“All right,” she says finally. “But I’m coming too.”
Daniil probably won’t be happy that his seven-months-pregnant wife is going on a mission but that’s a problem for after we get Allora back.
I promised her I wouldn’t die, but I also promised her they’d never get to her as long as I was still breathing. And I’m still breathing.
I have a lot to make up for.
Chapter Forty
Allora
I squeeze my eyes shut as a woman named Marisol puts me in an ice-cold shower and scrubs my body with the world’s hardest brush.
“Gets off dirt and blood,” she mutters.
I try not to flinch as she scrubs me from top to bottom, even my most intimate parts. When she’s done she pulls me out of the shower and wipes me down with a towel, like I’m incapable of doing it myself.
“On the table,” she says, pointing.
We’re in another cold, sterile room, just outside the bathroom. I think this is an old office building but it’s impossible to tell because there are no windows.
The table is metal and it occurs to me this might have been a morgue.
Ew.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I get on the table.
“Who are you?” I ask, hoping to delay the inevitable. “Who do you work for?”
“Don’t ask questions,” she says, plugging a little container into the wall. “Better you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what? I mean, obviously you work for Pete. Tex.”
She chuckles. “You think I work for him? You funny.”
She has a weird accent but I can’t place it.
Not Russian, not French or German, but something European.
“How would you feel if they did this to you?” I ask.
She laughs. “Theydid. I was smart enough to work my way into a position of power.”
Power.
Is that what this is? Power over people in vulnerable positions?
“My father has money,” I say. “He can get you out of here.”
She hesitates, looking at me for a moment. “Yeah? You think we’d live long enough to enjoy it?”
“My father isn’t a nice man. I promise you that. He can protect us.”
I see a spark of interest in her eyes, but then the door opens and Vito walks in. I shudder involuntarily, memories coming back faster than I can keep them at bay. The way he laughed the whole time he raped me. The way he and Baron took turns, over and over, like they had all the time in the world.
His eyes gleam when he looks at me but I refuse to cower. He’s already seen me naked, already done the unthinkable. This time, I won’t scream or cry or beg them to stop.
“Whassa matta, little princess? Daddy and your big bad bodyguard couldn’t protect you?” His New York accent is distinct and he leers at me.
