“Having fun, boys?” I asked, not bothering to mask the derision in my voice while my heart raced in my chest. The two men halted mid-movement, and before they could reach for their weapons, I made my move. I pounced, slicing the backs of their knees in fluid movements, and both collapsed onto the cold dirt ground.
They scowled at me, but before they could move, I straddled one’s back, uncaring whether I cracked his spine or not, while at the same time stabbing the other one through his palm.
The second guy let out a scream when I grabbed the nape of his head and smashed his skull against the ground, blood splattering everywhere. His body twitched before going limp, his dead eyes staring at me accusingly.
It didn’t bother me at all. I only wished I could have prolonged his horror a bit more.
“Geez, that was over way too soon,” I muttered with a labored sigh. “The only rock in the whole yard and it had to find itself underneath his skull.”
The asshole trapped underneath me grunted, scowling at me over his shoulder.
I pulled out my blade nailed inside the dead guy’s palm and brought it to the other guy’s throat, shutting him up.
“You crazy bitch,” he growled, causing blood to sputter out the sides of the blade’s puncture wound.
“You have no idea how crazy I am,” I murmured against his ear. He stilled below me, fear trickling out of him like smoke. “I’m going to savor your pain so fucking much.”
My knife pricked deeper into his skin, and he into the dirt.
“P-please,” he begged, but his pleas meant nothing to me. The girls they kidnapped had begged too. Cried and prayed. These bastards reaped the benefits and forgot all about them.
“I wonder if you ever showed those girls any mercy.” The disgust in my voice was unmistakable. “Give me one instance, and if I find it to be true, I’ll spare your life.”
As if. You played in this world, you died in this world. It was the unspoken motto, one he should know well.
He remained still, licking his lips nervously as his puny brain scrambled. He wasn’t able to come up with one, to no one’s surprise. The bastard couldn’t even name one situation when he’d even attempted to spare these girls. Didn’t even have the creativity to make one up.
My eyes flicked to the container full of unconscious girls as I wrenched him up and sliced across his Adam’s apple. He shrieked, but the moment I pressed the blade harder, it turned into a gasp.
“Shut that door, suka,” I ordered, tilting my chin toward the container while still holding the knife to his neck. “I don’t want the girls freezing to death.”
He crawled, pulling his body forward to shut the door with trembling fingers. My lips curled in disgust at his cowardice. These men were brave when it came to helpless women, but put them at someone else’s mercy and they were crybabies.
Once he shut the door, his gaze shifted to me, considering me. I watched his fear slowly fade as he took all of me in. A petite young woman. I looked weak, but I wasn’t. I’d been to hell and back, and I’d never let anyone overpower me again.
I could see the decision cross his expression before he lunged at me. I anticipated the move, taking a step to the right. My knife slammed into his shoulder, and a bloodcurdling scream pierced the frigid air.
He face-planted into the dirt, and I grabbed a fistful of his hair, slicing my blade across his neck with more force than before. His blood spilled into the dirt, pooling around him in fits of gurgles.
Maybe I should feel something, but I didn’t. No remorse. No fear. Nothing.
I kicked his body and let him fall to the ground with a satisfying thud.
It was time to take care of the innocents.
Chapter 12Kingston
Istared ahead, stunned at the gruesome murder.
It had been the last thing I expected to witness when I followed Liana from her hotel room. Was Sofia backstabbing Perez Cortes and using her daughter to make it happen? It was a plausible explanation, yet my instinct warned that wasn’t it.
Unless this was a spur-of-the-moment kill. No, it couldn’t be. Liana came prepared. She waited for Sofia and Perez to make themselves scarce before she attacked.
But then what?
Liana Volkov puzzled me more by the day. When I walked past her in the restaurant, there was no recognition in her eyes. Yes, she seemed astonished, certainly a little curious, but it wasn’t in line with the way a person reacted when they saw someone they used to know. A boy assigned as her bodyguard for years.
Did she forget me? It seemed unlikely. I’d spent more time with her twin, but I’d known both sisters for years. It would be impossible for her to forget me, just as it was impossible for me to forget them.
I watched in silence, sticking to the shadows as Liana staggered upright, glancing around, then fixed her blonde locks with clean fingers. Her hand didn’t tremble. Her expression was eerily calm. It was clear she knew what she was doing.
The more I watched her, the more I wondered whether anything was as it seemed. But I had no time to ponder it as she pulled out a cell phone, fingers flying across the screen. The moment the standard whoosh of a message leaving her inbox sounded, she tossed the phone across the yard. It skidded along the gravel until it fell over the side of the nearby dock and into the water with a splash.
She stared down at the corpses, grinning with satisfaction. A long-forgotten emotion pierced through me as sharp as a blade, her grin doing things to me I couldn’t make sense of. That dull ache in my thigh throbbed, almost like it was a sign to look closer.
What did all this mean? Was Liana a friend or a foe?
I watched the petite woman stand over the corpses, and I wondered if she was waiting for reinforcements. Or maybe she was reflecting on her sins.
I didn’t know. Liana’s body might have survived, but on the inside, she was just as dead as Lou.
The sound of the engines approaching shattered the cold silence, and with a lethal efficiency, Liana opened the container door, ensuring the women were in plain view before disappearing in the nick of time.
Two vehicles and a bus came to a stop. The door to the first black SUV opened and a familiar figure stepped out—Nico Morrelli. The second stopped and another door opened to reveal Áine and Cassio King.
It was a known fact in the underworld that Áine King had an ongoing operation of rescuing victims of human trafficking. Nico Morrelli, with his real estate spanning multiple continents, ensured the women were safe and rehabilitated.
Their eyes landed on the dozen sedated women huddled in the container, and they quickly got to work.
“Do we know who sent the message?” I heard Cassio ask.
Nico shook his head. “It was an untraceable line.”
Smart.
It would seem that Liana was very familiar with covert dealings.
If I’d learned anything from this display, it was that Liana Volkov had become a formidable enemy or reluctant ally.
I didn’t know what motivated her, but I would find out. And then, I’d plow through. She’d never see me coming.
Chapter 13Liana
Iflicked the lights of my hotel room on and came face-to-face with arctic eyes.
“Where have you been?”
My stomach dropped at seeing my mother seated in the chair, the full ashtray next to her hinting at how long she’d been here. My heart stopped, then kick-started with a jolt, drumming painfully in my chest. I knew what would follow if I played my cards wrong.
“I needed some fresh air.”
My voice was steady and my expression clear of any emotion.
“You’ve never been a good liar,” she said angrily. “Your eyes… They’re the windows to your soul.”