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I laughed.
Despite it all, I laughed.
Honestly, I couldn’t help myself.
Looking into his dark eyes, I asked, “Do you really believe that Maksim Barychev is going to trade his life for some random pussy?” No matter what Maksim might have said to me in bed, there was no way that he was going to sacrifice himself for a woman that he’d only been fucking for a few weeks. “You’re insane.”
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” he replied coldly. “Shall we call him now?”
Thankfully, I’d had enough sense to erase all the texts between me and Maksim. Granted, I had also erased all the texts and calls that I’d gotten from Klive, but that’d been in a futile attempt to pretend that my life was normal.
“You can call him, but I can guarantee you that Maksim won’t care that you have me,” I told him. “He might orchestrate an exchange to get to the bottom of this, but he’s not going to care if you kill me, Klive. You’re…you might as well just let me go. I’m not the bargaining chip that you think I am.”
“Even if Maksim doesn’t think you’re worth the trade, that doesn’t mean that I can’t have some fun with you in the meantime,” he remarked with a sneer, and I knew that I wasn’t going to leave here alive.
I thought about my grandfather, and pain hit the center of my chest like a two-by-four. There was no telling how long it’d be before someone found my body out here, and I had no idea if he was going to be able to withstand me missing before finding out the truth. He was going to be left alone with so much violence left behind, and my heart was breaking for him
I watched as Klive dug into my purse to get my phone out, and he was going to have to kill me before I let him rape me. Maybe that was a stupid choice to make, but I wanted to leave this world a fighter. Albeit a stupid one, but a fighter, nonetheless. Even if my grandfather would never know, it’d be enough that I knew that I’d gone out fighting, hoping to make him proud.
When Klive finally walked over with my phone in his hand, he ordered me to unlock it, and when I did, he said, “For your sake, you better have made a better impression on him than you think.”
“You’re making a mistake, Klive,” I said, hoping to make him listen. “It’s not too late to still stick with our original plan.”
“It became too late the second that you failed me, milaya devushka.”
Chapter 31
Maksim~
I stared at the empty room, hoping that it would work. I could always build a guest house to accommodate Mr. Antonov, but I knew that Katja would probably feel better if he was actually living with us inside the house. Though he was going to be guarded better than The Pope, it was about comfort and familiarity for Katja, and there was no denying how much her grandfather meant to her.
So, after speaking with Artur last night, I had arranged to have one of the guest rooms emptied, trusting that Katja could decorate it to suit her grandfather’s preferences. The room was large enough for whatever he might need, and there was a restroom just one door over. Of course, if it would make things easier, I could always convert his room to add a small restroom, but Artur had assured me that the man wasn’t invalid. He had simply needed assistance at times.
At any rate, with Katja at work, Artur aware of the changes, and Avgust giving me the green light to move forward with sweeping the apartments on Morongo, all I needed to do was speak with Mr. Antonov to discuss my intentions towards his granddaughter. Now, while I couldn’t see him too pleased with the fact that his granddaughter was going to marry into the Russian Bratva, I also trusted that the man was smart enough to recognize that there wasn’t anything that he could do about it.
As I looked over the room, my phone rang, and when I pulled it out of my pocket to see that it was Katja calling me, my back immediately straightened. Since she was supposed to be at work, she’d only be calling me if it was an emergency.
“Katja?”
“No, Barychev,” came a male voice over the line. “It’s not Katja.”
My blood turned cold in my veins, already knowing who it was on the other end. “Nikel.”
“Ah, so my secret is out,” he taunted. “I am curious to know why you would automatically connect me with the lovely Katja.”
“No one else in this city would dare go near her if they knew that I was entertaining her,” I replied smoothly, doing my best not to give us both away. If he found out that she double-crossed him, he’d kill her before I could find her. “They also would not be stupid enough to call me about it.”
“That is a fair point,” he conceded. “But that still doesn’t tell me how you know my real name.”
“We are Russian Bratva, so we already knew who you were,” I pointed out coolly. “Plus, did you honestly believe that we would not do everything necessary to find out who was behind Samara Kotov’s kidnapping? Did you already forget the lovely little chat that you had with Avgust that night?
“Yes, the lovely Samara,” he drawled out humorously, ignoring the reminder about Avgust. “You know, I wanted to go after her again, but Kotov sure does have her guarded nicely. Then I thought about going after her sister, but she is also well guarded.”
“What are you doing with Katja?” I asked, hoping that my question sounded casual enough.
“Well, at first, I was going to trade her life for yours,” he replied easily. “I know enough that you would never give up Akim, so the plan was to go after him once I was done with you. However, Katja has informed me that you would never trade your life for a random whore, so I have decided to have some fun with her until she is no longer of any use to me. After all, whether you hold any affection for her or not, I am curious to taste what made you keep her around for so long.”
My hand gripped my phone so hard that it was a miracle that it wasn’t shattering in my ear. If I offered to trade my life for Katja, then he’d know how important she was to me, and that would just give him more leverage. However, if I did nothing, then he was going to keep her and rape her until he was done with her, and I couldn’t allow that, either.
