Page 31 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

V ictor

I crouched down and looked at the mess that was once part of my house. They had thrown a bomb into my house, blowing off the side of it, and that was how they had taken my wife. I had been in my office, when two men had attacked me.

Ivan had been right and wrong. The distraction had happened, only it had been at my home, and they had moved my wife.

The Butcher and The Beast had been out in the yard, and only a second before the bomb hit, they gave the warning.

There was no time. I heard my wife scream, and I had been fighting to get to her.

In total, we had ten bodies. All of them contract killers. None of them associated with The Grid.

Ivan was there. The Beast was there. The Butcher had a tablet in her hands and was looking over the security footage. How had it gone wrong?

My anger was at a whole new level. My rage knew no bounds.

My wife had been fucking taken. Her shoe was in the main hallway, or what was left of the damn hallway.

I didn’t care about the rebuild. I held onto that shoe as if it was some kind of lifeline and in that moment, that was exactly what it was.

“Fucker!” The Butcher said. She tapped on the tablet, and I got to my feet and moved in close. That was when I saw the guard. He was not one of mine.

“That’s, Eric The Tool,” she said, holding out the tablet. The Beast moved in closer.

“How the fuck did he get in here?” He took the tablet, and we didn’t even need to ask. One of the bodies we had recovered was one of my men. He had a knife wound across his throat. That explained how they got in. They slit my guard’s throat, and used his fingerprint and eye scan to get inside.

I took the tablet from The Beast and played the security footage. My system was flawless, and I looked at my wife. She had fallen from the stairwell.

“We’re going to get her back,” The Butcher said. She put a hand on my arm, and I played the video, watching her fight.

“We didn’t train her well enough,” I said.

“We trained her as well as we could with her skills,” The Butcher said.

“Eric The Tool, I’ve never heard of him,” Ivan said.

I looked toward Ivan, and I was not interested in what he knew.

“The guy’s a piece of shit,” The Beast said. “He will change alliances for anyone with the right money. The Grid must be getting desperate. He is not a member. The Grid has to have reliable people to do their dirty work. Not just any random assassin.”

“It means they’re failing,” The Butcher said.

“You don’t know that, and it could be a trap,” The Beast said.

“I don’t give a fuck if it is a trap. We know there are two possible locations they would take her.”

The Beast shook his head. “We go through those tunnels, there comes a point where there is no exit.”

“It has an in and out. We can make that work,” she said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Eric The Tool is known for his black-market deals,” The Beast said.

“But he also likes to play games, so he has a setup with a lot of tunnels, like a maze. He likes to play with the people he kills. If they can get out of the maze, they’re free to go.

If they don’t, and he gets to them, he kills them. ”

“This is why The Grid is failing,” The Butcher said.

“Look, it could be the fucking explosion or the many hits to the head I’ve gotten, but this makes no fucking sense to me, so why don’t you explain it as someone who has never fucking worked with those pieces of shit!” I was losing my temper. I was yelling.

Umberto had come from the kitchen, as had my guards, and the few staff we had kept. Freya had become part of us. We all cared about her, and it was in that moment I knew. This was not just about caring for her.

I had fucking fallen in love with my wife, and it had taken her being kidnapped for me to realize that. I hadn’t told her. I didn’t even realize I had loved her until this very fucking moment. I felt sick.

The Butcher and The Beast looked at one another.

The Beast was the one that answered. “The Grid works on control. They tell us who to kill, where to do it, and how. We have to follow those rules. Each death has a story. It is part of keeping The Grid’s identity a secret.

It’s why they are strict about who they take on.

There are tests that need to be passed. There is a process to being selected a member.

” The Beast looked toward The Butcher. Cleary, they regretted their past decisions.

I didn’t have time for them to worry about what they did in the past. I needed to get to my wife now, if she was already alive.

“You have to follow their instructions,” The Butcher said. “The consequences are extensive if you don’t.”

I noticed The Butcher and Ivan share a look, and I wasn’t in the mood to even try and understand those looks.

“How is this going to help my wife?” I asked. “Standing around talking about the fact The Grid is failing, doesn’t fucking help me. Telling me who has my wife doesn’t help me. Telling me exactly where the fuck I can find my wife, alive, is the only thing that will help me.”

The Butcher looked toward The Beast. I hated how calm they looked. I heard my wife’s screams. My pregnant wife.

Pacing back and forth, all I could see was her smiling face.

It was like a montage of emotions flitting across my mind, reminding me what a piece of shit I had been to her, and that angered me.

We hadn’t made enough memories. I hadn’t been a good man to her.

This was totally fucked up, and I hated it.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to sink into oblivion.

“What are we dealing with?” Ivan asked.

The Butcher opened her mouth, but nothing came out, it was then that I noticed she was shaking.

I’d not truly known her, but I knew she did have a heart.

Her hands shook, even as she tried to hold herself together.

This wasn’t fear, was it? No one said anything about her being scared.

It made no sense to me. Why was she afraid?

“Eric is ... dangerous,” The Beast said. “If they’ve hired him, then they want her removed. They will not be able to control him.”

“This is not fucking helping me,” Ivan said.

It had been a long time since I had seen Ivan lose his cool. Within seconds Ivan stood toe-to-toe with The Beast.

“That is my sister. Do you understand me? That is my flesh and blood and I promised her she would have a life. She’d been lied to all her life.

Abused, pretty much tortured by people she thought were family, but they knew they were not her family.

She is a Volkov. She is an Abdulov. She is family,” Ivan said.

“And that has just put Eric at the top of my list of enemies. He came in, uninvited. I don’t care what it takes. Freya is coming home in one piece.”

“He’ll get more doing it piece by piece,” The Butcher said.

This drew my attention to her. “What?”

“Eric is black market. He is a sick fuck, and there is a chance Freya will stay alive, but for how long, I do not know,” The Butcher said. “It’s not going to be easy, or pretty. This is going to be hard for her.”

“What are we talking about?” I asked.

The Butcher and The Beast shared a look.

“Eric is not ... he will do anything he wants,” she said. “Rape, torture, beat, anything to get the viewers ... ready.”

“Viewers?”

“There’s a whole black market for this kind of thing,” The Beast said. “Think of it as a cattle market, only Eric serves people. Some people want to see sick shit, and they’re more than willing to do it.”

And with that, I lost it.

****

F reya

All my life I’d been in a cage of some kind, or at least I thought it was a cage, or a prison, or something.

Back with Harris as my dad, I thought I lived a normal life, although it was a prison, with random acts of punishment from him whenever I didn’t do the right thing. I could live with that. I had lived with that.

Then being married to Victor. Scared to move around in case he saw me, and then discovering my fake father had put a hit out on me.

One long cage for another.

Only, now I realized they hadn’t been true cages.

I stood in a cage right now. I wasn’t the only one. The man who had taken me had a whole supply of people locked in cages. I spotted five other people—three women, two men, and then me.

I’d been dumped in this cage with a bucket as a toilet. My stomach was causing me pain, and I feared what that meant.

It was dark. Barely anything could be seen.

“What are you in for?” a soft feminine voice asked.

I turned and could just make out a shadow. The dark terrified me. Shadows made it even worse. I felt sick. This was not good.

“Being alive,” I said.

Even though I was sitting, the world kept spinning, and I had no choice but to lay flat on the floor. I don’t know if there are rats or mice, or even spiders. There is no bed. There is nothing.

The pain kept getting worse in my stomach.

I tried not to think about Victor. I tried not to think about anything.

Taking deep breaths in, what I tried to think about was saving this baby, of becoming a mother.

Even though I was terrified of being a mother, I wanted to be one.

I wanted to have a son or daughter, make cookies, help them with their homework, hold them when they scrape their knees. I wanted to have a big family.

“Yeah, me too,” the voice said. “I’m ... Emily.”

“Hi, Emily.” I was able to see the hand that stuck through the cage.

I also happened to notice it was missing a couple of fingers. There were only two small finger and a thumb. I was going to be sick.

Crawling to the bucket, I was able to make it out, and I grabbed it and threw up everything I’d eaten the previous day.

“Sorry,” I said, calling out to everyone.

My voice felt croaky, but they all responded, wishing me well. That was odd. We were all in hell, yet still able to be civilized. It was ... nice. Totally fucked up and wrong, but nice at the same time.