Other times, I was questioned about the Vipers. The Riveras. Other factions of more families in Europe.
Regardless of where I was, who was speaking, and what they demanded, I said nothing. Not a single word. The only thing I had to control was that. My voice. My secrets. So long as they didn’t try to harm my baby, they would get nothing from me.
I exercised that same tactic when Emil captured me, but with him, I broke. I snapped and entered our strange friendship without actually telling him about my big case of dismantling the Obsidian Eye group before it started. The night I was taken, I began giving him vague details. That next morning, I would’ve been detailing all I knew for Luka Dubinin and his family.
It has to be connected. All of it. They took me because I was investigating Emil and the Dubinins’ potential impact on the group.
Since Emil told me that he knew nothing about it, I realized that these leaders behind the Obsidian Eye were nervous about the Dubinins resisting their alliance, whatever it would consist of.
And because they saw me with him, somehow, and knew that he’d knocked me up, they took me?
That still didn’t make sense, though.
Why hold me for so long without more interrogation?
Why take me at all without appearing to demand ransom from Emil?
Or from the agency?
I wondered, not for the first time, if they were the ones behind it all.
Something has to give!
The fact that I was kept alive felt like a tease, but with the many moves and changes of hands with my captivity, I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. All I could believe was that as an agent, or a former one, many criminal organizations would want to pry the secrets and intel out of me.
It was very much so a case of me against the world. With that jaded perspective, I couldn’t help but come to appreciate Emil and his family even more.
Their sense of law would be a drastic change to adjust to, but in this regard, when I was captured and exchanged like this, it seemed that no government, no agency, and no boss would ever be able to combat all the evil and villainy in the world.
Stuck as a captive and running out of hope, I opened my mind to wonder if it matteredhowjustice was delivered. Just that it was, by any means possible. Whatever it took to keep the worst of the criminals in check.
Because as I was given food, then ungagged by a masked man again, I ate the disgusting bland slop just to keep my strength up. Doing so with the solid belief that my life had well and truly gone through a one-eighty.
I couldn’t pray for any officer to save me.
No one from those offices I once worked at would be assisting in my rescue.
Only my assassin would.
He would be the hero I needed when I was at my lowest and most desperate state of captivity.
The Dubinin name would be the one I clung to with respect and hope for survival.
But when?
When will you find me?
Please, Emil. Please come for me.
It didn’t matter how often I begged the universe like this. It seemed that time was running out for my life and the arrival of this baby.
Please.
Please come to me.
25
EMIL
