Klaus didn’t understand blind loyalty. He couldn’t understand how Luka still protected the bastards who had nearly killed them both. If he were in the Albanian’s shoes, he would have handed Fatos over in a heartbeat, if only to protect his own interests.
A click sounded in his ear. Klaus frowned, glancing at the screen, reading the number that was flashing on the screen. He didn’t recognize it.
“Hold that thought.”
Without waiting for Luka’s response, Klaus answered the new call. “Yeah?”
“I’ve left a gift for you.”
Frowning, Klaus tried to place the voice, sure he had heard it before, but when he couldn’t, he dismissed it for the time being. “I don’t like gifts.”
“You’ll like this one.”
The mystery person on the other end hung up. Klaus, reconnecting the call with Luka, got to his feet. Going over to the bed, he slipped the case out from beneath it. Unlatching the locks, he pulled it open, pulling one of the 9mm handguns free.
Klaus hadn’t been entertaining the caller. He didn’t like gifts, nor did he like surprises.
“Where are you?”
“Why does it matter?”
He had barely had the time to screw the silencer onto the end of his gun when there was a knock at the door.
He didn’t have a good feeling about who would be on the other side of it.
Taking a moment to check the peephole, he eyed the man on the other side, waiting until he relaxed his guard before yanking the door open and dragging the man inside.
Abandoning his phone for the time being, Klaus let it drop to the floor as he pushed the man to the floor, his knee in his chest, his gun beneath his jaw.
“Who sent you?”
“I—”
With his free hand, Klaus punched the man in the face. “A name will do.”
“You can’t—”
Klaus wrapped his finger around the trigger, the challenge in his eyes clear.
“Fatos!” he rushed out to say.
If anything, the name only made him angrier. “You do realize, don’t you, that he sent you here to die?”
There was a trace of fear in his eyes, but there was also the arrogance of a man who thought he knew something. “You can’t kill me until you hear what I have to say.”
“Yeah?” Klaus asked entertaining him. “And why is that?”
“Only I know where Alex is buried.”
Shit.
Shit.
Grabbing his phone from the floor, he kept his gaze on the man that was now smiling up at him.
“Your Albanians have Alex. Get your ass back here. I’ll text you an address.”
Hanging up, Klaus dialed Mishca. “We have a problem.”
____
There was organized chaos all around them, and through it all, Klaus was the only one to remain levelheaded. Mishca tried, for the sake of his men, to keep his anger contained, but Klaus could see that careful control fracturing.
And why wouldn’t it when his sister was buried alive somewhere?
Not to mention, they were running out of time.
But the Albanian had yet to cave, no matter how Klaus had made him bleed. But he had withstood torture before, the history of it was embedded in his flesh.
“Where is he?” Mishca demanded, running an agitated hand through his hair.
But the question was moot as Luka came bursting through the door, barely sparing them a glance as he focused solely on their captive.
Now, finally, they got a reaction from him. It was a mixture of fear and dark glee. Whatever assignment he’d been given, it obviously had more to do with Luka than it did Mishca and the Bratva.
Klaus feared he knew all too well what this was really about.
Stepping out of the path of Luka’s rage, he watched with thinly veiled anticipation as Luka drew a knife from his pocket.
“The address.” It wasn’t a question.
“Valon.”
For once, Luka didn’t flinch at the name, too focused on his task to realize that his secret was just seconds from being blown.
Unlike Klaus, who’d threatened the man by telling him exactly what he would do if he didn’t cough up Alex’s whereabouts, Luka immediately acted.
Tossing his blade on the table, he reached for a hacksaw, even as the man’s eyes widened in fear, his head jerking back and forth as though that might help him.
Lining up the serrated teeth at his wrist, Luka began cutting, not wavering for a second as he cut, blood spraying, the man’s screams echoing in the room. Those who couldn’t stomach the brutality turned away, but neither Klaus nor Mishca turned away.
Only when the man’s hand lay detached on the ground did Luka drop the saw.
“Fatos doesn’t want her to die. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you. Deliver your message.”
Tears were in the man’s eyes, his pain clear. It took him several minutes to get his breathing under control before he could offer him a response. “I…I don’t know the a-address.”
Luka reached for another instrument of torture, but there was no need.
“Wait! Fatos…Fatos said to tell y-you that she was where our p-paths c-crossed.”
Klaus frowned in confusion, until Luka turned to pierce him with a stare that told him exactly where and why she was there.
It was becoming apparent that Fatos planned to reveal all their secrets.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” Mishca demanded.
“She’s at the house,” Klaus supplied, already heading for the door.
Mishca spat out directions to the soldiers who still lingered, exiting without sparing Luka another glance.
Luka, who had already turned back to the Albanian, reached for another tool, his movements more measure as he now had more time on his hands. “Call me when you have her.”
____
Not since she was a little girl had Alex ever feared the dark, but as it surrounded her so completely that she almost felt blind, she wished she had appreciated light a little bit more.
She’d fought, as best she could to get free, but her hands merely slipped along the glass. Despite the pain in her hands, she hadn’t been strong enough to break it.
Then she’d screamed until her voice had gone hoarse, hoping somebody, anybody, would hear her, but beneath the earth…she had no voice.
Alex didn’t mean to cry, didn’t actually realize when it started, but with the first tear shed, the rest came in earnest.
This was it.
This was how it would end.
…Until she heard muffled movement above her.
It was the slightest of sounds, but it filled her with such hope that she tried calling out again, even as her voice failed her.
Movement came, and finally, the dirt shifted above her, just enough that brightness nearly pierced through the darkness that had covered her for so long.
Then, a hand swiped another layer away, revealing Mishca’s face.
Her relief at seeing him mirrored his own. She reached out for him, crying harder than she had ever cried in her life.
“I’m right here,” he said from his position above her, laying his hands flat against the glass where hers rested. “Easy. Breathe.”
But no matter how she tried to drag air into her lungs, she couldn’t get enough, to the point that her head was going fuzzy and the image of him blurred.
“Klaus, do something!”
But whether Klaus responded, she didn’t know.
She had already passed out again.
38
____
Safe House
“We got her. We’re at the safe house—you know the one.” Klaus was silent for a beat as he took a breath. “She’s gonna want to see you when she wakes up.”
Luka ended the call, stuffing his phone back in his pocket, eyeing the man in front of him. He was new to him, didn’t remember him from his time in Berat, but Luka had made sure he understood the gravity of the part he had
played in this. It didn’t matter that, as he’d said, he’d only accompanied Fatos and didn’t actually lay a finger on Alex. No, that hadn’t mattered to the monster that had taken Luka over.
“How did he know about her?” Luka asked, the question having plagued him the entire drive back.
No one, except for those closest to him could have known that Alex meant everything to him. It could only mean someone within the Bratva.
Now, he just wanted a name.
“A woman. That is all I know.”
And with that, Luka had his answer.
“Please,” he said, the word coming out like mush as Luka had pulled a number of teeth free…and that had been the least of what he had done to the man’s face, not to mention the rest of him. “Just kill me. Please.”
Those words would have pleased him more than an hour ago before he had learned that Alex had been taken, but now they did nothing.
With a move this bold, Fatos told him everything he had been too afraid to acknowledge.
He was out of time.
Taking his blade, the same one he had walked into this place with, Luka slit the man’s throat and walked away.
With each step he took, he heard the clock ticking down.
____
“I thought I would hate you the day Anya told me she was pregnant,” Mishca started thoughtfully when he realized she was awake.
As she had slowly come into awareness, she realized she was no longer in the glass coffin but on a bed that she never wanted to leave. Besides a splitting headache and memories of pitch blackness, there were no other reminders that she had been buried not long ago.
Mishca was beside her on the bed, her tucked into his side, reminding her of a time when they had done this very thing. Before Paris, before he had followed in the footsteps of Mikhail…
Here, though she didn’t know for how long, she was safe.
Shifting so she could better see him, she waited for him to go on.
“But the day you were born, even as you screamed your lungs out, I loved you more than I ever thought I would. And with that realization, I knew that I wanted to protect you from everything, including the life I would ultimately lead.” He looked at her then, and despite the thin smile, there was sadness in his eyes. “I failed at that.”
“Mish…”
“Not yet,” he said carefully. “I don’t want your forgiveness. Not until I end this. And even then…I’m not sure if you will be willing to offer it.”
Not sure how to respond to such grave words, Alex changed the subject. “Where’s Lauren?”
“Home.”
“And does she know that I…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“No. If I had told her, she would have worried more than necessary.”
“Good.”
The sound of yelling drew her attention from Mishca to the closed door.
She knew who was coming for her without having to hear his voice. And with that knowledge, her heart hammered once more. Besides her brother, he was the one other person she desperately needed to see.
A sharp yelp of pain sounded just outside the door, and Luka’s voice, louder than she had ever heard it, made her sit up straighter, already anticipating the moment he would be there beside her.
Mishca slipped off the bed as the door crashed open, Luka standing in the entryway with wild eyes. Despite the company in the room, he only had eyes for her. But it wasn’t just him that ignored Mishca, Alex noticed. Her brother barely spared his enforcer a glance as he left the room without a goodbye, pulling the door closed on his way out. Despite the illusion of privacy, she knew he wouldn’t go far.
She was out of the bed in an instant, practically throwing herself in his arms as she clung to him. She felt the tension leave him as his arms came around her and squeezed, taking her breath away.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his lips at her ear. He said it again softer, as if he needed to say it again to make it true.
But it wasn’t him that she thought should be sorry. It wasn’t as if it was his fault. And even with the enemies that her family had garnered over the years, she didn’t blame Mishca either. No, the blame was solely for the person who had got off on burying her.
She shivered, thinking back to how the dirt had sounded as it hit her temporary prison, how pungent the earth had smelled as more and more blocked out the streams of sunlight bleeding in through the glass for that short period of time. Squeezing her eyes shut, she forced those images out of her head and tried to focus on the present.
There were plenty of times in her life that she had felt fear but not like that.
His hair was damp, his skin as well as though he had recently showered. She briefly contemplated why this was, but thoughts of this fled as he gently extracted himself from her hold.
He hardly moved away at all, and like the night she had wrecked Mishca’s car, he looked her over starting from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. His hands followed the path of his eyes, even drifting beneath her shirt to skim along her shoulders, along her ribcage, and the down the flat of her stomach.
She hadn’t noticed the bruises on her wrists and arms until he lingered over them.
“Did you see them?”
She had to remember, as Luka asked her that question, that he wasn’t upset with her because the chillingly calm way he asked that made fear slither down her spine. “It was fast, but there were at least two of them, and they both had on masks. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Breathe. You’re doing fine. Just finish.”
But from the way his body had stiffened, she wondered what she had said to make him have that reaction. She hadn’t had the opportunity to tell Mishca what happened, but maybe he too knew that Luka would get it out of her, and he would then relay it to him.
“There was a white van, but that’s all I remember because one of them hit me and knocked me out.” Alex looked away from him then, trying not to hyperventilate as she thought about being in that ground. “Next thing I knew, I was in a coffin, and I could hear standing up there. He was holding something metal, the shovel I think, and he kept hitting it against the ground. Every time he would drop more dirt over me, he would tell me what it would be like once I was completely buried. He didn’t care that I was begging him. It was like he was enjoying that the most.”
He shushed her then, pressing his lips to her forehead for a moment, wanting to calm her. It helped, but she didn’t know how long it would.
“You know I’ll find him, yes?”
“Of course, but I don’t want you to get hurt over this. Over me.”
“Aleksandria.” It was the first time he had ever said her name in its entirety in all the years she had known him. “I’ll burn this whole fucking city to the ground if I have to.”
He kissed her forehead, a promise in itself, and then kissed her so thoroughly that it took her breath away.
As quickly as he had come, he was leaving again. “I need to go.”
Alex didn’t mean to grab him as tight as she did, but the moment he’d said those words, her hand grabbed his bicep, practically trying to force him to stay. “You can’t leave.”
“I have to finish this.” His hands clenched into fists as he said this, then he looked tired all of a sudden. “Stay and rest. No one can get to you here.”
With no other choice, she nodded, watching him leave. It wasn’t for her that she felt fear now, but for the men they were going to go after.
No matter their differences personally, between the three of them—Luka, Mishca, and Klaus—when it came to revenge, they were all in accord.
____
The momentary relief Luka felt at seeing Alex safe was short lived as his mind worked with the possibilities of how this could have happened and what it all meant.
Just down the hallway, Mishca and Klaus were waiting, their faces carefully arranged into that of blankness. But Mishca wasn’t as careful and Luka saw the one thing he had hoped never to see i
n the man’s eyes.
Suspicion.
Luka didn’t think he had connected all the pieces yet, but it was an easy enough assumption that this was because of him. If they had wanted to hurt Mishca, they could have easily gone after Lauren.
No, hurting Alex, while it affected Mishca, was aimed solely at Luka.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said simply, continuing on and not bothering to explain more as Mishca’s phone chimed.
But as he headed out to his Jeep, Klaus was at his heels.
“What are you going to do about this?” Klaus asked.
Not wanting to acknowledge that he had spoken, Luka kept on, but Klaus wasn’t one to be ignored.
“About Fatos. The Albanian. The one who helped carve me up. Oh, and the motherfucker who put Alex in a coff—”
He was cut off when Luka turned so fast that Klaus nearly collided with him, but he caught himself just in time to not hit his back. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited, undeterred by the wrath in Luka’s eyes.
“End it.”
Klaus, who had never seemed to care what choices Luka made, looked thoughtful for a second. “Can you?”
No one had ever thought he was capable of harming Fatos. Not in all the years they had spent together.
Not even Luka, himself.
“It was only a matter of time,” he found himself saying as he climbed into the Wrangler, jamming the key into the ignition. “But I could only run for so long.”
“You know then that the Russian will know what you’ve done.”
He wished otherwise, but… “It was only a matter of time.”
Before Fatos, however, he had another stop to make.
39
____
Breathe…Breathe
Luka screeched to a halt outside the older building, nearly ripping his keys out of the ignition as he climbed out and headed for the entrance. He didn’t have to worry about surveillance of any kind, not in this neighborhood. That, at least, was a small favor.
Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time until he reached the fifth floor, pushing through the heavy metal door at the end of the hall. His fingers flexed as he faced the closed door that loomed just ahead, but before he could kick the door down the way he wanted, he checked the urge and lifted his fist to knock instead.
Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva Book 4) Page 29
