wanted to wriggle until I could get free of the ropes. But if I did anything, Maksim would know that I had heard him. And I didn’t want him to know that. I needed to play my cards as close to my chest as possible and look for a way to save myself.
Inwardly, I snorted at myself. As if I had any damn cards to play at all. I was tied up in a forgotten room somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea how far I was from home. I had no idea if I would ever see home again.
And my mom. My new job in Chicago. My new life…my eyes stung with tears, and I fought the urge to sniff.
The door opened and Aleks walked in. “And?”
“The fucker is playing hard to get,” Maksim said with a growl.
“You knew he would.”
Maksim nodded. “The best fucking triggerman I’ve ever had. And the biggest pain in my fucking ass. You need insurance, you hear me? You don’t commit without insurance.”
“Sure, boss,” Aleks said. It didn’t sound like he knew what Maksim meant, but he didn’t want to tell his boss that. Maksim sounded more and more unstable by the minute.
And that made him dangerous.
“What’s the plan?” Aleks asked. “Do you think he’s coming?”
“No doubt,” Maksim replied. “He’ll want her back.”
They were both silent for a moment. Were they looking at me? I didn’t want to peek and risk them seeing I’d heard every word.
“You think he cares that much about her? Viktor doesn’t care about anyone.”
“He cares about her,” Maksim said, certainty in his voice. “You should have heard him lose his shit on the line. He’ll come.”
My heart warmed and returned to its natural spot as my fear cooled. Viktor cared about me? Not that it was a question; I hadn’t walked away because I thought he didn’t care. But the way Maksim said it made my heart sing. I shouldn’t have cared that a monster, a killer, cared about me. But I cared about Viktor, too. A lot more than I’d been willing to admit. A lot more than I wanted to. With my mind, I kept telling myself he wasn’t worthy of my love and affection.
But dammit, after the week we’d spent together, after how he’d treated me and how close we’d grown, he seemed like exactly that.
Worthy.
I knew assholes and shady characters when I saw them. I didn’t know what the hell Viktor had done in his past. But he wasn’t like the others. And Maksim had said there was no doubt he was coming to get me. He was going to save me. I just had to wait.
“He’s a dangerous fucker,” Aleks said. “What do we do when he comes?”
“I’ve called in for backup. As soon as he gets here, we drop him. Before he gets a chance to shoot first.”
“And the girl?”
“We’ll kill her in front of him. A bit of a show.”
My ears started ringing. They were going to kill Viktor. They were going to kill me.
Maksim really was the bad guy. Holy shit. How had I ended up here? I wished I could warn Viktor. He was going to come for me and was going to walk into an ambush with his eyes wide open. He was going to die.
But not until he watched them kill me first.
I started trembling. I didn’t want to die. I had so much to live for. I hadn’t even started living. It couldn’t be over yet. My whole life, I had lived for my mom, making sure she had what she needed, getting her through the hard times. I was heading out to Chicago for her too, dammit. But I didn’t want that. I wanted something I could look back at and say, “I did that, I really lived.”
A steely resolve settled inside of me. I had to get away. I wasn’t going to be the classic damsel in distress that needed saving. I was a strong woman. Dammit, I had survived my dad. I’d gotten through taking care of my mom. I had managed to fend Ryan and his disgusting advances off for a long time.
I could get out of here. I could save myself.
I started to recall any details I could about where I was being held. I would need them to formulate a plan to get myself out.
The place was creepy as hell. And if Maksim had holed up here, it wasn’t a place people came to often.
They switched over to