“Are you okay?” Roman asked.
I shook my head. It wasn’t an answer in the negative. I wasn’t in the mood to waste time answering anything about howIwas doing. My comfort didn’t matter. How I felt was an irrelevant concept.
What mattered was how frantic and distraught Natalie was. When I’d last spoken to my uncle—clearly on speaker for her to cut in from the background—she’d begged me with that desperate, heartbroken tone that indicated she’d spent the last several hours crying her eyes out and imagining the worst.
What mattered more was that I found Maisienow. The longer she was captured in the Popovs’ hands, the more at risk she was to be moved again, taken away, hurt, killed?—
No. She can’t be dead. They couldn’t have?—
“Sergei,” Roman said again, sterner, yanking me out of my horrible fears.
I must have cringed at the ideas I never wanted in my head.
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be fine until I found Maisie. Until I took her back to Natalie. That wouldn’t be the end of it. The girl could be scared, traumatized, and experience untold horrors from the flashbacks of what was going on. And I would be there. I would stay and comfort her however she wanted me to, whether it be hugging her or coloring or anything else.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do to make her happy.
And there wasn’t anything that would stop me from proving to Natalie how much I loved her, both her and her daughter.
The ache in my side wasn’t anything that could slow me down, anyway. I simply had to watch it in the next fight.
Since we began this pursuit, we’d been fighting, searching, and demanding answers. From one high-speed car chase to another. In one bloody shoot-out to the next. And after one episode of hand-to-hand on to more, as we tracked down any and all Popov players we could find, we were far from giving up.
I never would.
Roman didn’t look convinced, frowning at me as the SUV rocked and swayed with the next turn. The soldier next to him shouted out a new location to the driver.
“What did he say?” I asked my brother again. Our uncle would be the leader of the whole mission, working remotely like a puppeteer, dispatching men as he saw fit to better align us as a cohesive team. So many people came together, ravaging our way through the city on this usually festive night.
“They thought they were retaliating for one of their supervisor’s wives being taken and raped.”
I raised my brows. “What?” The thought that the Popovs had taken an innocent like Maisie in the sense of exacting an eye for an eye burned another fire of pure rage inside me.
“Yeah. He’s gotten word to and from Niko Popov himself,” Roman said of our uncle. As the boss, he could—and would—go to the top and demand answers. “The Cartel had one of their women taken, and Niko assumed it was our doing.”
I growled, shaking my head. We wouldn’t ever hesitate to hit back at our enemies with the hardest force possible, but that incident wasn’t our fault.
“He ordered his men to take Natalie, and if they couldn’t get her, to take Maisie.”
I didn’t want to ask why. Or for what purpose. They hadn’t snatched her to bake cookies and have a fucking play date with her.
I could only cling to the hope that George was still alive to defend her. That they hadn’t separated them.
The soldier next to my brother lifted his hand. He was still on the phone, likely with another spy or soldier on the street. “They’re there. I’ve got a visual confirmation.”
Nodding once, I faced forward and primed myself to end this. To finish this fight through hell all night and morning long to reach that young child.
We’d risked ourselves through gunfire, among knives, against fists and kicks, and all through the adrenaline rushes of deadly speeds of chasing after their vehicles. We’d all scraped through, shot at, cut up, and bruised all over. Our SUV had more than a few dents from sharp stops and crashing.
But we weren’t quitting.
I couldn’t. Saving Maisie and showing Natalie how I never wanted her to be afraid or have to struggle on her own would be my ultimate redemption.
I’d taken her husband’s life.
But I would protect hers and her daughter’s with all that I was to make up for it.
