Page 18 of Devil's Retribution
His voice was calm and businesslike, as if he was discussing stock trades. But I caught a flash of anger in his brilliant eyes. Not directed, I suspected, at me.
I tried to reason with him, I had to try it once. “Look. Nick’s too young to deal with being somebody’s hostage while you hash out my uncle’s financial debt. I don’t know who you really are—”
“Viktor Kozlov, leader of the most powerful Bratva in Los Angeles.” His smile was calm, casual. This was a man who didn’t give a damn whether people knew who he was. That and the mention of a Bratva felt like a splash of icy water.
Mobsters. Goddamned mobsters. Of course. I felt a cold jolt of terror—and somehow, that just made me angrier. In the back of my mind I worried that I was being stupid, but I couldn’t just lie down and be a scared little doormat after watching Nick cry like that. I had to remain strong for him.
“There’s no excuse for involving a kid in this,” I snapped, looking him in the eye. “Let him go. I can tough through being a damn hostage if I have to, but not him.”
Viktor hesitated, looking down at the boy peeking out at him from behind me. Something in Nick’s appearance seemed to startle him—like he hadn’t seen him in good light up close before.
“That’s very brave of you, and I can certainly understand your position. But what is done is done. It will be over, and you will be returned safely home, as soon as your uncle agrees to our terms and we make the exchange. Until then, you and he will remain our guests.”
“You mean your captives.” Hot or not, I hated him right now. I wanted to punch him in the balls, take his keyring, and get us the hell out of here while he was still writhing on the floor. But I knew that would be a perfect way to get us shot. Even if I could put him on the ground, I doubted I could keep him there long enough for us to get away. And he likely wasn’t alone.
“Call it what you wish.” His face was impassive, but his eyes kept flicking back to Nick in a way I really, really didn’t like. “You will be fed, and your needs seen to in the interim. Behave, and this will all end peacefully and quickly.”
Nick was staring back at him defiantly, pale and shaky with fear but with his jaw set and his eyes steady. I put an arm around him and stared back at Viktor too. “You say my uncle owes you something, but we’re the ones suffering for it.”
“Again, regrettable. But unlike your uncle, I keep my word. Provided that you cause us no trouble, you will both be well cared for, and released unharmed.”
I stared at him, wondering if I could trust anything he said. It really didn’t help that he was just as attractive as he’d been when I’d first met him. “You already showed me I couldn’t trust you when you came to me on false pretenses. Now, I don’t know how you pulled this off or who you hurt doing it, but know this. If you do anything to hurt Nick, I will make you pay for it. I don’t care if I die doing so.”
Nick whimpered and buried his face in my side, and I tightened my grip on him protectively as I glared back at our towering captor.
He smiled faintly in response. “I have no doubt of it. But there’s no reason for us to ever test that.” He reached over and patted the bag of food. “Have something to eat, get some rest. You will be expected to sit for a telephone call with your uncle later.”
Before I could formulate a response, he had turned on his heel and walked to the door, fishing his keyring back out as he did so. I heard the locks disengage and saw the door swing open a little to let him out. He pulled it wide, I caught a glimpse of that long hallway again, and noticed the only other door was on the far end. Then he stepped out and was gone, locking us in behind him.
Chapter 8
Viktor
I was very distracted as I walked away from our holding cell and emerged into the larger complex. I liked Emma. I liked her spirit as much as I liked her intellect and looks. If she had caved in, wept, begged, I wouldn’t have respected her as much. But as it was, I almost admired her. She really was nothing like her uncle.
The whole place was a decommissioned movie studio I had bought and converted for my purposes. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floor as I walked. When I looked up at the high-domed roof, I couldn’t see it for the shadows. The whole area was too large to even light properly.
Holding prisoners was just one of many uses I had for the place. The cavernous main studio was full of classic cars from my uncle’s old collection. I had been selling them off since his death, aside from a few gems like his Silver Cloud that I couldn’t bear to part with. We didn’t have a showroom, so when we had buyers in or took photos, we made do with a sound stage and creative backdrops.
I fished out Emma’s phone and turned it back on. Thirty missed calls, ten texts, three phone messages. Most of them from her uncle. I couldn’t unlock her phone to check them, so I called Alexei on my own.
He yawned in my ear. I heard puppy snuffles and the crunch of kibble in the background. “Hi, boss, good morning. What is it?”
“I have a phone for you to crack. Shouldn’t take much. By the way, do you have anything from that license plate number I gave you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Another yawn. “Like you thought, it was straight from Graves’s motor pool. So I went poking around his employee duty roster and who checked it out last.”
“Mm, all right, good.” I walked outside to the lot and got into my coupe, which was parked just steps from the door. “So, who is our man?”
“James Layton, former Navy SEAL and head of their security team. I’ll send you the details.” I heard a click and then some typing. “Not much about him online besides his job and military service. He seems to be smart enough to keep a low profile.”
“And smart enough to run when wounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. Is he registered at any hospitals? Perhaps we should pay him a visit.”
“If he is, it’s under an assumed name, and a CCTV search didn’t pick his face out at any of the local ERs.” The rattle of typing was undercut by the faint slurps of a puppy drinking. “Either that or Graves has his own doctor with a setup outside the normal hospitals.”
“He’s a billionaire. He could arrange it.” And not just from some back-alley patch, either. A man like Graves could have a whole operating theater set up somewhere, and the legitimate doctors to staff it.
“Graves definitely knows that we have his niece and great-nephew, from his communications traffic.” More typing. “My guess is, Layton rang him from his car as soon as he could.”