Page 29 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

I’m brought inside this prison. A prison with a pleasant scent of something savory. But before the smells register completely, I’m moved swiftly through corridors I don’t get a chance to process either. Then down a winding staircase we go. It seems to spiral into the earth until all I smell is dirt.

At the bottom, the large brute sets me down, but everything tilts, my balance gone. My legs give out, and I pitch forward.

Strong hands catch me. It’s him. The blue-eyed man with the gun.

“Sandrine,” he says, his voice suddenly in a different cadence. “Baby, I got you.”

The contact is brief, just enough to steady me, but it also ignites flashes of recognition. Memories, sharper and clearer than any others.

There’s a park.

Sunlight through leaves.

Arms around me. His?

His voice is sweet, like right now. He’s calling me⁠—

Baby…

Then it’s gone. Snatched away.

I jerk back like I’ve been burned. “No,” I growl. “I’m not Sandrine. Don’t touch me.”

He watches me with eyes that have gone dark. Those eyes are messing with me. Hypnotizing me, putting false memories into my head.

But why? I’m nobody.

Wait, I’m not nobody.

I pull away completely, calling on the lessons drilled into me after years of careful, controlled therapy. There are men with guns everywhere. Men who can hurt me. Men who can force themselves inside me.

This is what they meant.

I’m slammed with a thought I had never even considered. I’m an unattached woman flown to Chicago and brought into a strange mansion.

Trafficking. The other man named Scava accused the blue-eyed man of trafficking.

I know who traffics women. The mafia.

“No!” I push out that word again. “I told you I know Ares Zervas. You said you know him, too. He’s married to my sister. Please call him. He’ll pay for my release if that’s what you want.”

“Oh, I’ll call Ares,” the man says, his tone vicious. “I’ve been looking for you for years. He had the chance to hand you over.”

My stomach drops. This man has been looking for me? For years? Is he a man from…before? Before the accident?

And Ares knew?

“It didn’t have to be like this, Sandrine,” the man adds.

Hearing that name again makes my skin prickle. Before I can respond, he jerks his head toward a cell behind me.

“Get in.”

“What?” I blink at him, disoriented. “No, I⁠—”

A hand clamps around my arm, firm enough to hurt. I’m steered toward a set of bars. Several rattle open, and I’m pushed forward into the cell.

It’s not exactly dirty. It’s clean, in fact. Stark and clinical. But a harsh reality crashes into me all the same. I’m being held against my will.