscathed, and you wasted it! I was going to let all of you goddamn walk away from this!”

  “Hannah, you’re my sister!” Hunter shouted out to her over the burning wreckage nearby. “We could have worked together! I would have helped you! I would have went to the ends of the fucking Earth for you!”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” She replied with unhinged laughter. “Hannah is dead, Hunter. Your older sister as you knew her died a long time ago, and you’re just too stupid to see it.

  “I won’t let you stop me again. I won’t let any of you stop me. I’m going to save lives. Millions of fucking lives!” Hannah screamed. “I’m going to be a hero! You think I’m dangerous? You don’t know the people I’m fighting! You could never understand the bigger picture of what I’m doing!”

  “I’m… I’m sorry, Hannah,” I murmured.

  Hannah pulled at my hair a bit harder, looking down and catching my gaze. My hand came up from beneath me, and I pulled the trigger. A gunshot rang out as Hannah’s hand unwove itself from my hair.

  And then everything went completely black.

  Sarah

  I was falling, tumbling, rolling down a dark and empty abyss. Everything felt hazy and foggy, and I could barely stand the idea of even opening my eyes. My arms and legs were sluggish, my breathing was heavy, but I knew that I had to go back.

  I had to see Hunter again.

  Forcing my eyes gradually open, I abandoned that dark pit in my head. As painful light started to filter in, I murmured, moving to slowly cover my face.

  “Sarah? Princess?”

  That voice…

  Hunter.

  My eyes snapped open, and I gasped a deep breath of air. I felt strong hands on me and I fought them, barely able to rein myself in as I started to burst into uncontrollable tears.

  “Babe
, I’m here, it’s okay…”

  It was his voice.

  My rapid heartbeat began to settle, and I stopped trying to shove him off of me as I broke down in my darling Hunter’s rugged, warm embrace.

  As I started to pull myself together, I realized that I was in a hospital. Some tubes were connected to me, some of which I’d dislodged in my frantic panic attack.

  There was someone else here now, a nurse. She was talking to Hunter, looking at me in concern. He was saying things to her…

  Don’t let them take him away from me.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she left the room, and Hunter returned his attention to cradling me and running his fingers through my hair. I stared up, taking notice of the bandages wrapping his shoulder tightly.

  A few minutes later, the nurse returned with a doctor, and they reconnected the tubes and monitored my vital signs before trying to speak to me. I could barely understand their questions, but Hunter helped. The doctor jotted down some answers on a clipboard, looking stern and unhelpful, but he eventually left after speaking to us about something that sounded serious.

  “What was that about?” I asked when the two of them had left us alone.

  Hunter sighed heavily.

  “You suffered some pretty strong trauma there, Princess,” he told me. “Do you remember anything from last night?”

  “Last… night?” I did remember something.

  A dangerous woman who could have killed us all…

  A blinding light from the Heavens…

  Hunter, trying to reach me…

  My head began to sharply hurt again, and I clutched it in my hands. “It hurts, Hunter…”

  “I know, Princess,” he told me tenderly. “But you’re okay now. It’s all over. You hit your head pretty damn hard on the way down.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  He smiled. “Almost twenty-four hours. You were always such a heavy sleeper, even when we were kids… always liked that about you.

  I couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Sark… Soro…”