His blue eyes lifted to mine, cold and unwavering, threatening. As if he weredisappointedwith the choices I had made.
Fuck him.
I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if Malachi put a bullet in my goddamn chest for breaking his precious fucking rules, I would find my girl. I would find her, and I would bring her home.
I looked across the bodies again. Nobody had said a word. Not even the wives serving the drinks. And why would they? They were all loyal to Alexei. All of them. The wives probably beaten into submission, fearing their husbands more than they feared death. But someone had to talk eventually. Someone had to saysomething.
“Everett!” Rae called from the other room. “Get in here!”
I was already halfway there, jumping over the bodies of the members of this Meeting of the Russians, to get to the room she and Jack were in.
I skidded through the doorway, Lucy right behind me, blood coating her white fur.
She had become quite the murderous little creature since realizing Olivia was still gone. She hadn’t left my side, killing right alongside me, earning a few scars herself as she aided in the search.
I didn’t even know where she had gone when the chaos started, but by the looks of the shredded meat hanging from her jaws, I suspected she had herself a little revenge in another room while we finished off those in the living area. Out of the 28 of them, only four belonged to the actual Delepski bloodline, the others were just grunts, workers. None of them had any information they would willingly give up, even after 26 hours here, torturing them for a morsal. Even after Lucy had continued to shred people in the other room, their screamsechoing through the house.
They hadn’t given up a damn thing. Another dead end. Unless Jack and Rae found something useful on the computers, we were back to square one.
Rae stepped back from Jack, her full-face black bunny mask securely in place, stark against her long blonde hair.
Jack straightened, his own mask in place, his eyes painted black. “Security cameras,” he told me as I joined his side.
There were four of them on the monitor, only trees to be seen in all but one.
One camera, placed high above the property, looking down on a compound of some sort. There were a few buildings, all wooden, some sort of campground. There were men and cars scattered about, lights on in several buildings. “Which are you guessing?” I asked, trying to force my heart to remain calm, my mind steady. She was in one of them, I could feel it. I could feel it in my fucking bones.
Jack clicked on the one, making it larger. “See here,” he said, pointing at one guy in particular. “That’s Isaak, and right next to him is his daughter Lillian.”
I couldn’t tell how big the place was from where they had positioned these cameras. I couldn’t tell how many people they had or how many buildings there were, but I knew she was there. Iknewshe was there.
I straightened, turning to the doorway to find Azrael standing just outside of it. He was splattered in blood just like the rest of us, his eyes glowing brightly in the dim hallway. “I don’t care what you have to do, who you have to kill, what bridges you have to burn. Find it.”
That creepy smile stretched across my brother’s face, a glint lighting in his eye. “The mountains have finally sung. Jacky-boy?”
“It’ll take me time to triangulate the location. When I do, it’llbe a large area, depending on how deep in the woods will tell me how large the area.”
Azrael’s grip tightened around his cane. “I’ll narrow it down without breaking a sweat. Don’t worry, mountain-boy, I’ll find your little rose soon enough, if not prickling than perhaps covered in blades.”
I didn’t care for his riddles. I didn’t have the energy to decipher what he could possibly mean by that. I just wanted her home. “Fine,” I said, and brushed by him, Lucy close on my heels.
Six Weeks Later
22
Olivia
Date Unknown
Ihad to be trained.
I had to be trained and the Delepski’s and all of those people who worked for them were so…happyfor it.
I mean, they became happy after I lost every ounce of strength I had.
I managed to kill three of them. Since the day Mr. Alascer left, I managed to kill three of them. I couldn’t remember it, but I remembered the hose afterwards. I remembered feeling their dismembered cock’s in my hand and the beatings that came with killing them. I remembered sliding halfway into that black fog when the fourth man came in. A sacrificial lamb, I called them.
But they had ordered Phil to stop feeding me. Stop giving me water. Stop caring for my wounds. All until I behaved.
