by Leah Wilde
She didn’t say anything as I walked her to the stairs leading down from the bay to the basement. I held onto her arms as we descended the stairs and walked through the open doorway into the pit area underneath the bay. The thick metal door to the enclosed basement stood across the room from us.
“Is that where you’re taking me?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” I whispered in her ear. “That’s where your new friend, Dimitri, is. You’re going to go in there with me and follow my cues. You’re going to say what I tell you to say and ask what I tell you to ask. You’re not going to improvise in any way. Do you understand?”
She nodded, closing her eyes to fight back the tears I could see welling up.
“There’s no reason to get upset, Julia. I’ve been told that you are the nation’s foremost Russian expert. Isn’t that so?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
I loosened my grip on her arms. “All you need to do is convince him to answer my questions so that we don’t have to rough him up. I want to get the information I need from him quickly and painlessly. Then we can send you both away, and everyone can go about their lives like nothing happened here.”
I was trying to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear. I was going to have Dimitri roughed up either way, and he had been already. I just wanted to get the information first, before we had our fun and taught him a lesson. Dr. Julia Danvers didn’t need to know that.
“I’m just asking questions,” she repeated, as if she was just trying to make sure.
“Right, just asking questions,” I confirmed.
“What do you need to know?” she asked.
“No. Not until we get in there. I will let you know what to ask once we’re in the room with him.”
She pulled away from me gently, taking a step forward as I squared my shoulders to block the doorway back to the stairs.
Julia turned and looked at me with stony green eyes. “I’ll do it,” she said resolutely. “I’ll talk to him for you and try to get the information you need. As long as you agree that we’re not going in there to rough anyone up or torture him for information.”
“We’re just going in there to talk to him. I hired you to talk to him and translate anything he says for me,” I assured her.
She turned back around to face the steel door and concrete wall holding Dimitri in his solitary interrogation room. We’d poured the thick concrete ourselves when we bought the property for the Kings of Hell HQ. Originally, the pit was open from one end to the other, but we needed a room where we could take people for situations like these.
“Are you ready?” I asked her after she stood for a moment staring at the door. I was afraid I was going to lose her. “Take a moment to compose yourself, because when you enter that room, I want you to be one hundred percent professional for me. Do not let him see any distress.”
She took a shaky breath. “Got it.” Her body seemed to relax suddenly. “Let’s get this over with before I lose my nerve.”
She took a step towards the door, her back straight, shoulders squared, and head held high. Her heels echoed each time they hit the floor as she walked across the pit to the steel door of our basement.
I couldn’t help but watch her walk. She wasn’t what I had expected at all, not even after I’d seen her for the first time. I walked into her office expecting to see a frumpy college professor who lived most of her life in her head or inside a small apartment filled with books and cats. Most of the teachers I’d known in school had forgotten that they were women, but not Julia. As petite and mousy as she was, she knew how to take a powerful, commanding posture when she needed to.
As a woman travelling the world and talking to other historians, digging for her own information, and convincing people to give it to her, it seemed necessary for her to be able to put on a strong front when she needed to. I was definitely impressed by her ability to command my attention the way she did. The woman I saw crossing the pit in confident strides was not the same woman who’d been on the verge of tears when we first came downstairs.
“Are you coming?” she asked me, turning back at the door, waiting on me to cross the room behind her and join her for her session with Dimitri.
She seemed to have grown a few inches taller as she crossed the room as well. I chalked it up to her straight-backed posture and her boost of confidence. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall as I walked over to her.
I’d always avoided women like Julia Danvers, the prim and proper, uptight types. They always seemed too snobby, as if they looked down their noses at everyone. But now that someone like that was right here in front of me, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Chapter 3
Julia
Somehow, Gage had managed to calm and steady my nerves, though I wasn’t sure if it was anything he’d done or just my fear of what would happen if I didn’t play along. Straightening my back and mustering up my resolve, I walked across the lower level of the garage to the steel door of the room where he said he was holding the man he needed me to talk to for him, Dimitri.
As I watched him walk over to me from the opposite end of the room, I realized I’d never met a man quite like Gage Noll before. Most of the men I’d known were academic types—quiet, mild-mannered, studious, and the antithesis of everything Gage seemed to be. Gage was commanding and authoritative. He took charge, and he didn’t take no for an answer once an order was barked.
The men I knew would have killed for his body, but only after calculating the risk of getting caught for the crime. Then, only if they felt the risk was worth the payoff would they have gone through with it. Needless to say, none of them ever seemed to really work on their bodies, not to the point that this man had.
When he walked over and opened the door into the concrete interrogation room in the basement, I was tempted to refuse to go in. I wanted him to grab me again. I couldn’t shake the desire to have his arms around my waist one more time and have him forcefully take charge of me. There was something so sexy about that. It made no sense to want him to manhandle me, but I did want him to, and I thought I saw the desire in his dark, mysterious eyes as he opened the door and let me walk into the room.
“Dimitri,” he said loudly as he closed the door and locked it behind us, “I’ve got Dr. Danvers from the university to help us talk.” He spoke slowly, and his voice boomed in the little room, as if that would help break through the language barrier. Unfortunately, that tactic never seemed to work as well as people thought it should.
“I don’t think that helps,” I told Gage as I looked around the room. The room was essentially a concrete cube with one dim light bulb hanging down from the ceiling over a small wooden table. Other than a small pool of light directly under the hanging bulb, the rest of the room was almost completely dark.
The man he called Dimitri sat in what looked like a metal chair. It was hard to see in the dim light, but it looked like he was tied to the chair. He was also a thick, muscular man a little smaller than Gage. His features were distinctly Russian. He wore his hair cropped closely, almost a buzz cut. He looked up at me as I took my seat across the table from him, and I saw blue eyes that were probably once beautiful, but now they looked tired, defeated.
“Dimitri,” I said, leaning across the table to make sure he was looking at me, “my name is Dr. Danvers. Gage has asked me to come in so you could have someone to talk to.” I spoke to him in Russian.
His eyes focused on me. He glanced quickly at Gage standing behind me, then jerked his head back to me. “You speak Russian?” he asked me.
I nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
“What’s he saying?” Gage asked eagerly.
“Nothing yet. We’re just making our introductions,” I told him.
“Well, tell him he better talk or else I’m going to start breaking his fingers.” I decided to ignore the perverse pleasure Gage seemed to take in making his threat.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, refusing to re
peat Gage’s threat of violence.
“I don’t want to talk with him in here,” Dimitri told me.
I cut my eyes to Gage, wondering if I could bring myself to ask him to leave us alone. He glared at us, at me in particular, from just beyond the pool of light surrounding the table. The darkness fought with the yellow glow of the light to conceal his features. The effect was a sinister play of light and shadow on his face. I didn’t feel I could ask him any favors while he looked like that. He didn’t look human anymore. He looked demonic, as if he really was a King of Hell sent to torture poor souls like Dimitri’s.
“He doesn’t know what we’re saying,” I assured Dimitri in Russian. “He asked me here because he can’t understand a word of Russian.”
“You’re talking too much,” Gage barked. “I need you to get him to talk.”
I turned to him. “I know I’m not making threats and being aggressive, but let me work at him my way. What do you want me to ask him?”
“Ask him where I can find Ivan.”
I didn’t ask who Ivan was. I figured there were things I didn’t need to know, and the less I knew, the better. I shifted my weight in the chair and leaned across the table. “He wants to know where he can find Ivan,” I told Dimitri.
He looked at me with his cold blue eyes.
“You know who he’s talking about, don’t you?”
“I’m not telling him anything,” Dimitri said, cutting his eyes to Gage.
I rubbed my brow and sighed. “He’s not talking,” I told Gage.
The behemoth stepped into the light and leaned over the table, bringing his face within inches of Dimitri’s. “You tell him that if he doesn’t start talking, we’re going to make his life a living fucking hell.” Though he looked Dimitri in the eye, he spoke to me.
“He said if you don’t cooperate, he’s going to make your life a living hell,” I told Dimitri.
The Russian laughed in Gage’s face, and I saw rage darken his features even more. I was surprised when he stood up and refrained from hitting the man. “You’re not helping,” he told me in a threatening tone. “If you don’t start getting answers, you could find yourself in trouble with him.”
I looked at Dimitri, whose eyes met mine, and for a brief moment it looked like he understood the threat Gage had just issued. Maybe he’d just picked up on the tone of his voice.
“What did he just say?” Dimitri asked me.
“He threatened me if I can’t get you to talk,” I told him in a flat tone. “I need you to give me something I can use.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Dimitri told me.
I shook my head.
“What is it? What did he say?” Gage asked, his voice growing more and more frustrated.
Emotions were starting to run a little too high for my comfort, and I was stuck right in the middle of it all.
“He’s not talking,” I answered.
Gage let out a frustrated groan. “Tell him if he doesn’t start talking, I’m going to kill him. Then, I’m going after his family.”
I sat back and looked at Gage, shocked. “You told me I wasn’t doing any such thing,” I protested.
“I told you before we walked in here to follow my lead and say what I told you to say,” he reminded me. “Now, if you can’t do that, I’ll find someone who will, and you might find yourself in a chair like Dimitri’s,” he threatened. He leaned down, bringing his face down beside mine. I could feel the heat of his anger radiating from his face and hear his deep, hard breathing.
“Except, what I’ll do to you will be far worse than Dimitri’s fate,” he whispered in my ear.
Dimitri sat upright, bound to his chair, and watched our little exchange with concern in his eyes. I gave him a sidelong glance.
“Tell him we know he’s working for Ivan,” Gage said. “Ask him again where Ivan is.”
I turned to face Dimitri again. “He says he knows you’re working for Ivan.”
A smile spread across the Russian’s face. “Of course he does. That was never supposed to be a secret. Tell him congratulations.”
“Where is your boss?” I asked him. “Dimitri, where is Ivan?”
He laughed then. “I’m not going to tell you anything, Dr. Danvers. He needs the information too much to seriously hurt me, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Once I tell him where Ivan is, he’s going to kill me.”
“No,” I argued. “No. He told me he’s going to let you go. He’s just trying to find Ivan.”
“You have no idea what you got yourself into, do you?” Dimitri asked, realizing that I really had no idea what this was all about.
I was starting to get pieces of the puzzle, though, and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Dimitri was being held against his will, tied to the chair in this dank, musty old room. All this talk about bosses and where to find them was straight out of the movies. I was beginning to think I’d been pulled into a conflict between two rival mob factions.
“Why don’t you go back to your university, doctor?” Dimitri continued. “This isn’t the place for a woman like you.”
“What’s he saying?” Gage asked me.
“You’re in over your head, Dr. Danvers.”
I shook my head. “He’s not talking.”
“I ought to bash his skull in right here and now,” Gage growled. “Tell him I’m threatening him again.”
I stood up and looked back and forth between the two men. “He understands violence,” I told Gage. “Just raise your fist at him. He’ll know what you mean.” I started towards the door. “He’s not talking to me.”
“Where are you going? You can’t get out of here without the key.” Gage pulled the key out of his pocket, and I considered stepping back over to him to snatch it from his hand, but I feared his hand would meet my face in a bad way if I tried anything like that on him.
“Listen, I’m not getting anywhere with him,” I said, frustrated. “He told me he’s not going to talk with you in the room, so we need to figure out a different approach.”
“He’ll talk no matter what,” Gage threatened. “If the dumb bastard knows what’s good for him.”
He raised his hand, but the Russian just calmly looked up at him, his face not even registering anticipation. It was as if he didn’t even expect Gage to make good on any of his threats.
“I think we need to talk,” I told Gage. “This isn’t working.”
Gage kicked over the chair I’d just been sitting in. He slammed his fists down on the wooden desk and leaned across it again, coming face to face with Dimitri. He didn’t issue any threats. He just stared into the Russian’s blue eyes, his face seething with rage.
“Gage, that’s not helping.”
Dimitri stared into the hateful expression on Gage’s face and said to me, “Tell him that if he harms me, he won’t have to look for Ivan. Ivan will find him.”
“Gage, we need to go. We need to talk. In private,” I urged the biker. I couldn’t believe I was willingly offering to examine other options to get through to the Russian, but something told me my ass was suddenly on the line, too.
“Fine. Let’s talk.” He pushed himself up from the table and walked over to the door, unlocking it to let us out and locking it again once we were out, to keep Dimitri inside. Alone.
He grabbed my arm and walked me away from the room, toward the steps leading back up to the garage.
“Talk,” he said. “What was all that about in there? You two talked a lot for your answer to be that he wasn’t telling you anything,” he accused me.
“He was just telling me he wasn’t going to talk. At first, he said he wasn’t comfortable talking with you in the room. Then, he said he felt like you were going to kill him once he did talk,” I explained to Gage. “I think I should go back in there alone,” I added.
“Good. And you’ll get the chance, because you’re staying with us until you get him to talk,” he said matter-of-factly before taking me by the arm and leading me upstairs.
His grip was firm and forceful, but it didn’t hurt. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, just to make sure I understood my place.
Chapter 4
Gage
Julia pulled back from my grip on her arm as we reached the stairs. “Let go of me,” she snapped. “I can walk on my own, thank you.”
I raised my eyebrows. She was a feisty one. It just made me want her more. I wasn’t sure if she was old lady material, but she was definitely worth a go.
“Alright,” I said, letting go of her arm and stepping aside. “Ladies first.” I held my arm out, indicating I expected her to take the stairs in front of me.
