Page 12 of Marked By the Devil

Of course, my gun was gone. I couldn’t understand why they’d left my holster, though. That could be a handy rope to use for an attack. My jacket lay near my feet, by a wooden chair.

All that remained was to act now. I walked around slowly, still listening. The absence of the weight of my wallet in my jacket as I picked it up clued me to its being missing along with my keys and phone. Also, not a surprise.

At the door, I heard no sounds of anyone coming. No moans or wails of any other prisoners. Then looking at the slim, horizontal window too high for me to see through, I knew that there was no means of escaping, just a tease of a slit that could prove it was day or night.

I rubbed my face and swallowed hard. My tongue was glued to the top of my mouth. Dizzy with dehydration and wincing at the hunger pangs, I wondered how long I’d been in here. I wasn’t famished to the point of dying and I wasn’t so thirsty that I couldn’t form saliva.

Probably just since last night?

I scanned the unfamiliar room and immediately knew this was a controlled environment where I wouldn’t have any leverage.

I was at the mercy of whoever had chased me and captured me. Massaging where he’d hit me or applied pressure near my neck, I realized that he’d knocked me out easily. But this fatigue and slight haze in my mind suggested that I’d been drugged too.

Clothes intact…

I didn’t feel like I’d been touched at all, yet the slightest possibility of that pissed me off.

My escape options were limited, but I had to have faith. Smithson would know that I was missing. Others at the office would wonder where the new agent had gone.

I couldn’t be stuck in here forever. But as I lowered to the chair because my foot hurt from running last night and stepping on it wrong when I didn’t see a pothole, I worried that my short stay would be predetermined by the hulk who’d captured me.

That fear rose to the surface again, mixing in with the rage that this had happened at all.

Stay cool.

Don’t let the fear win.

Assess. Ascertain. And a⁠—

A scrape of metal on metal came from the door. I acted, but it was an involuntary response. I jerked, flinching at the sound that signaled someone was coming.

I forced another swallow and tensed as I sat still. If it was that monstrously large behemoth again, I wouldn’t gain anything by trying to hide to the side of the door and thinking that the best defense was offense.

Waiting as the door slid open, I refused to cower. I resisted hunching into a ball to protect myself.

Anything could happen.

Someone could waltz in and shoot me point-blank.

They could swarm in here and try to abuse me.

A guard or servant could toss in some food and water and leave without a word.

Hell, maybe it would be Smithson with Brayden trailing behind him, here to rescue their fellow agent.

It wasn’t any of the above.

It was worse.

Much worse.

Because the huge man who’d stalked me like a shadow in the night was none other than a Volkov. A son of the Pakhan, or maybe one of the two cousins. I couldn’t call myself an agent if I wasn’t familiar with the Volkov Bratva. Even as a newly transferred agent, I’d done my homework. No other crime family could reach the heights of power and wealth that Dmitri Volkov had. Upon closer look as he strode in, I racked my brain for which one this was.

Not Adrik or Maksim. Not Lev. They’d all married someone recently and this one didn’t have a ring. No mohawk, either. That was Nikolai. Alexei always looked too much like a gargoyle in the still images captured and put into his file. Because of course, Smithson and the others kept tabs on them all.

The slight smirk on his lips, a cruel and malicious one, was all I needed to see. The ponytail of long brown hair proved this mussed-up, bad-boy look would mean he had to be one of the deadliest negotiators and enforcers in this underworld of syndicated crime.

“Fuck,” I muttered.