Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 36597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 183(@200wpm)___ 146(@250wpm)___ 122(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 183(@200wpm)___ 146(@250wpm)___ 122(@300wpm)
Somehow, Millie managed. He gave her a gentle smile. “There’s my girl. Let me see your pretty blue eyes.” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly before opening them again to an even bigger smile. “Yeah,” he said with a satisfied nod. “You’re back with me. Good. I’ll get you a bottle of water. Be right back.”
That was it. No condemnation. No making fun of her. Just… whatever that was. It wasn’t long before he was back with a cold bottle of water. He handed one to Venus, then knelt in front of Millie again, watching while she took a healthy pull.
“You good?” Shadow met her gaze steadily. She sighed, wiping a shaking hand over her face.
“Fine.”
He raised an eyebrow at that, but let it go. Shadow stood and went to Venus. “We’ve got just over eleven hours to plan this. You ready?”
“Da,” she said, standing and retrieving a laptop from an overhead bin. “Millie, I need to know what you know. If we’re to do this right, you have to tell us everything.”
This was the most embarrassing situation she’d ever been in. She’d nearly had a fucking panic attack in front of a stranger. A stranger she had to work with, who already judged her on her size and not her capabilities. It made her want to punch something. Preferably her fucking sister.
She shot Venus a look. “If you’d bothered to see beyond relationship I was pretending to build with Mikhail, maybe you’d know same shit I do. Which, I’d like to point out, cost him his position in palace when you berated me for fucking a common soldier. I wasn’t fucking him. He was trying to help get all of us out of Belarus together. Besides, had he still been in fucking palace, I’d have known Katya was in danger and could have gotten her out before whatever contact in fuckin’ FSB informed you! So fuck you!”
Venus didn’t rise to the bait, simply looked at Millie. She’d always thought herself superior to her little sister. When she’d been a scared teenager, knowing she’d eventually have to leave, she’d followed Venus willingly because the other woman was a trained FSB member. Once they got to America, months later, Millie had been on a constant crash course on how to take care of herself and had realized that all Venus’s training hadn’t prepared her for the real world any more than Millie had been. They both had had to learn street sense, but Venus had never admitted to not knowing everything. Likely the doctrine of her training. If she’d doubted herself, she’d make more costly mistakes than being wrong. As part of an armed unit that was all well and good. As two women alone on the streets in various foreign countries? Not so much. Studying Venus, Millie knew she’d hit a nerve. The slight tic in her sister’s right eye was a clear indication. Yeah. She wanted this fight.
To Millie’s everlasting irritation, Shadow just had to step in instead of letting Millie stir some more in the hornet’s nest. “We need to know what you know, Millie,” he said gently. “You’re probably right, but the past is done. We have to deal with the here and now.”
If the man hadn’t been so fucking patient and single-minded she might have found him attractive. He was certainly worthy of some masturbation material when she was alone, but the mere fact he didn’t recognize she needed this fight with her sister took him out of the running for mutual gratification later. Well, that and he was in her sister’s MC. She’d never cross that line. Not out of respect for Venus. Quite the opposite. If they put up with her sister, she had no time for them. All that aside, she knew she needed to tell them what they were up against. Because Millie knew there was no way she could do this without all the resources these two had available.
She sighed, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Fine. Victor has her microchipped. Like fucking dog. Mikhail says he knows of two chips in her. Second one is safeguard in case first fails. He says tech guy told Victor they would last a minimum of twenty years, but Victor insisted she have two.”
“Do you know where on her body they are?”
“One is in her back at her hip. I’m not sure which side. Second, I have no idea. You’ll need to find scanner he uses or chips’ frequency to find either without simply cutting her open.”
“Blyad,” Venus swore, turning away and pacing several feet before focusing on her laptop.
“It’s not that bad,” Shadow said, hooking a finger over his chin and rubbing as he thought. “Cain can talk to Giovanni about it. I’m sure he can come up with a solution in eleven hours.”