able to approach and get in place. We only need to make a move and get one gun. I can take out a lot of men with one gun.”
He can. I’m not as good as he is with a gun. Few people are. Andrius is deadly accurate, super-fast, and merciless.
“You’re bigger and stronger than me,” he says. “You focus on incapacitating as many of those fuckers by hand as you can, and I’ll shoot the others. So long as we get one gun, I think we’d be okay until our troops storm the fortress.”
“It’s risky,” I say. Shit, it could work, though. We don’t seem to have much choice. If we do nothing, Cassie will be mutilated and eventually killed.
“Life is risky, but I know Tigran. If the whole distraction ruse doesn’t work, he’s not going to kill us straight off. Trust me, he’ll spend ages torturing us both. We can take it until our guys get there. We need to distract him, Popov, and their men, enough so that our guys can approach.”
I turn to face him. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s the only way. We’ve got to give them what they want. Distraction techniques, eh?”
“Remember to zig not zag,” he says.
He grins, and I smile too, then I clap him on the back, and we head back toward the hospital to see if there is any news of Vasily.
Hope blooms in my chest. The war is here, the time is now, and if these men Andrius knows will help, I have my army.
Time to fight.
Chapter Two
Cassie
I can’t even look at Liza, sitting in the corner of the room stroking and patting her belly and humming nursery rhymes under her breath. The woman is insane and vile.
She’s got an annoying sugary singing voice that is as false as her persona and her beauty. It’s a stupid thing to get angry about in my current predicament, but I keep going back to what the hell Konstantin saw in her in the first place? I feel like a total bitch, but honestly, if she were actually beautiful, I’d maybe be less upset, but she isn’t. She’s skanky when you take away her glaring surface attributes, and it makes me think he’s skanky too.
Let’s be honest, he is a skank and a man-whore. Once I’m out of here, I swear, I’m done with him. Yes, he gave me the best sex of my life, but is it worth it? Kidnapped and held in a room with Liza, which frankly counts as actual torture, and possibly about to be maimed, and for what? A great orgasm.
Okay, three great orgasms, but still. Not. Worth. It.
“You know, it bugged me seeing him fawn all over you,” Liza says, making me jump. “Now though … now I think it was an act. Part of the game we were playing. After all, you’re not screwing, right? So how into you is he? Not very, that’s the answer. A man with his libido? Not into you at all, boring little mouse.”
I could tell her. I could burst her smug bubble, but what’s the point. She can have him.
It doesn’t hurt, I tell myself. I didn’t care for him. I was simply beguiled by him. Bewitched. Well, now the spell is truly broken.
When I get out of here, and I will, I promise myself, I’m making some huge life changes. I’m going to look for a new job; something I want to do. What that would be I don’t know yet. I’m probably going to have plenty of time to think about it while stuck in here, though.
I enjoyed working at the coffee shop, but I can’t do that forever. It’s hot and tiring work, and whilst it might be fun now in my twenties, I think it would be exhausting in my fifties.
Something similar might appeal, however. Something where I work with people because generally, I get on with folk and enjoy their company. I like chatting and finding out how their day has been. I think of my neighbor, Mr. Clarke, who I go dancing with once a week. Suzy was horrified when she found out and said it must be the most boring thing ever. Tim thought it was weird, but I loved our dance dates. Mr. Clarke is an interesting character. He was a child in Sheffield during the war, and he said he remembers the sky lighting up in a horrible red glow from the bombs dropped on the city.