Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Okay.” She breathes out noisily before all sounds muffle, and her breathing doubles.
“Are you hidden?” As I stab the elevator button with my thumb I circled around her anus only minutes ago, the faintest ruffle of a head bob trickles through my phone’s speakers. “Good girl. Is it a fully closed-in space?”
I should have known better when a swoosh sounds down the line. She can’t do fully enclosed spaces. The darker it is, the more terrifying it is for her.
“You did good hiding, baby, but I need you to do one more thing for me, okay?”
With the elevator taking too long to arrive at my floor, I throw open the emergency exit stairwell and stomp down seven flights.
My leg is in excruciating pain after only one level, but I keep moving, as determined as ever. Alek will get men to Polina’s store in no time, but she’ll need me more than them, especially since I forced her to hide.
“What do you want?” Polina’s voice is still weak, but I am so incredibly grateful it is without the stutter it’s had since the commencement of our call.
My breaths come out jagged from my stomps when I reply, “I need you to turn off any lights. To not touch the screen of your phone so it will go black. If they see light, they might find you.”
“Yev…”
“It’s okay, baby girl. It’s gonna be okay. I promise. I just need you to trust me.” I add on a demand for her to cup the speaker of her phone when my leap onto the second-level landing rockets pain from my ankle to my scalp.
I can barely see through the pain.
I can barely talk.
But I don’t stop moving or trying to calm Polina down.
“Help is on the way. Alek sent men. And I’m coming too, Polly. I’m almost there.”
The grunts responsible for the furious shakes of my body almost block out Polina’s hushed murmur of my name. “Yev…”
“Yeah?” I reply just as I reach the foyer.
I sprint out the stairwell so fast, the bottom of my cast completely removes, and my bruised and swollen foot takes the full brunt of my stomps.
As the words I’ve been dying to hear the past week in person rustle down the line, I freeze. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.” Even with her pulse thudding in her ears, she can’t miss the sentiment in my tone, so it makes me nowhere near as guilty when I add, “But now is not the time for that, okay? You’ve got plenty of time to tell me that later. When you’re here, with me, tied to my fucking bed.”
That almost gets a giggle out of her until someone finds her hidey-hole.
“Nooo!” she screams as the thrashes of a woman fighting for her life ring through the speakers of my phone.
“Polly,” I shout down the line with my heart in my throat.
“Polina!” I try again when I get no response.
With my pain threshold nonexistent and my body determined to die before it ever gives in, I race into the parking lot, cussing when I find my spot empty.
I’m about to smash the window of a neighbor’s car when a dark sedan shrieks to a halt next to me.
I do a double take when the driver leans across to open the passenger door. “Get in.”
It’s Polina’s father.
He’s identical to the man Kliment spotted in the footage, sneaking into the country months ago.
Although a million questions are in my head, none of them are voiced during our frantic dash to Polina’s boutique. We get airborne at the end of the street before the smell of burning rubber lingers in our nostrils.
I have a cast from the middle of my thigh to the bottom of my calf, but I throw open my door and enter the boutique as quickly as Polina’s father.
The threat has been neutralized. The two dead men in the main area of Polina’s boutique announce this, not to mention a small number of the street kids I grew up with filling the corridor between the main part of the boutique to the storage room, but my pace doesn’t lessen in the slightest.
I need to see Polina.
I need to feel her.
I need to know she is safe before I can secure an entire breath.
When I enter the storage room, I spot a group of men huddled around an air vent. It is one of those big ducts that sucks in the hot air before distributing the cold.
My lungs commence accepting air again when I notice the man who carried Feo onto the dock in the body bag Kirill stored him in for days has scratches covering his hands and arms.
He’s been torn to shreds, and it fills me with an immense amount of relief.
“She won’t let anyone touch her,” Budimir mutters, his voice deep but uneased. “She’s a—”