Chapter Ten
CLOSET
Dree
Matryona Sokolov’s henchmen tied Dree Clark up more securely the next time.
She hadn’t even made it out of the damned parking lot. After she’d climbed out the bathroom window, a stupid truck had turned in at just the wrong time, its headlights lighting her up like a spotlight at a prison, and the driver had narced.
They wound a clothesline around her wrists that were wrenched behind her back and then wrapped the thin rope around and around her, binding her arms to her chest and her legs together like a mummy.
It was a good thing they still hadn’t frisked her and found Max’s cell phone or that jewelry box under her boobs, the idiots. If she’d been back home, she might’ve had a gun hidden in her girls or a thigh holster. When she got out of there, those amateur criminals deserved everything that was coming to them just for being so dumb.
She cussed at them the whole time and threatened to shoot them and their whole organization with a variety of range weapons, some of which she made up, like the .85 caliber ballistic thunder rifle. Stupid Russian mafia guys didn’t know Western American weapons from a hole in the ground. Let them figure out which ones were real.
They left her lying on the floor of a closet, but they didn’t shut the door all the way. Through the crack in the closet door, Dree watched Kir Sokolov walk over to his sister Matryona and begin boasting about how well he had done the night before at the Sea Change Gala when he had kidnapped Dree.
Matryona disagreed. Kidnapping someone for mere revenge in the middle of an international incident might draw unwanted attention to their operation.
Kir and Matryona started arguing again, viciously attacking each other’s secret emotional weaknesses and personal hygiene, like siblings do. Evidently, Kir had screwed up more than one mission by being too quick to kill people, which Matryona believed was his greatest weakness and evidence of his inability to ever lead their crime family.
Okay, things were getting a little Godfathery around there. Dree hoped they shot each other as she laid on the floor of the closet and cursed them with a variety of different skin diseases and brain infections that she hoped they’d get.
And then Kir and Matryona started debating whether or not to kill Dree.
She wasbeyondpissed at them.
Kir said, “But that little shitbag in Phoenix saidthis girlhas the money he owes us, at least part of it. And I did see her name on some of the bank accounts. Why wouldn’t she be able to access it?”
“You shouldn’t have grabbed her,” Matryona said. “Didn’t you see that the Prince of Monaco was trying to propose to her? Fifty cameras were livestreaming it. The wholeworldis looking for her. Even beyond the horrible violence of the mass shooting that is on every news channel right now, everyone wants to know who the girl was who was standing in front of the Prince when he went down on one knee, and youkidnappedher,you dumbass.”
Kir shrugged. “Monaco has restrictions on media. There were no journalists there.”
Matryona balled up her fist and shook it at him. “There weresocial media influencersat that gala last night. They’reunregulated. Marie-Therese brought a bunch of her friends to the gala because she wanted herself plastered all over Instagram today. Instead, there are Instagram photos of the unknown girl,who is Dree frigging Clark,with millions of likes and abillionquestions about who she isand where she is now!”
Kir shrugged again. “So? We were going to make her disappear anyway. What is the difference if we disappear a girl that nobody knows about, or one who is internet-famous for one day?”
“There was security camera footage, and some of those influencers were livestreaming the whole thing—the dancing, the proposal,and then the shooting.They sawyoudragging her out of there. Your picture is all over the place from five hundred different angles, too!”
“No one will put it together.”
“Interpol has facial recognition software, dumbass.”
“It won’t recognize me. I had a haircut recently.”
“That’snothow it works. And besides, there were hundreds of people there. Maybe a thousand. There were witnesses.”
“Then we will kill them, too.”
“Hundredsof witnesses? Andmillions of peopleon the internet? Are you out of your damn mind, Kir?”
“Yes,” he said.
Oh, now he was just sulking.
Dree was even more disgusted by him. He was one of those guys who always had to be right even when confronted with glaring evidence that he was a screw-up, like a lot of the surgical residents were.
Matryona asked, “So, you think you’re just going to kill her then?”
