I pull down my sleeve. His breathing is wrong. “Hang on, Dad.”
“I wanted too much.”
“Shhh. You’re okay.”
“Lazarus is dangerous. I made him into a powerful monster. It’s right my monster should bite me, that you should hate me.”
“Oh, Dad—”
“I was so proud of you.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Listen, they’re mounting an attack on Aleksio and Little Vik. They figured out where they are from the GPS on the car you stole.” My eyes widen. “Shhh. Once they’re successful, they’ll kill you. You have to get away.”
“He’s sending men to Aleksio’s now? How many?”
Dad looks at me warily. “Everything. Those boys won’t survive it. It’s already too late.”
My heart pounds.
“You can survive it, though, Kitten. You will have one opening. Take your opening. This is the last thing I give you.”
“Dad!”
He squeezes my hand and fumbles with his lapel, pulls out a blade. I stare out in horror. He’s going out. He’s going to try to take Lazarus with him. “Call him over.”
“No.” They’re arguing and laughing. Fuck! They’re going to surprise Aleksio. Kill him. Maybe he’s not back yet. But I’m sure he is. Tito said he’d be back in “a few.” It’s been more than a few.
“Mira,” Dad says. “I won’t survive this. Let me choose this.”
It can work for sure—it’ll take the focus off of me long enough for me to get out. Especially if he kills Lazarus. But it’s suicide.
“Call him over.”
“No!”
He does it himself. “Lazarus! A word,” he calls. “A deal. A deal for my daughter’s life. A secret.” He nudges me away.
I stand, wrapping my arms around myself. I meet Dad’s eyes. He mouths the words, Got your back.
Lazarus strolls over, stands towering over my father, there on the floor. “What?” He reaches an arm around my neck and pulls me to him before I can move any farther away. “Why kill her when she’s so pretty? Is that what you’re wondering? Maybe I’ll put her in Valhalla.”
My heart thunders. Whatever Valhalla is, I know it can’t be good. My father mumbles something. All I hear is “Barbados accounts.”
Lazarus eases off, but he’s suspicious. I twist away. “He needs medical attention!”
“Shut up,” Lazarus says. “What was that, old man?”
My father mumbles something more about Barbados accounts. My heart pounds. I back away as Lazarus kneels in front of my father. My father grabs Lazarus’s tie. He’s going for his neck with the blade. Men close in.
I head for the door, pull it open, and run like hell for the stairway down the hall.
Lazarus’s voice—“Get her!”
I yank open the door, tears in my eyes. If Lazarus survived, it means that Dad didn’t.
Footsteps behind me. Strong hands close onto my shoulders just as I hit the first landing. I kick and twist as Rondo drags me back into the suite, back to a smiling Lazarus. Dad’s lying in the corner at the foot of the drapes, eyes open, blood everywhere.
I fall to my knees.
Lazarus just smiles. “Sucks when things don’t work out how you plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Viktor
Mira is gone when we return—gone with Tito’s car, his phone, his gun. Tito tells us what happened.
I thought Aleksio would be enraged, but he seems more hurt. He can’t believe she’s escaped—again.
“I thought she…I thought we…” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. He thought she was with him, that she would wait to see us together with Kiro.
He was wrong.
“You kidnapped her, brat,” I say. “You filmed her sucking your cock. Threatened her. She tried to get away once already.”
“But—”
“But what? But you saved her from getting her finger cut off?”
“We were together.”
He calls everywhere. He sends two men out to look for her. Our tech guy tries to activate Tito’s GPS remotely. They find it disabled. Of course.
Aleksio looks like he wants to crush the phone. “She won’t even answer.” He storms into the study.
I go to my bedroom and check my laptop to the Valhalla feed. There are webcams to all the girls’ rooms, including the one we chose for me to bid on. The one we chose for me is not the one I watch.
There’s only one woman I watch in Valhalla.
I haven’t slept at all since I saw her on the webcam. My heart is too twisted up.
I place the laptop on my bed and sit in front of it.
Turn, I think. She will not.
She’s dressed as a nun, and she prays at the side of her small bed to a small icon. Her blonde hair peeks out from the bottom of her head scarf.
I would know that hair anywhere.
I know that cheekbone, that way of sitting. I know that walk as she steps out of the room—to use the toilet, or maybe she’s called from the room.
Even the casual way she avoids the camera, never showing her face…this, too, I know.
I don’t need her to show her face. I know it’s her. I know. My pulse thunders with her every movement.
I’m not the only one who wants her to show her face. Men type things to her. Some of the girls answer when men type things to them, but she never does. She sees the notes—there’s a monitor there for her, always on, always lit. What the other men type comes across the screen. Sometimes lewd, sometimes not.
The men who message her, I would like to rip their faces off. Maybe I will, soon.
Some speculate that she doesn’t know English.
She knows English. She’s fluent. Not so fluent as me, but close.
There’s a dollar number below her, as there is with all the girls. For the nun, the bidding is highest. A night with her is well into six figures now.
This is Valhalla, the brothel, the nerve center of Aldo Nikolla’s billion-dollar flesh trade. We don’t know where Valhalla is located; nobody does. This will soon change.
And nobody will have this nun. Not ever. I would put my own eye out before I let any of these men get to her.
We’ve set up a bulletproof identity and an account for me with a credit card to match.
My actual mission is to bid on the cheapest girl, a young scrawny one named Nikki. Nikki’s virginity auction closes soonest. The plan is for me to get in there and hook up surveillance. It’s the scrawny girl I should be watching, but it’s the nun I can’t take my eyes from.
The nun is everything. She always was.
A knock. Yuri.
I grumble and shut the lid. I can’t let Yuri know.
He comes in. His gaze goes to the closed laptop. “What?”
“Valhalla feed. Disgusting. So many of our women in there being auctioned off to the highest-paying…” I growl. “Virgins, girls. A nun, even.”
Though I happen to know she is not a nun.
I force myself to ask about the search for Mira.
I pull up the Valhalla feed on my phone as Yuri speaks. I felt sure she would turn just a moment ago, but no. Tanechka and I used to be able to sense each other. Why can’t she sense me now?