Lara Erdeli.
His pale eyes narrow all the more, and I’m quite certain he’s grinning with glee beneath his mask.
“You’re coming with me, Ms. Erdeli,” he says.
Turning me around, he binds my wrists behind my back with a plastic zip tie. He does it too tight, so my hands immediately start tingling, my fingers going numb.
I don’t want to allow him to tie my hands. I know once he does, I’ll be significantly more helpless. There’s nothing I can do about it, however. I have no idea who these men are or what they want. Or how trigger-happy they might be. If I struggle, he might just shoot me dead.
With the room cleared, the other two men—the fake police officers—retrieve their duffle bags and join their friend. The taller one stares at me in surprise.
“Why did you grab her?” he says.
“This is Lara Erdeli,” Blue Eyes says proudly. “The commissioner’s daughter.”
The tall “officer” hesitates. He doesn’t like this. It wasn’t part of his plan. But at last he nods.
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s keep going.”
He must be the leader of their little group. The other two follow as he heads down the hallway, deeper into police headquarters.
The men move carefully, with tactical precision. They’ve obviously been trained. Former military?
I don’t think so.
They may have used something to cover their skin, but I’m fairly certain that all three of them have tattoos on their necks, hands, arms, and probably the rest of their flesh, where the uniforms cover.
That means they’re Bratva.
My stomach gives a lurch.
It’s the worst possible thing.
I really don’t want to be captured by Bratva.
As we approach the prisoner intake area, the leader nods to Blue Eyes.
“Keep her quiet,” he says.
Blue Eyes rummages in his pocket, pulling out another bandana similar to the one covering his face. He uses it to gag me. He ties it tight, so I can taste the rough material in my mouth. Thankfully, it seems clean and mostly tastes of cotton.
I expect the men to turn right, where the interrogation rooms and holding cells are located. I’m assuming they have a friend being held here, somebody they want to let out. I can’t think of any other reason they’d be crazy enough to break into a police station. They obviously aren’t here to assassinate officers, or they would have shot the ones in the main room.
However, they pull me to the left instead, toward the private offices.
The two phony officers turn the corner first. There must be someone posted here, someone who failed to hear the gunshot fired in the main room. Because I hear the leader speaking to somebody, then a quick scuffle that ends with a clunking sound and the thud of a body falling to the floor. The leader gives a whistle, and Blue Eyes pulls me around the corner.
I see another officer trussed up on the floor. A laptop sits on the counter, still playing an episode of Dolce Vita. The idiot was listening to his show with headphones on—something that will get him fired if Pavel finds out.
For now, the helpless officer can only watch while Blue Eyes steals the keys from his belt and uses them to break into the evidence locker.
So that’s it. They want whatever cash or drugs or guns are inside.
However, the men ignore the tagged and bagged evidence on the shelves lining both sides of the room, making their way instead to the far wall where a heavy safe door blocks off the most critical items.
Now the duffle bags come into play. The shorter “officer” drops to his knee, unzipping the top of his bag. He starts pulling out safe-breaking equipment. He’s certainly got the build for it—it takes muscle to drill into a safe. I can see the bulges beneath the sleeves of his too-tight officer’s shirt.
I should have seen at once that his clothes didn’t really fit him. The pants are an inch too short on his legs. His boss’s trousers are even worse.
I’m looking the safe-breaker over. He’s got curly dark hair, cropped short. A scar bisecting his right eyebrow. He’s the one that has the tattoo on the back of his hand, the one that looks like a—
I realize Blue Eyes is staring at me. I quickly drop my gaze to the floor. If he thinks I’m trying to get a look at their faces, to formulate a description of them, things won’t end well for me. Bratva don’t leave witnesses.
The boss is watching the door.
Blue Eyes looms over me, standing too close for comfort.
“How did that walking corpse Erdeli make a daughter as hot as you?” he says.
I’m gagged, so I can’t reply. Not that I’d want to respond to that anyway.
But Blue Eyes isn’t going to be ignored. He crouches down next to me and yanks the gag down out of my mouth. When he does it, his thumb brushes over my lower lip. His face is close to mine. His blue eyes look as cold and wild as a Husky dog’s over the top of his bandana.
“You know your father shot my friend?” he hisses at me. “Twice.”
He obviously expects me to answer.
I clear my throat, then say, “Well . . . that’s kind of his job. To shoot asshole criminals.”
Blue Eyes doesn’t like that. I can’t see much of his expression, but I see the fury in his eyes.
He moves his right hand. I instinctively flinch, thinking he’s about to slap me. Instead, he draws a knife from his belt.
Shit.
It’s a switchblade. He presses the button to flip up the blade. It snicks into place, the sharply-honed edge gleaming under the fluorescent lights.
“You know who we are?” he asks me, his eyes fixed on mine.
Should I pretend not to know? Should I act like he’s just some average petty criminal?
No. He wants me to know what he is.
“You’re Bratva,” I say.
“That’s right. And do you know the Rule of Reciprocity?”
I swallow hard, then nod. Yes. I know it very well.
“Whatever the Bratva receive, we return three-fold. Your father shot my friend twice. So what do you think I should do to you, six times over?”
He presses the point of the knife against my cheek. Then he draws it down the side of my face, as light as a whisper. The metal is cold and brutally sharp. It doesn’t cut me—not yet at least. But if he were to press just a little harder, it would slice through my flesh like butter.
A saw whirrs to life. The safe-breaker maneuvers it into place so he can cut through the safe’s hinges. The noise startles me, causing me to jerk. The switchblade knicks the hollow under my jaw, drawing a warm bead of blood.
“Careful . . .” Blue Eyes says.
I feel the warm blood sliding down my neck. Then I feel the cold metal tip of the knife following after it, running down the side of my throat to the collar of my blouse.
With three quick flicks of his wrist, Blue Eyes pops off the top three buttons of my blouse. Beneath the whine of the saw, I hear the buttons bouncing away across the tile floor.
The cool air hits the tops of my breasts, now bared to everyone’s view.
Blue Eyes is certainly taking the opportunity to look. He puts the point of the knife between my breasts. He traces the curve of my right breast, the bare swell above the cup of my bra.
I want to slap him, but my hands are tied behind my back. And if I move a muscle, the knife will bite into me again.