Page 21 of Devil's Retribution
“I’ll supply you with the proof,” he said firmly, his tone so confident that I half believed him. But the implications of that made my heart clench. My uncle wouldn’t order someone killed like a damn mob boss. That wase something I would have expected more from a man such as Viktor.
My uncle was good. My uncle was loving. He was sometimes a little clueless about how to show that love, but he was the closest thing to a protector that I had ever had. I couldn’t possibly believe that he’d wanted someone murdered enough to go through with it.
And yet...
“Fine,” I snapped, already fed up with hearing him talk. “I’ll take a look at your proof. But expect me to take it with a grain of salt the size of a soccer ball.”
He blinked, seeming startled that I’d kept my sense of humor despite everything. A small chuckle escaped him, a smile ghosted onto his lips and away again.
“Very well,” he said calmly. “I’ll be back with the evidence you need in just over an hour.” He gestured toward the takeout bag on the table. “Please. Have something to eat and drink. I’ll see you when I return.”
I nodded at him, and he turned on his heel and walked back out. It took a lot of determination for me to focus on the floor, and not drink in the set of his shoulders and the shape of his ass as he strode out. The fact that he was hot, was the most confusing and disorienting part of all of this.
Aside from the idea of my uncle somehow being a murderer, that is.
“I’m hungry,” Nick mumbled into my shoulder as soon as the door closed and locked behind our captor. He lifted his head slowly. “Do you think they brought us those dumpling things again?”
“Liked those, huh?” Keeping affection in my voice was tough. Under the surface I was still boiling with anger, and under that, knotted up with fear.
The big man in the chef’s apron who had brought our plates at lunchtime had seemed almost apologetic. He had moved slowly around us, his craggy face cracked by a small, sad smile. Like he was doing everything he could not to scare us more. I got the sense that he’d made the meal with his own hands. But I hadn’t understood why he’d seemed worried he’d scare us. These were supposed to be big, tough gangsters. Why would they care whether their kidnapping victims were safe, or comfortable, or fed?
“Those were called pelmeni and no, that was lunch. Looks like Viktor grabbed us Chinese on the way over.” I checked the bag, hoping to at least pinpoint what neighborhood we were in. But he must have thought of that, because the address printed on the bag had been heavily inked over by markers. I couldn’t even guess what was under those black censor bars. Crap.
Once again, this Viktor guy was one step ahead of me.
The lo mein had hand-cut noodles, one of my favorites. There were only a few places in the city that did hand-cut noodles, mostly in the richer areas like Beverly Hills or Hollywood. Some of the suburbs. I could count the restaurants capable of Chinese takeout this good on the fingers of one hand.
Maybe I could figure out where we were being held, from that.
As we sat eating, Nick looked up from his noodles and said solemnly, “Do you think that man is gonna kill us?”
I froze for a moment. Nick was talking like the kids from my sessions. His tired, hollow tone, the plaintive note to his voice, the way he didn’t look at me. At his age he shouldn’t even be considering something like that. Trauma. This is traumatizing him. The very thought made my blood boil even more.
“No, honey, I don’t.” I kept my voice as firm and even as I could and did my best to catch his eye. He finally looked up at me reluctantly, and I smiled at him. “If they were just going to kill us, they wouldn’t put us in a fancy room and feed us. That takes work and money. They don’t want to hurt us or do bad things to us.”
“And they stole us because the man thinks Uncle Charles killed his brother.”
I winced. These were not things I should have had to discuss with Nick quite yet. But then I simply nodded. “They want to make Uncle Charles pay to get us back. Once he does that, they’ll let us go.”
He looked up at me. “What if Uncle Charles doesn’t wanna pay for us?”
I hesitated. I remembered being his age, mom and dad freshly dead, my sister too young to speak or remember them. Uncle Charles had rushed to us, in the aftermath of the accident to take us in. He had visited us at the hospital. His face had been the first familiar one I’d seen when I’d woken up from being sedated.
A man like that would never let us down, no matter what these damn weirdo Russian gangsters thought.
“He’ll pay,” I reassured. “He won’t leave us stuck here. I promise.”
***
True to his word, about an hour later Viktor came back with a stack of printouts. “We have not yet received any kind of response from your uncle,” he said solemnly, the smallest hint of tension in his deep voice. “But I have provided what you requested.”
I nodded and took the sheaf of papers from him, trying to ignore the little jolt that went through me as our fingertips brushed. “This is over twenty pages of material.” I started shuffling through it, glancing at each page before moving on. “Why hack his email?” It was such a violation. I wondered if he’d done the same to me.
Like Uncle Charles tries to do.
The thought came unbidden, and I felt a flush of embarrassment and anger. I was depending on Uncle Charles to get us the hell out of this. I couldn’t afford to be angry with him right now.
“I do not know what kind of man you think I am, but I do not go to the trouble of kidnapping people without due diligence. I had to make sure that your uncle was the man we’ve been looking for.” He tapped the top sheet in the pile. “These dates place the conversation a week before my brother was murdered.”