“Wait. Is that Ember Lerrus?” the man asked, striding to Mary.
“No! It’s my cousin!” I shouted. “Mary! It’s my cousin Mary, not Ember!” Mary’s fucking hair was strawberry blonde, not fire engine red! But, with horror, I could see how they would mistake her for Ember.
The guy bent down, yanking Mary’s face into the light, and I screamed at him to stop…and he did, dropping her head back on the ground. Standing, he shook his head, stating, “It’s not her.”
“Let’s go then,” the woman stated, but both she and the man pulled out their guns. “Take her to the van. We’ll be there shortly.”
WAnd with a new terror filling my veins, I saw the man and woman take aim on my six bodyguards. I scrambled against the hold of the brute behind me as he started carting me out of the room, trying to stop this…but I wasn’t strong enough. While I screamed and struggled, the man and woman kill each one of my six guards. A single shot to the head.
I held onto the door screaming, staring around the corner into the room as they then moved onto Ruslan, Vadim, and Abram…but the woman held up her hand. They both glanced to the right. I couldn’t hear a damn thing, and my mind was mush as I stared blindly at Trofim’s dead body, but they both started running out of the room, yelling to move.
I was yanked from the door, my stomach wanting to expel everything it contained as I was thrown over the guy’s shoulder. Everyone started running toward the back of the church. I kept screaming all through their mad rush through the church. Finally getting my hearing back, I sucked in as a loud banging erupted at the front of the church. It gave me hope, so I lifted and screamed even louder.
My hope was short lived as the lights went out, when I was bashed on the side my head.
Waking, my head was being tugged and buzzing sounded in my ear. I lay flat on my stomach on a thin mattress, and my jaw was killing me. I tasted blood in my mouth. There were two people behind me—a woman and a man speaking Russian. Another jerk of my head brought my eyes open fully as memories invaded.
I had been kidnapped. And I was still being held, I realized as I started struggling, only to figure out my hands were handcuffed behind my back, and my feet were also cuffed to something that clinked.
I started to scream again…and again.
I was hit on the side of the face, and the lights went out.
The next time I woke, it was dark, no lights except for moonlight that streamed in. I closed one eye since I had apparently lost a contact somewhere and squinted up to a large window. I was still on my stomach, handcuffed, my jaw hurt, and my left temple throbbed. I moved my tongue around inside my mouth and winced as I realized the inside of my cheek had been split open.
I wiggled, trying to see if I could get loose, but the handcuffs were so tight I was in danger of losing circulation.
“Aw. She’s awake,” a man said from my right with a heavy Russian accent.
I swung my head in his direction and felt an odd breeze on my head. It felt strange—while I squinted with one eye at the man sitting quietly a few feet away, I shook my head.
With the cool sensation, I realized…I was bald. I had no more hair.
“You took my hair?” I asked in a croak, swallowing when my throat scratched badly. “You kidnap me to shave my head?”
“No,” a woman stated further behind him with the same accent, but I couldn’t see her clearly in the darkness. As it was, they were still masked, but only without the gas masks. “Your hair is too recognizable. We had to get rid of it.”
I sucked in a breath, glancing around. I was on a makeshift cot, and the area appeared like some kind of basement. The walls were tall with windows rimming the ceiling right before the wooden planked ceiling. A quick look to my left only showed more of the same, but with stairs leading up and another set leading down. “Are you holding me for ransom?” I was praying they were. That would be my luckiest option.
The women chuckled, and the man said, “No. You are going to die, Ms. Forter.” He paused. “But not before you give birth to those babies inside your womb. Once they’re born, we will kill you. If you behave, we promise to make your death as painless as possible.”
My vision blurred, and my breath caught as I stared. “What do you mean?”
“Your babies,” the woman stated, still laughing. “Actually, we want Daniil’s babies.”
At that declaration, I threw up.
They started cursing, but it was only white noise as the day’s events fully registered. I had no doubt in my mind these two psychos were serious. Trofim’s head exploding kept repeating inside my mind’s eye. And then each bodyguard’s head. I choked and continued to puke, hardly noticing when the man yanked my bare head from the cot so I could throw up into a wastebasket.
This kept up for some time until I understood why my two delusional captors were cursing even more. I could hear gunshots. Faintly. From above. A whole shit ton of it.
I swallowed down the rest of my puke and started screaming. The woman slapped me hard enough that my head banged against another wall, cutting off my shouts. But I started back up. I needed to get the fuck out of here! They wanted what was mine! Never did I think I would feel such a possessive urge inside me, but these people wanted my babies. And they were fucking mineminemine.
The woman slapped me again as the man started to remove the cuffs from my feet. She yanked me to my feet and shoved me toward the stairs. I stumbled, but I was good with the direction. I raced toward the flight of stairs, only to be yanked back hard against a solid chest.
The man hissed, “Down. Not up, Ms. Forter.”
“Fuck you,” I stated harshly.
