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Shit.
Before I could plead my case or pretend ignorance again, Louie had the paring knife up to my throat, and when his other hand groped my right breast, bile danced up my throat. While I’d been hoping for this as a chance to get free, I knew nothing about Louie Manziel, so it’d be just my luck that he’d be a psychopath that enjoys necrophilia.
“I’m going to teach you what happens to liars, and then I’m going to carve your body into a piece of art before dumping it at Avgust’s feet,” he snarled.
Trying to throw him off, I started crying and begging for my life like most women would. I wanted him to think that I was a helpless female, no threat to him at all. As he cut the rest of my clothing off, I just whimpered and cried powerlessly. I wanted him to believe that the knife really was scaring me, but it wasn’t. The only thing that I couldn’t fight against was a gun, and that was his mistake for leaving it sitting on the table.
When Louie finally cut my legs free, I didn’t kick out or anything like that. Still wanting him to believe that I was lost in fear and hysteria, I just sat in the chair, letting his free hand touch me everywhere. However, when he sank his fingers into the letter that he’d just carved into my thigh, I couldn’t stop the real scream that escaped from my chest.
“Christ, I love it when a woman screams for me,” he muttered, the sick thrill already working on him. “I’m going to have too much fucking fun with you.”
Pain felt like a fire burning me alive, and I was surprised that I was still conscious. It was also apparent that I was in over my head. Once upon a time, I’d thought of myself as strong and tough, even having the audacity to get in Avgust Kotov’s face with my attitude. However, now that I knew what it felt like to be abused, I realized that I wasn’t that strong. There was no way that I was going to be able to survive all that Louie Manziel had planned for me.
Nevertheless, as soon as he cut my hands free, I reached up, grabbed his hair with both hands, then slammed his face into my knee. Through his howls, I could hear cartilage breaking, but more importantly, the knife was no longer in his hand. So, I slammed his head against my knee a second time before pushing him aside, and since the knife was closer, I grabbed it, then wasted no time sinking it into the side of his neck.
Still, knowing that the small knife might only slow him down, I ignored the pain in my thigh, then raced towards the kitchen table to grab the gun. I’d never shot a gun before, so I could only hope that the safety wasn’t on because I didn’t have time for a crash course in weaponry.
“You bitch,” Louie gargled as I turned to see his hand wrapped around his throat, the paring knife still protruding from his neck. “I’m…I’m going to…to kill you…”
Wasting no time, I grabbed the gun, then aimed and fired into Louie’s chest, the force of the recoil sending me landing on my ass. Still, that didn’t stop me from shooting the gun at least two more times, making sure that Louie Manziel was dead and no longer a threat.
The gun dropped from my hands when I saw Louie finally collapse on the dirty floor, his blue eyes vacant and no longer alive. A shot of adrenaline coursed through my body, and my hands started to shake as the pain in my leg came roaring back to life. I dropped like a sack of potatoes, and as I sat up against the wall, I felt panic beginning to set in. A normal person would search Louie’s body for a phone to call 911, but I couldn’t force myself to move just yet. I had to get my head on straight before I called the police, because I knew that there was no way that I could tell them the truth about Louie’s motives. I was going to have to play this off as a random attack, and I wasn’t sure if I could do that.
After all, there was a huge N carved into my goddamn thigh.
Chapter 33
Avgust~
Two hours later, Maksim, Akim, Melor, and I were pulling up to an abandoned house that sat a little too close to O’Brien territory for my liking. However, once Morocco had given us the last location that Samara had been seen, it’d been easy to find the car out here in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, that’s what had taken us the longest to figure out. Once we’d gotten past the main roads, there’d been no more cameras. Still, I knew every inch of my territory, and it was only a mile or so away that you had the Irish crawling all over the place.
“We have no idea how many people are in there,” Akim remarked as we all gathered around my car, all of us parked a few yards away from the actual house. “How do you want to do this?”
Maksim checked his 12-guage. “Well, we can’t go in there just shooting up the place. One of us might hit Samara by accident.”
“It’s dark enough that we can sneak up,” I told them. “Just don’t announce yourself before we have to.”
“What’s the priority?” Melor asked.
“I’d like the guy alive, if possible,” I answered. “However, Samara is the priority. If it is a choice between saving her or keeping the man alive, save her.”
“Got it,” Melor replied before we all started making our way towards the abandoned house.
As we got closer, it was easy to see that only one room had a light on. My guess would be that it was the kitchen from where the illumination was located, but it could also easily be the living room. It was also obvious that the place looked like it was about to fall down all around us as I got a closer look at the decrepit structure.
When we finally reached the front of the house, Maksim already started making his way to the right side of the building, Akim and Melor heading towards the left, one of them smart enough to keep going until he reached the back of the house. While I had no doubts that we could handle whatever was inside, the unknown was always troublesome.
The rickety porch was going to be a problem, but before I could figure out how to get closer without making any noise from the corroded floorboards, Melor was calling out to us, and it was enough to assure us that the place was empty.
“There’s a dead body in the kitchen,” he said.
I immediately entered the house, and I wasn’t surprised to find that Akim was already coming in through the backdoor. Ignoring the rest of the house, I headed straight into the kitchen, and the dead body was laying on the floor like a fresh kill. There was a mixture of dried and wet blood decorating the space around him, and since he was on his stomach, we were going to have to turn him over, taking ownership of the house. No way would we allow the cops here now.
“The house is empty,” Melor repeated. “We checked all the rooms, and there’s no sign of Samara.”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Maksim drawled out.
“There are too many scenarios that can be discussed right now,” I said. “So, let’s just concentrate on what we can control, and that’s finding out who this fucker is.”
