I explained where I was and the options laid out before me. Ivan owned half of South Florida, so if anyone had contacts who could be on the lookout, it was him. He perked up when I mentioned the little town I passed without a second glance.
“I used to own a place out there. About fifty acres with a house and a barn. Great safe house, good for… other things.”
I didn’t care how many bodies were buried out there. In fact, I might have another to add once I caught up with my wayward guard. “But you don’t own it anymore?” I asked.
“No, sold it more than a year ago. Hang on.” He paused for a long, quiet moment, soft tapping in the background as if he was pulling up records. “Looks like it was a corporate sale. I figured they’d raze the farmhouse and turn it into a warehouse park. Does the name Zolan Manufacturing mean anything to you?”
I couldn’t speak for a few seconds, could hardly see through the red haze of rage. Oh, I recognized the name all right. It was one of Luigi’s shell companies. As fast as the new wave of anger hit me, it receded to icy fear. This wasn’t an escape attempt at all. It was an operation to get my wife back into Luigi’s greasy hands.
Who the fuck knew what waited for her at that farmhouse, or whatever in the hell it had been turned into over the last year.
“You okay, Gavril?” Ivan asked when I remained silent too long. “Just tell me if you need backup.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” I said, thanking him for the information, as well as the promise to send the exact location of his former property.
It felt like half the day had been wasted on wild goose chases, but this new information had to be right. There was no way this was a coincidence. The sheer amount of time that had gone by had me so tense I could barely fold myself back into the car. My imagination worked double time to taunt me with images of what Lilia might have been suffering for the past hours.
Clamping my fingers around the wheel, I forced a calm that wouldn’t last and headed toward the location as soon as Ivan’s text pinged on my phone less than a minute later.
Certainly no Russia, or even California, Florida was still a damn large state, and this far outside of a big city, there seemed nothing but miles of plant life. I could have gone from LA to San Francisco in the amount of time I had been driving first in one direction, then another.
I finally turned off onto a farm road and crept along with a vast expanse of overgrown fields on either side of it. The house came into sight after about a half-mile, and I pulled off into the weeds. Strapping a gun to my side, another across my back, and clipping a hunting knife onto my belt loop, I stealthily made my way up to the house.
It might have been nice at one time, but now the wraparound porch sagged at the edge, and most of the windows were boarded up. An old gray barn with a big piece of corrugated sheet metal leaning where the door should have been stood off to the side. The car the motel guy described to me was parked right in front, and at the same time I breathed a sigh of relief that they were here, my heart rate kicked into overdrive.
Another car parked beside it and my tension rose. How many? Was I too late? They wouldn’t kill her, not when she was so valuable, but those assholes wouldn’t have any compunction against a bit of torture or some other sick fun.
As I pictured how I would kill them all, I found a window that wasn’t boarded up on the ground floor and peered through. It was a kitchen window and had a view straight through to the living area.
My eyes skated past the filthy, mostly broken furniture and spotted familiar hands clasped together behind a wooden chair. Zip ties dug into her wrists, leaving red welts against her pale skin. Her long hair fell down her back in tangles. I moved to get a better view and saw her profile, chin tipped downward,almost resting on her chest as if she might be unconscious. I didn’t blink until I caught the rise and fall of her chest. Blood stained the shoulder of her t-shirt, and I gripped the windowsill until the rotting wood crumbled in my fingers.
I ducked down when footsteps sounded toward the kitchen. A moment later, I heard familiar voices.
“How much longer?” Reuben whined. “You promised all I had to do was deliver her.”
The little piece of shit sounded scared, but it was nothing compared to how he’d sound when I was sawing his fingers off one by one.
“We need everyone for the ambush,” Luigi answered. “It won’t be long now. They landed at a private airfield not too far from here. Any minute now.”
Another voice joined in, one of Luigi’s right-hand men. “This is a lot of work for just one more,” he said, as whiny as Reuben. “I get that Masha’s a prize and will probably hold a lot more sway than that other one, but—”
Luigi cut him off with a grunt. “Do you honestly believe they’ll just send one person? No matter what the girl told them, we’re going to be able to pick off quite a few with this setup.”
So this wasn’t just to get Lilia back in his control. Luigi had actually thought a few steps ahead this time. He planned to take out whoever arrived to rescue her.
“They’ll kill you all,” Lilia screamed from the other room after hearing their laughter. Someone cut her off with a hard slap.
The sound of her whimper after the crack of the hand against her cheek filled me with such fury that I was about to goin alone. All I had to do was aim my gun over the windowsill and take three neat headshots in quick succession.
As I raised my gun, the sound of several cars pulling up outside made them hurry out of the kitchen toward the front of the house, shoving Reuben ahead of them. “Get outside and keep up the act like you’re helping her,” Luigi hissed, as the other men with him ducked down and readied their weapons.
Running around the side of the house, I saw that Luigi’s assumption was correct. It was a veritable army of Petrovs. Out of the first car spilled Aleks, the leader of the American branch of the powerful family, Lilia’s older sister Masha, who looked like she was ready to tear off some faces with her teeth, and her husband, Anatoli Ovinko, someone who definitely wouldn’t mind seeing me dead. Two other cousins I thought I recognized as Rurik and his brothers, Matvey and Daniil, jumped out of another car, followed quickly by at least a half-dozen other angry, heavily armed men.
I stayed frozen at the corner of the house, my hand on my gun, waiting to see what would happen next, only thinking about Lilia, unable to protect herself or get out of the way if something went wrong. Reuben stepped out onto the sagging porch, his hands up, a nervous smile on his face.
“Where’s Lilia?” Masha demanded, lunging forward. Aleks grabbed her by the arm and held her back. No one made another move closer to the house after that.
“She’s inside, she’s not feeling well, she…” the nervous little shit trailed off, motioning for them to follow him in.
