Til Death Do Us Part (Kornilov Bratva Duet #2) - Nicole Fox Page 0,81

for it.

The number is unknown, and that is more exciting to me than anything else.

Maybe Molly escaped. Maybe she got away from Fedor and is calling me from a random phone somewhere. Maybe I can get in my car and go pick her up and wrap her in my arms.

My heart is hurling itself against my chest by the time I answer.

So, when I hear the female voice on the other end of the line, the disappointment is physically painful.

“Hannah?”

“Don’t hang up,” she says quickly, her voice desperate.

“Don’t tell me what to do, you bitch,” I spit at her, standing up and pacing across the small room. Petr is frowning at me, but I’m too livid to explain. My hands are shaking, and I want to throw my phone across the room. “You turned your back on your best friend. You deserve whatever hell comes your way.”

“He has my mom,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He was blackmailing me, and I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry. I’m so … so sorry.”

I hear her crying on the other end of the line, but I have no sympathy for her. She could have chosen not to participate and gone to the police. Or, better yet, she could have come to me. She could have told me what was going on and allowed me to help her, but she didn’t. She got Molly kidnapped and maybe killed.

“I should have told you,” she says through tears. “I should have told both of you, but I was so scared. I thought if I just did what Fedor wanted that he would give me back my mother, but now I know it was all a lie.”

“No shit. I could have told you that. Molly could have, too. We know him better than you, and we could have helped.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but I want to help.”

“Why should I listen to you?” I ask. “Better yet, why should I trust you?”

“Because Molly saved me.” Her voice is soft, and I hear her sniffle through the phone.

“What do you mean?”

Hannah tells me about the moments leading up to Molly’s kidnapping. She tearfully explains that Fedor was going to shoot her and take Molly, but Molly grabbed the gun and told Hannah to run. Even after being lied to and betrayed by her friend for weeks, Molly saved Hannah’s life.

“She is a good person,” Hannah says. “Probably the best person I know, and I feel like a piece of shit for betraying her. So, I’d like to help.”

I want to hang up the phone and forget Hannah exists. Actually, I’d like to hang up the phone, track her down, and make her regret every lie she told—but I know that won’t do much to help Molly now.

However, Molly’s example shines like a lighthouse in the distance, guiding me home. She saved Hannah as her last act of freedom, and I have to believe it means something. I have to trust her instincts even when my own instincts are screaming at me to disconnect the call.

I drop my face into my hand and shake my head. “How can you help?”

Hannah sighs with relief. “I have an idea.”

23

Molly

I don’t know how long it has been since the phone call with Viktor. It feels like hours since I heard his voice through the speaker, wondering where I was and if I was okay. I could hear the fear in his voice. I could sense how much he loved me. But still, when Fedor revealed that Viktor had hired—or rather, nearly hired—men to break into my house and scare me, it made me doubt everything.

As soon as Fedor hung up, two of his men dragged me back to my cell, and I’ve been here ever since, trying to understand my own feelings.

I told myself before that feelings didn’t matter in here. They wouldn’t help me escape. But now, my feelings feel as inescapable as my cell. No matter how hard I try to push them away, they rise back to the surface, demanding to be felt and understood.

Betrayal.

That is the first and strongest emotion.

Viktor was willing to terrify me and invade my privacy and traumatize Theo to get me to marry him.

Whatever Viktor may think his motivation was, it wasn’t love. Love does not hurt like that. Love is not vindictive or scheming.

But he chose not to send the men in. He didn’t hire anyone to come and scare us—Fedor did. The fact that Fedor got the idea by listening