Page 33 of A Vegas Crush Collection #2

f#ck the game!

Boris

Sometimes being the boring one on the team pays dividends.

Like now. I scored two goals in the game tonight but the press has already figured out that I’m not good for much more than a quick one-sentence soundbite.

Tyler is off being his usual obnoxious self, garnering more attention than me, so I’m able to make quick rounds and then slip away, eager to get to Talia at the restaurant.

I make the walk quickly, but when I arrive, Talia is not here. I start to worry maybe she changed her mind. But in my heart, I know she’d tell me if she couldn’t make it.

Something feels not right. I know she left ahead of me and she should be here by now.

Boris: Hey, are you hiding? I’m at the restaurant but I don’t see you.

I wait. And wait.

Boris: Hey, everything okay?

And then the three dots appear. It’s a long minute before the reply comes through.

Talia: We have her. Cancel your contract and leave your money with us or she dies – after we’ve enjoyed her thoroughly.

Talia: Such a pretty girl.

My blood runs cold. I put a hand over my mouth to keep from roaring in anger.

I haven’t seen red like this since I was a teenager, dyslexic and frustrated and without an outlet.

Since before I started playing hockey. Whoever is on the end of the line sends a picture of Talia, bound and gagged, her shirt ripped with a breast exposed.

The image makes me think of nothing else other than murder.

I will kill these people. Or make them wish they were dead.

With shaking hands, I hit the talk-to-text button and send my reply.

Boris: What do you want? I’ll come. I will give you what you want.

Talia: Scorpio Street. Look for a rusted metal door. Come alone or she dies.

I run all the way back to the apartment building, first checking Talia’s place, which is locked up tight. I head up to my apartment after that, dialing Vlad’s number. Go alone? I don’t think so. I’m not fucking going alone and I’m sure as hell not letting those guys hurt Talia.

As soon as Vlad answers, I launch into a tirade.

“I asked you to find a way to get me out of this contract. Now they have Talia. You said you’d help me fix this.”

“I said these things are always more complicated than we want them to be,” Vlad answers. “Good game tonight.”

“Good game? I just told you they have Talia and you’re telling me good game? Fuck the game and fuck you too!”

“Whoa! I’ve never heard such language out of you, Boris,” Vlad says. “What is this little girl to you anyway? They hit a nerve taking her?”

“Vlad, I swear to God I will ruin you for your business in hockey,” I snarl. “They have threatened to kill her. If she is harmed there will be hell to pay so you better send me the best guys you have on the ground in Vegas and send them right fucking now.”

“Fine, fine,” Vlad says. He chuckles and I swear I would punch him if he were in front of me now. “Hope you marry this one for all the trouble she’s causing.”

“She is just doing her job, you debil. They ordered me to come alone so I need your guys to meet me here at my place first. Now, Vlad. Tell them to come now.”

I hang up and head to my closet, pulling a lockbox from the back of the top shelf. In it, a .45 sits, untouched since before I moved to Vegas. I was never into guns much but bought one in Austin so I could learn to shoot. I learned at a range, but it’s been a while since I’ve pulled a trigger.

I load it and put it in my jacket and then wait, pacing for the long minutes until a sharp knock sounds at my door.

I swing it open wide, finding three barrel-chested men in dark suits there, each one more menacing than the next.

One of them is positively gigantic. He says his name is Huell and that Heisenberg.

Fucking perfect.

I tell them where we’re going, and that I’m supposed to go alone.

Huell tells me he knows the place. “There’s a way to get in unnoticed. I’ll lead my men in from there while you go in the rusty door as expected.”

Plan set, we head out on foot. Vlad’s men split off two blocks away from the building, disappearing into the shadows as I make myself obvious, staying in the light. I get to the rusted metal door and it swings open, two big men waiting for me. They saw me coming.

I’m patted down, my gun taken away the minute I get in the doorway.

I’m led down a dark hallway, through a corridor filled with what I suppose used to be individual offices.

Each of the men has a grip on my elbows.

They control my movements, our pace. My heart is beating wildly, and the need to see Talia is visceral.

When I do, it takes everything I have to stay neutral and calm.

She’s gagged, her arms and legs tied tightly to the chair she sits on. Her shirt is torn, her breast still exposed to all who want to look. She’s got a bruise blooming on her right cheek and blood trickles from her bottom lip.

“You’re as good as dead,” I say under my breath. “I will rip your limbs off.”

I’m shoved to the ground, a knee in my back.

One of them grabs me by the hair and kicks me in the stomach, enough to take the wind out of me.

The other steps away, pulling his cock out.

He shakes it at Talia, taunting her, telling her how much she’ll like having it up her ass.

She winces and closes her eyes as I try to stand.

Suddenly, there is a third man in the room, and two of them are holding me back as the guy with his cock out strokes himself, pushing his limp prick toward Talia’s mouth.

She’s gagged, so there isn’t much he’d be able to do anyway, but the kidnappers all laugh.

They say, in Russian, for him to spread her apart and take her. To teach me a lesson.

They don’t know it yet, but they just signed their death warrants.

At the end of this night, the world will be less a few of its degenerate scum, because these motherfuckers are going to die.

Talia

Seeing Boris rage against his captors is absolutely terrifying, and yet he fills me with hope.

He came for me. I shouldn’t be surprised because he has always shown his protective side, but watching him transform into an enraged Incredible Hulk on a mission for justice is something altogether spellbinding to witness.

As soon as the one guy whipped out his cock and started waving it in my face, Boris became supercharged.

Their exchange in Russian, I didn’t understand of course, but whatever they said wound Boris up to the point he managed to break free, throwing punches left and right, as well as taking some in return.

He’s not a fighter, but he is a hockey player so he’s not unskilled in defending himself.

He body-checks one guy into the cement wall, smashing his head hard enough to make him wobbly.

That guy falls to the floor as a second one swings at Boris, hitting him in the side of the head.

Boris appears stunned for a moment but manages to stay on his feet.

Bang! Bang!

Gunshots ring out as two of our captors fall from direct shots to the head, blood pooling around them on the floor.

There’s no way they can still be alive. I’m in shock at what I’m seeing—a gun battle right in front of me—and hearing, as people shout and scream and bleed out.

Boris rushes me as the men continue to take shots at each other, taking me to the ground with him while untying the ropes binding me to the chair.

He works quickly, telling me he’s going to get me out, shielding me from a position on the floor where we are more protected.

The second I’m free from the ropes, he drags me up and out into the hallway, pocketing a lone gun left on the side counter along the way.

I can’t resist kicking the guy who swung his dick at me, as hard as I can in the nuts, when we pass by him crying on the floor like a baby.

A huge black man speaks to Boris. “Leave it to us. We’ll make sure the message is clearly relayed.”

We don’t need to be told twice. Boris covers me with his jacket and rushes us out of the room, back through the maze of offices, and out into the warm Las Vegas night.

We’re two blocks away when we hear the screaming of police sirens.