Page 50 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)

I awoke with a crick in my neck, my arms and legs tied to a wooden armchair.

The more time that went by, the more my head cleared.

It was dark, pitch black actually, as if all the lights were turned off.

How long had I been out? The place smelled musty, of hay left out too long, old stone walls, and animal droppings, though I couldn’t hear any sounds of livestock nearby.

Some kind of small rodent scuttered in the attic.

My guess, this was some sort of old, currently unused barn.

Voices from outside filtered in. I recognized a few Russian words from some of the lessons my father demanded I take when he tried to negotiate a marriage alliance with the Chicago Bratva after the contract with Adrien fell through.

I had resisted as much as possible at the time.

Now I was regretting not understanding more. I caught a name though—Leontyev.

I hadn’t remembered the name when Leontyev’s lackey interrupted Adrien and me outside the clinic weeks ago.

Now I did. Pakhan to the New York Bratva, Rurik Leontyev wasn’t known as the forgiving type.

Six years ago, he took over after his brother was killed and razed an entire organization to the ground in retaliation.

I’d overheard stories between my father and Renzo about the brutalities he committed and how he treated enemies.

He liked to cut them into pieces and send them to family members.

A woman groaned not too far away from me. Inside the barn.

“Alizé? That you?” I whispered.

“Tessa,” she mumbled after another groan. “You did not run.”

“Neither did you.”

Metal hinges screeched, then something heavy rolled until it clanked into position. A light bulb turned on overhead. I squinted from the sudden brightness. Footsteps approached.

The blob of a man, large and dressed darkly, approached me slowly, dragging something behind him. It screeched loudly against the floor. I tried not to cringe or fidget as he stopped not far from me. He sat in the chair with a huff. The spiced, overapplied smell of his cologne tickled my nose.

“So…you are her.” His English words were barbed yet bored, as if this were the last thing he had time for. “You’ve caused quite the trouble, little girl.”

“Leave her alone,” Alizé snarled from my right, her French accent strong.

I exhaled shakily. I could do this. Like Alizé said, I had to remain calm and collected. I had to show strength and not crumble. My panic only helped them, and it changed nothing for me.

“I’ll cause more trouble dead.” I hated how that almost ended in a question with how much my voice was trembling.

“Oh, how do you figure?”

“Adrien won’t let this rest.”

He chuckled long and deep. “De Villier will do nothing. His sister will live.”

“You hurt his fiancée, and I promise he’ll take issue.”

“She is telling the truth,” Alizé confirmed. I appreciated the support of my little white lie. Technically, I was. All I had to do was change a no to a yes.

There were some mumblings in Russian.

I licked my lips, bolstered by their unease. “And then the Iannelli mafia from the West Coast will also come after you.”

“Oh?” He sneered. “Iannelli never sticks his nose in East Coast affairs.”

I lifted my chin. “I know my brother wouldn’t rest until the group that killed his sister is wiped from the earth.”

“ You are the missing Iannelli princess?”

“Yes.”

“ Blyat .” Fuck. I knew that much Russian.

Different male voices volleyed in Russian from all sides, discussing with their leader. He spat out angry retorts. I focused on my breathing and where I was, not them. I wasn’t safe, but I wasn’t back there. They hadn’t laid a hand on me.

“Let’s not forget the De Villier marriage ties with the Burnelli family in Chicago,” Alizé added.

That was right. I had heard Adrien’s younger sister, Maribelle, married the Burnelli don’s cousin last year.

“If my brother calls on them for help, who do you think they’ll side with?

You can take on one organization. Can you handle taking on three? ”

He grunted. “You drive a hard bargain, ladies.”

“Why did you kidnap us?” I asked, my shaking slowly getting under control.

“I plan to finish what De Villier should have done.” He sighed, sounding inconvenienced. “But he made you his woman instead.”

“You haven’t killed me yet.” Hopefully, that meant I could reason with him.

“ Nyet . I wanted to look into the eyes of the woman who survived when my niece did not. I wanted to see what made her worthy to be spared when my niece, Taisiya, was not.”

My eyes watered. I knew the name, except she’d told us girls to call her a little differently. Told us she wanted a bit of familiarity in a place like that. So when Bogdani and his crew ordered her to use the name Taisiya, in our sleeping quarters, we used a diminutive version of it.

“Tasya,” I whispered.

“You knew her?”

I closed my eyes, trying to recall her face. Soft features, hazel eyes, hair like gold. She’d been beautiful, like all the others, before Bogdani killed her.

“We shared the same bunk room, six of us together. She was strong. She resisted, never let it bring her down, even after the beatings, even after…She never gave in.”

“That sounds like lapochka moya . Tell me how she died.”

A tear slipped down my face. “She refused to do what a client wanted. Bogdani took her as his own to punish her, but she escaped him and jumped into the water. They caught her. They hung her, and they made the rest of us watch.”

He spat, spittle landing on my cheek. “None of you helped her.”

I wiped my face against my shoulder. “How? We had no weapons. We could barely help ourselves. We didn’t even know where we were.”

“She is dead because you did not have the courage. You’re weak. Useless. A waste of the air she should have been breathing.”

The cool end of a gun barrel butted against my forehead.

“Did De Villier make that svoloch suffer?”

“Leontyev, don’t do this. You’ll start a war,” Alizé begged.

“I already have.” The gun pressed harder against my temple. “Tell me.”

“I made him suffer. I did it. I dealt the killing blow before Adrien’s team made it there.”

“You?” He laughed and pulled the gun away, my head swaying from the sudden lack of pressure.

He made me tell him how, in excruciatingly long detail, and I relived it, but I wasn’t frightened this time.

If anything, I was proud of what I’d done.

I went against my attacker, and I brought him down, not the other way around.

I conquered him. I survived. I was alive, which meant I could do the same again.

I embellished the story, going into painfully long detail, as I tested the bindings around my wrists and ankles.

Plastic, probably zip ties. The chair’s wood was thick enough that it was unlikely to break from the force I would put into it.

Maybe if I rammed it against a wall? I wiggled the chair a bit. It wasn’t bolted to the ground.

I was on the part when I stabbed Bogdani with glass when gunfire erupted outside the barn. I ducked on instinct.

“Leontyev,” Adrien yelled in English, his voice slightly muffled. Definitely coming from outside. My relief was instantaneous. “We had a deal.”

I sagged in my chair. He came for me, for us. We were found. It wasn’t like last time.

“No deal.”

“You have your money. Let the women go.”

“ Mudak . This is not about money. This is honor.”

Shots rang out. Between them, Adrien commanded his men in French. Leontyev yelled at his men in a mix of Russian and English, his voice sounding turned away from me. He was distracted. This was my moment.

I lifted the front legs of the chair and shimmied my ankles down them until they were free. The zip ties dangled at my heels. Now, how to get my hands free? I didn’t have a wide enough range of motion to tug them hard enough to break the zip ties.

A bullet pinged against metal not far from my head.

Something scratched against the floor next to me. Even amidst the chaos, I flinched, expecting Leontyev looming above me. My ears rang from the nonstop gunfire. My head ached from whatever drug my body was still burning through.

“Smart.” It was Alizé, beside me, shouting over the ruckus. The edge of her chair tapped against mine, her knees nudging me. “Now for our hands. Bend over.”

I didn’t question her. Her hand dug into my shirt and bra, where I stored the lipstick-knife tube.

“Breasts will always be a woman’s best assets,” she exclaimed, pulling it free. “Don’t move.”

I felt the small blade slip between my skin and the zip tie. One quick tug, her chair making a grated skip, and one of my hands was free.

Men kept barking at each other. The gunshots were slowing down, used more sparingly. Grunts and thuds resounded from not too far away, hay rustling beneath their movements.

I took the knife from her and tried to slip it under the ties as seamlessly as she did mine. Another gunshot whizzed by our heads. I ducked. She hissed. Blood slicked over her wrists.

“Just do it,” she snapped.

Feeling my way around what position to tug in, I jerked the knife. The zip tie snapped. She took over, cutting our last two binds. She slapped the tubed knife back into my hand.

“Keep it. I still have mine.” Then she grabbed my hand and tugged me after her.

“We need to find a way out of here.”

“Already on it.”

Maybe I should have questioned her more when she led us up rocky steps.