Page 23 of Devil's Retribution

I swallowed hard, took steadying breaths, fought the tears that were threatening. I couldn’t let myself look hurt or vulnerable around him. That would just be blood in the water to a man like this, no matter how polite and considerate he was on the surface.

“He’s not answering. It’s- it’s the first time ever. He could be in a meeting or something, but then he’d text me that and call me later.” I was talking too fast, too shakily, like I was pleading with him. Maybe I was.

Nick stirred and rolled over, blinking up at me. I bit back my terror and struggled twice as hard not to cry.

“I see,” Viktor said, that tension deepening in his voice. “Try not to let that frighten you too much yet. He may yet respond. I will be waiting for his call.”

He took the phone from my shaking fingers. It took everything I had left not to protest. It felt like losing a lifeline. A talisman of the normal life I was trying so hard to get back to.

“What’s going on?” Nick’s small, chirping voice made me flinch a little.

“Nothing,” Viktor said, but the strain stayed in his tone. “Do not worry, little one. We will get to the bottom of this soon, and then you can go home.”

Before he walked out with my phone and locked us in, he got me to make one more phone call, this time to my office to say I needed to take some personal days due to a family emergency. As soon as he was gone, I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me. My heart was pounding, my emotions were in turmoil. I pushed myself up unsteadily from the chair, painfully aware of Nick watching me.

“Are you okay?”

“I just need a shower,” I mumbled, before hurrying into the bathroom and closing the door.

It was the only place where I could hide my tears from him.

Chapter 10

Viktor

Cyka blyat! The Russian language had an amazingly diverse and poetic collection of curses and insults, and half of them were tripping off my tongue as I stalked back down the hall. He wasn’t answering. Not the email, not his phone. He just holed himself up in that damn fortress and kept radio silence.

I knew logically that it was too early to tell, but this felt like a blown deal. I knew that a lot of billionaires had God complexes, all I had to do to verify that was look at national news. Graves may have thought he was above anything like consequences to his actions. He may have thought that micromanaging his niece was somehow going to keep her safe. He was dead wrong, but that didn’t stop him from acting on his assumptions.

But now we had his niece. The one he was so protective of that he secretly stuck a security team around her house at night. And his grand-nephew as well, a child. It did not fit his pattern to ignore their plight.

But the phone stayed silent in my hand. There was no report of a response from Graves at all to the message we’d sent. There was no indication that he’d done anything but squat silently in his castle in the sky, hiding behind his security.

Ignoring his niece’s desperation.

As soon as I got in my car I was on my phone, my first call was to Tolya. “How many of us are around the club this evening?”

His response took a few seconds. “Alexei, Nico, a few others. Why?”

“Emergency meeting. Has Alexei told you anything about the monitoring he’s been doing of Graves?”

There was another pause. “No, boss. Should I ask him?”

I looked at my watch, it was almost an hour since we sent our demands. “Tell him to gather everything he has so far and check in with the men he has watching the building. I’ll need to go over it in about ten, fifteen minutes.”

When Tolya next spoke, his voice was cautious. Wary, even. “What went wrong, Viktor?”

I winced slightly, I hated that I must have sounded so transparent, but Anatoly has known me for years, and can probably read my moods as easily as I can his. “Graves isn’t responding to anything, not even his niece’s calls. I have no idea why. Alexei’s men are monitoring his online activity, but so far there’s no sign of him. Nothing on his cellphone either. It’s early to tell for certain, but I smell trouble.”

There was another long pause. “I see. I’ll pull the others together, get you what you need.”

“Good.”

I rubbed my face as I pocketed my phone again. The purple one I left on the passenger’s seat beside me as I drove.

I played no music and didn’t select one of my books on tape either. My mood was too foul to enjoy either. A thought was echoing in my head, unbidden and unwelcome.

There was no point to this kidnapping in the first place. I could have left this poor woman and her child alone. They could be back home right now, safe and sound, instead of trapped and scared in my hands.