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Never did I expect to see her in the middle of Russia, and one hand moves protectively over my stomach.
“Alena, my dear. It’s time to come home.”
28
ALENA
Where am I?
A deep, thrumming sound consumes my limited senses as consciousness slowly trickles back to me. It pulses like a heartbeat, only so much louder. So loud, in fact, that static runs across my thick tongue, rippling in time to the odd pulses coming from the all-consuming humming.
Is it an alarm?
Did I set one?
No, I don’t think so. Smoke detector, maybe?
No, that’s not right either. Heaviness weighs down my limbs as I slowly come to. A sharper throbbing makes itself known at the base of my skull. Registering that brings forth a wave of nausea that dulls the static across my tongue, so I suck in a deep, audible breath.
“Alena?”
I know that voice.
My addled thoughts trip over one another as I fight with my eyelids. I never have so much trouble waking up, and yet right now, it’s like something is clinging to my lashes and trying to keep me under. My next breath brings my attention to my raw throat and a cotton-like sensation in my chest.
Maybe it is smoke.
No, not smoke—gas!
It hits me then from the bleary depths of my mind. I didn’t fall asleep. I was drugged! A large man with a scar over one brow had surged forward and shoved a soaked cloth over my mouth and nose. He’d been so urgent in his movements that he knocked Mara right?—
Mara!
My eyes snap open. My body jolts at the same time, and sudden restrictions around my wrists and ankles alert me to the fact that not only am I on a private jet with sickeningly glaring bright white lights overhead, but I’m bound to the large leather chair I’ve been placed in.
White cotton rope circles each wrist and disappears over the edge of the armrests. Testing, the rope is taught enough that I can’t even scratch my nose. The gleam of the glass table in front of me stabs at my eyes, and I close them again with a wince.
That roaring is the jet engine, and the ache in my skull and the throb in my throat are from the drug.
I remember now.
Mara came to the mansion, she drugged me, and now I’m… where?
“Alena,” comes Mara’s sharp voice once more.
Opening my eyes slowly, I glimpse her in the chair at the opposite end of the glass coffee table. The bulky man with the scar sits on the sofa to my left, his hands clasped and hanging loosely between his knees. Mara holds a fashion mag between her carefully manicured hands, and her poker-straight hair cuts down one shoulder.
I ignore her.
The rest of the jet is the same as the chair I’m bound in. Everything is cream with a gray carpet, and if the overhead bright lights weren’t enough, I spot bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds outside the oval windows.
God knows where we are.
The only thing that distracts me is the odd mustard-colored cushions that rest on either side of the guard.
What an odd color choice.
“Alena!” Mara’s voice is dangerous now, and my attention, still fuzzy, finally drops to her.
