Page 86 of Mistaken
“No,” she was weeping now, “they put a bag over my head, pulled me right off the street. I just know it was maybe an hour and a half from my place-”
“We see you,” I interrupted, “we’re in the black Porsche Cayenne, come out to the curb.” I pulled another device out of my jacket.
“What is that?” Yuri asked.
“Another way to find Ella,” I said, the rest of my explanation was cut off as he leaped from the car to hold Tania.
Tania and Yuri sat next to me, but I ignored her tears and his whispered reassurances. I couldn’t look at her, I knew everything she’d said was true.
“How long will this take you to compound?” I was speaking with Yuri’s chemist. He was apparently one of the best in his field, but not used to dealing with the Bratva.
“Uh, your people have been very good about fetching me the items needed,” he stammered, “so maybe a day or two?”
“WHAT?” I roared, “I need this gas now! This is a matter of life or death! And by this, I mean yours.”
“I’m sorry, sir, uh, Pakhan, I just- twenty-four hours is the least amount of time needed to compound this. I’m sorry, there is no way around this.” Growling, I hung up on him and sent the men guarding him instructions to stand guard while he worked.
I placed another call to Giovanni Toscano. “Are you ready to join us?”
“We are,” he answered, so much calmer than his brother, who I could hear shouting in the background. “How do you intend to play this, since your wife is a hostage?”
“We’re sending in a stealth drone to track the heat signatures in the building. But if she’s underground…” My throat closed up, and there was a respectful silence from Toscano. We both knew we’d have to blast through Katya’s men if that was the case. The more time they had to recover from the surprise, the higher the chance that Ella would die.
“Well, then we’ll have to move fast,” he said firmly.
Ella…
The stainless-steel table was terribly cold, and it was leaching all the warmth from my skin. Of course, Katya had ordered one of her creeps to cut off my clothes, so my bra and panties weren’t offering any help. He’d been pretty sloppy with that knife, and I had half a dozen little cuts bleeding all over me. I gritted my teeth, trying not to shiver.
So far, not so bad, I tried to comfort myself,they sting more than anything, right?
“So, my darling husband has quite the head for business,” she was saying, kissing Vasily on his giant cheek.Seriously, I thought,his face is half the size of a football field…
Oh. She was still talking.
“He thought it was a waste of money for me to damage you enough that even those men with the lowest standards would be unwilling to fuck you.”
“Oh, yeah.” I croaked, “The family brothel again, huh?” A spurt of blood flew across my face as she slapped me, her wedding ring catching on my lip. It swelled quickly, sending a flash of heat across my face.
“What made you think,” she hissed, “that you could ever keep a man like Maksim?” Looking over her shoulder, I see Vasily’s potato-shaped face frown. “Did you really think I would allow you to survive after you ignored my warning to not go through with the wedding?”
There’s another slap before I can answer her, this one making my eyes go out of focus for a second. Still, I opened my big mouth again. “Have you ever seen Maksim not get his way? How did you think I was going to pull that off?”
Now Katya’s really angry and she punches me in the stomach. Her rings are cold- such a stupid thing to notice but they drive into me so hard. I lose my breath and wheeze, trying to inflate my lungs again as she’s ranting. “How could you think an outsider like you could ever belong? You must think you’re so clever to get pregnant and trap him!”
My brow furrows and I’m one second away from blurting, “Huh?” before I remember Maksim’s cover story. “It takes two to tango, Katya.” Annd, here comes my big mouth. “Do you have any Tylenol? It can be generic, I’m fine with that.”
She’s lighting up a cigarette and I don’t think about it until the lit end comes down on the thin skin of my throat. There’s a little sizzle, like when you put out a cigarette in an ashtray but this is on me. The pain sears, blooming across my neck and I can smell it; my burned skin and it smells like roast pork. I turn my face to the side and heave uncontrollably.
Maksim…
My gaze is directed solely on the device in my hand, the green blinking light showing me the path to my wife. The wife I don’t deserve. I thought I could protect her, but of course, Ella would fling herself into the path of an oncoming bus if it meant saving Tania.
Her Tarot reading at Christmas came back with nauseating clarity; The Hanged Man card and Sofia’s words, “There is a sacrifice ahead and only you can decide to offer it.”
Ella didn’t deserve this. If anyone’s life should be sacrificed, it should be mine. I remembered when we were standing at the door, Sofia had also told me,“One of you can make a choice that could destroy you both. And that warning is meant for you, too.”The choices I made when I shouted at her and told her she was an outsider. A chain of choices all the way back to forcing her to marry me because she fit my requirements, because I admired her spirit.
I’d been so used to being hard since I was old enough to throw my first punch. But in this moment, I felt a surge of self-disgust so intense that it threatened to choke me.
