Page 48 of Sold to My Ex's Brother
“On it,” Ilya replies, as he heads for the door, Gregori close behind him. The blood is pulsing in my temples as I make my way to my car, stepping over Anatoly’s body as I go. That bastard—if it hadn’t been for him, I might not have been in this nightmare.
But I know, deep down, as I start up the car, that my brother was never going to let something like this go easily. It’s not who he is, never has been. He was always going to do what he could to hurt me, to take revenge, and now he knows that she is pregnant, too, it’s a double victory for him. I can already imagine the ways he will make sense of this act of senseless violence to himself, as some kind of revenge against me, but I will not give him the satisfaction of going through with it.
I pull away from the office buildings, knowing that my men will clean up the body as they parse out the route that Artem took out of here. He can’t have gotten far. I just have to intercept him before he gets a chance to hand her over to that buyer.
Fuck, even if that bastard manages to get his hands on her, I will hunt him down, too, execute him for thinking for a moment that he had a right to the woman carrying my child...
I grip the wheel tight, so tight it looks like the knuckles might burst right out from under my skin. I need to get to her. That’s all that matters. Everything else in the world can wait. As long as I make sure she is safe, that she does not succumb to whatever my psycho brother has planned for her, I will be able to fix this.
Even if I can hardly stand to think about the terror she must be experiencing right now.
“I’m coming, Maya,” I mutter under my breath, and I put my foot down, my car tearing through the quiet morning air.
23
MAYA
I tuckmy knees up to my chest and look around the back of the van. There are two other women in here with me, and I don’t know if I’m glad for the company, or devastated that there are others subject to the same horrors that I am.
Artem wasted no time in getting me out of that place, pulling a bag over my head before he tossed me into the back of a van. My ears are still ringing from the sound of the door slamming, and, as the engine starts up below us, I get a horrible feeling in the base of my stomach.
I don’t know if I’m going to find a way out of this.
I try to distract myself, looking around at the women who are sharing this space with me. Maybe we can band together, figure something out. Might be a ridiculous thought, but I have to give it a try.
“Hey,” I murmur, to the one closest to me. She has long hair that is streaked with grown-out blonde highlights, and her eyes are fixed on the floor. There is a tattoo of a butterfly on her wrist, its wings flapping, as though seeking somewhere better than this.
She doesn’t lift her head, and I guess she didn’t hear me over the rumbling of the engines. I try again, a little firmer this time, reaching out to touch her on the arm.
“Hey.”
She jolts as soon as I lay a hand on he, and I instantly regret it. I don’t want to scare her, or any of them, for that matter. I can’t even imagine everything that has brought them to this point—I can only guess that it’s as much of a mess for them as it is for me, and I don’t want to force them to relive it.
“Sorry,” I whisper, drawing my hand back, shifting away from her to give her the space she needs. “I’m Maya, by the way.”
The girl eyes me for a moment, her scared green eyes examining mine.
“Anna,” she replies, and she hooks her elbows around her knees, pulling them further in, as though she wants to vanish into herself.
“Do you know where we’re going?”I ask, nodding to the road outside—not that we can see much of it, from where we are. The windows are tinted, dark enough that it’s virtually impossible for anyone to see inside, and even if they could, the windows are too high to see where we are going.
Anna shakes her head.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I just… I was asleep in my apartment, I brought this guy home last night, and he must have… I thought he left, but he stayed while I was asleep, and I woke up and he was telling me I had to come with him.”
She falls silent again, her words choked by tears in the back of her throat. My brows knit together. Fuck, this is even worse thanI thought. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to ease the burden of this for her, but I have to try.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I—he took me, too. I was just getting some fresh air last night, and he?—”
“To an auction.”
One of the other girls speaks up from the far side of the truck, and we both look over at her in surprise.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Artem is taking us to an auction,” she replies, her voice hollow, devoid of emotion. “He’s got buyers together, ready to bid. That’s where we’re going right now. To be sold.”
My head sags down to my chest as panic grips me once again. No, this can’t be happening. He threatened it, but I never thought it would get to this point, the point where I was actually going to be forced up on to that stage again and shown off like I was nothing more than an object.
