by Stella Noir
Then a rush of memories came flooding back to me as I attempted to open my eyes. Something about the light in the room jarred me out of the thick-headed feeling and I started to remember. Adrian was taking me somewhere. It was Gina. He was taking me to see Gina.
We were in a crowded marketplace and … Oh God. I’m not with Adrian.
I slowly opened my eyes as much as I could, but blinked to shield them from the light. There was only a long fluorescent light bulb that flickered close to the ceiling, but it still hurt my eyes. I moved my hands and all I could feel was a cold, hard floor. I realized that’s what I was lying on. Not the soft, fluffy bed I had imagined.
I moved my hands to push myself up and heard the chain that had them cuffed together drag across the floor. That’s when the complete realization came crashing down on me that I had been taken. Someone had done exactly what Adrian was afraid they were going to do. They took me away from him and he was never, ever going to find me.
A long, loud sob came from my mouth as I hung my head over my handcuffed wrists. They had won. And now I was on my way to some unknown place to live out the rest of my life as someone’s property. My body shook as I pushed myself up and dragged my legs underneath me. Everything felt so heavy and weak and I barely had enough energy to get myself up into a sitting position as lay back against the wall.
I wiped my face with my hands but I couldn’t stop the crying that was shaking my whole body.
I looked around the room. It was an old bathroom. I didn’t know what kind of boat I was on, but everything in the room felt very old and industrial. Like an old Navy ship. There were three urinals on one wall and two stalls with doors and toilets inside on the opposite side of the room. There was a sink directly in front of me with multiple faucets and the fluttering florescent light I had noticed when I opened my eyes was positioned directly above them.
Everything in the room—the fixtures and the walls and the floor—were all dingy and chipped and cracked. It was hard to tell what the real color of anything was because all of the porcelain was gray with dark yellow stains and the walls almost looked brown.
I looked down at the filthy floor and could feel the residue of dirt and scum all over my hands and arms and legs.
I heard a grinding sound at the metal door that was to my left. I scooted along the wall to get farther away from the sound and watched in horror as it opened up with a shrill, creaky groan. A large, bald man came into the room with a tray and set it on the floor in front of me.
“Food,” he said as he pointed at the tray on the floor.
“Toilet,” he pointed again, but this time it was at the two stalls against the wall. I wasn’t sure why he felt the need to tell me they were toilets, but he must have thought I didn’t have that information. The man had only said two words, but I could definitely tell he had some kind of accent. He didn’t look Indonesian but he looked like he could have been from an eastern country. Or maybe even the eastern part of Russia. His size and gruffness made me think that’s where he was from. He turned and left the room, then closed the door and locked it behind him.
I sat there in shock, and stared at what looked like bread and gruel. I had stopped crying when the man came into the room, but my body was still shivering and I pulled my knees up to my body.
I sat there with my head lowered to my knees and drifted in and out again for what felt like hours. The smell of the bowl of thick soup filled the room and I thought multiple times if I had enough energy I would have flushed it down the toilet. But I could still barely move my arms and legs and keeping my eyes open felt impossible. I wanted to lie back down but the floor was so cold. But I knew I had no other place to sleep and that lying down on the filthy tile was inevitable, but I was trying to put it off for as long as possible.
I was jarred awake by the sound of the door opening again. It was the same man and he carried another tray into the room. He set the tray down next to the old one and looked up at me. He pointed at the tray and said food again, like he thought maybe I didn’t understand what it was.
“Please,” I said as the man picked up the tray and started to leave. He turned and looked at me like I was taking up his precious time, like he had big business outside the creaky door to attend to. “Can I have a blanket?”
I wasn’t sure if he understood what I was asking so I rubbed my hands on my arms and said “Cold.”
He grunted and left the room, locking the door behind him again. But he came back a few minutes later and threw an old blanket at me. It was scratchy gray wool, and smelled like a wet dog, but it was better than lying directly on the cold tile.
Now that I was awake again I was starting to get really hungry. I also needed to use the bathroom. I pushed myself up using the wall behind me and stood there for a moment, because standing up made me incredibly dizzy.
I hugged the dingy wall as I shuffled over to one of the stalls, and when I got inside I shut the door and locked it in case someone came back into the room. Luckily there was toilet paper still in the dispenser. And even though it seemed incredibly old and fragile it worked well enough to cover the seat.
I sat on the toilet for a long time after I’d finished because it was infinitely more comfortable than sitting on the cold floor. But eventually I got up and flushed the toilet. I quickly unlocked the stall door and jumped out as it started flushing because suddenly I realized anything could happen with that old toilet.
I was worried it could overflow or come splashing back out at me and cover me with cold, nasty water, but nothing happened. It just made some weird clanking, groaning sounds and went silent.
I walked over to the sink and washed my hands and looked up at what appeared to function as the mirror. It was a piece of polished stainless steel that spanned almost the entire wall, and reflected a warped and distorted image of myself back to me.
In the mirror I looked gray and thin and my eyes took up half of my face and that sight made me even more sad and depressed than I already was, so I didn’t look up at my reflection for very long. After I washed my hands I bent down and drank some water from the faucet. The water didn’t taste very good, like it had been drained off of a bowl of loose change, but my throat was so dry I didn’t care.
I went back and sat down near the tray of food. I had no idea how long I had been knocked out, but it felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. I picked the tray up and set it in my lap but I was afraid to eat. I remembered that first week in the cavern under Adrian’s villa. How they had kept the water drugged so that all I did was sleep the entire time.
It was a horrible feeling, losing control of my life while I slept in strange surroundings, but it was also a blessing because it helped me escape the reality of my prison. I was afraid the same thing was going to happen to me if I ate the soup, but the idea being drugged and unconscious now was even more terrifying.
In retrospect, what went on in Adrian’s caverns was a vacation in paradise compared to where I was now and where I was headed.
I stared at the food for a long time, then brought some of it up to my nose, smelling it a few times and somehow imagining I would be able to detect the drugs that way. But I knew that was ridiculous and I was just stalling the inevitable.
I knew I was going to have to eat something, because I didn’t know where I was or how long I was going to be here. But the alternative of letting myself die of starvation didn’t really sound too bad the more I thought about it.
But what I wanted more than anything was to see Adrian again. I knew he would come looking for me. I just didn’t know if he would be able to find me. And I knew I had to eat so I was able to fight back, if I ever had the chance.
I picked up the plastic spoon they had given me and stirred the thick, beige soup. It looked like watery oatmeal and smelled like rotten fish, neither of which were even remotely appealing. But I took a little bit on the spoon and tested it on my tongue, then waited to either vomit or pass out. Neither one of those things happened. It actually was
like salty, watery oatmeal with a little bit of a fishy flavor, which really wasn’t that bad. So I took another few bites and hoped I was doing the right thing.
ADRIAN
“A drian, you have to let me help you. There is no way I can sit by and wait to find out if you’ve found our dear Brooklyn. You have to let me do something.”
“I don’t want you any more involved than you already are, Gina. I never intended for you to have to deal with any of this at all. You and I have been friends for a long time, and I never wanted that part of my life to be any part of this relationship. Everyone we’re dealing with, including my father, is very dangerous and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“There has to be something that I can do though. Rinaldo, do you know of anyone that can help?”
“Yes, Ms. LaDonna, I think I do. I can definitely make some calls.”
“Thank you, Rinaldo, but you have to understand what you’re getting yourself involved in here. These men will try and kill anyone who tries to stop them.”
“I understand, Mr. Bellini. I also understand your wife is in great danger. I would like to help, if I can.”
“Thank you, Rinaldo,” Gina said as she looked over at him, but still held my hand in hers. “Let me at least pay your expenses. Something. I feel so useless.”
“You bringing me to your hotel room is more help than you realize. If you hadn’t been there, Gina, I don’t know what I would have done. I felt like I lost my mind when she disappeared.”
“You do seem to be doing much better. I was very worried about you. Your eyes were so sad.”
“I am doing better, especially now that I have people on the way to help.”
The three of us spent that night in Gina’s hotel room waiting for Grady and Lucas to fly in. They had both called me back within an hour and told me the exact same thing. Grady found out that the man who Brooklyn had originally been sold to was a high-level Russian mobster who, interestingly, trained girls as sex slaves himself. I wondered what else he and my father had in common and if my father was trying to replicate this man’s business somehow.
Then when I talked to Lucas he confirmed that exact story. He talked to our father and found out everything. That they had come aboard the yacht to kill me and take Brooklyn, and they watched the men take her in the marketplace. But my father’s men hadn’t taken her, and my father wasn’t sure it was the Russian mobster’s men who had taken her. They were waiting for their next orders because my father didn’t want to lose track of Brooklyn. He was apparently very anxious about getting her to her buyer.
It made me wonder what kind of deal they had between the two of them.
The sun had barely risen when there was a knock at the door. I had no idea if my father’s men had followed us to Gina’s hotel, so I cautiously approached the door and looked out the peephole.
I had mixed feelings when I saw Lucas on the other side of the door. I kept hoping I was doing the right thing by having him help me. So far he had been invaluable, but there was this voice in my head that kept telling me to be careful, to not get my hopes up, and to watch my back. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t here for my father.
I opened the door and he gave me a big smile and put his arms around me. I think if I hadn’t been so shocked at his behavior I would have lost it right there.
It had been so long since I had seen him or touched him or gotten anything but a scowl and a sarcastic remark from him that I was immediately suspicious. But when he pulled away from me and I saw the look in his eyes, I let myself believe that he really was here to help me.
“It’s good to see you, Adrian. I was wondering if you were ever going to invite me to come for a visit on your damned yacht. But I guess a trip to Russia is better than nothing.”
“Thank you, Lucas. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
Lucas had his hands on my shoulders and he shook me a little with a smile still on his face.
“It means a lot that you emailed me in the first place. I figured you didn’t want to have anything to do with me or Dad anymore. Dad, I could understand. But me? I didn’t even want you to go away in the first place. I told you that right before you went running after your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, well, you said a lot of things and I didn’t know what to believe.”
“Okay, let’s get in the room. I don’t like standing out in this hall with all those thugs on the loose.”
I turned to the side and let Lucas walk past me, and just as I was about to shut the door Grady showed up. He looked at me, then at Lucas, and I had a feeling he was wondering the same thing as me.
“Holy shit, you’ve got Grady working for you? You’re a pretty sneaky bastard. I had no idea.”
“So where do you think she is?”
“Well, where she is right now is hard to say,” Lucas said as he sat on one of the chairs in the living area of the hotel suite, his elbows resting on both knees like he was ready to jump up and head out any minute. “But where she’s headed looks like it’s about three hundred miles north of Moscow. Depending on how they get her there it could take a day to fly or more than a week by boat.
“I’ve got some guys working on the exact location and some local men who will be able to help us once we get up there, but it looks like this yahoo, Mihai Syrnyk, lives in an isolated house that’s hidden deep in a forest that’s a good twenty or thirty miles from the nearest city. Apparently his house is really more like a palace, and from what I’ve heard he fancies himself as some kind of royalty, but isn’t.
“He travels back and forth between Russia and the Ukraine and is a very high-level member of the Odessa Mafia. It’s rumored that he has worked for both the Russian and Ukraine mafias, but if that’s the case he’s gotta be a total nut-job. Or someone who is so sought after and skilled at what they do that they would share him.
He seems to spend most of his time in this isolated house in Russia though. Oh, and you’ll love this. He has an underground cavern where he has his own training ground, complete with multiple cells and the works. You’ll never guess who modeled their wine cellar after his setup.”
“Wait, are you saying that our dad copied him? Do they know each other, I mean, beyond this transaction?”
“From the way Dad made it sound, they’re buddies or something. I have a feeling I didn’t get the whole story though, because Dad never gives the whole story, but, yeah, they know each other. I think the information Dad gave me is quite a bit more than is common knowledge on this guy, but it’s far from all of it.”
“So how are we going to find this place?”
“I have some guys working on that. We have plenty of connections in the area so we’re quickly narrowing down men who have worked with Syrnyk and are familiar with his compound. At this point we’re not sure how were going to approach the place and get in, but we’ll figure that out once we get there.
“What we need to do at this point is get to Moscow and start heading north. We’ll drive until we get to the woods on the other side of Vologda, then probably stop for the night while we wait for more guys to show up and for our inside men to tell us how it’s going to go down.”
While Lucas was talking I suddenly remembered how this was totally his thing. This was why our father had always sent him after the transactions. Lucas loved this part. He loved figuring out how to get to them and how to bring them back. It was like a game to him or a puzzle that he was putting together in his mind. I glanced over at Grady, who was already looking over at me, and I was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing I was. That we were incredibly lucky to have Lucas on our side.
“So that’s twenty men I’ve got flying into Moscow tomorrow, and I don’t know how many, maybe twenty more that’ll meet us when we get there. And Grady? Do you have anyone coming to join us?”
“Yeah, I’ve got about ten guys who are set to fly out whenever I give them the word on where to fly to. They’re all guys I knew in the military w
ho are mostly working security now, but more than anything they’re guys that I know I can trust.”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll round up some men up as well.”
“Who is this guy again?” Lucas asked as he gestured at the man who was working for Gina.
“His name is Rinaldo. He’s my security guard and we both want to help as much as we can.”
Lucas looked at Gina and shrugged.
“Get whoever you can, then. Preferably guys who have no problem with killing multiple people, and are down with working in a foreign country. Oh, and if you have anyone with any experience in Russia that would be a bonus. We’ll be working with cell phones, so a phone with international coverage would be awesome. And it would be great if they could bring their own guns.”
“I’ll get working on it now.”
Rinaldo pulled his phone out of his pocket and went into the bedroom to start making phone calls.
“When are we leaving?”
“Well, I’ve got my jet at the airport about twenty miles from here, so we can leave anytime. We can send your bags down now and head out whenever you’re ready.”
“I don’t have any bags. I haven’t been back to the yacht since Brooklyn disappeared.”
“So you just have the clothes you’ve got on? You might want to grab something before we go. A change of underwear maybe?”
“I don’t want to go back there. I just want to leave it.”
“Well, do you have anything personal on there? A computer or a phone?”
“Yeah, there’s Brooklyn’s computer and I’ve got a tablet and the satellite phone.”
“We really should take care of that. You don’t want anyone getting on board and going through that stuff.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m not thinking straight. Okay, let’s go down there and then head to the airport. I’ll pack some things and then ditch that boat for good.”
