Page 34 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

“It’s The Butcher,” I said.

“Where is she?”

“She’s getting Freya, and she told us to meet her there.”

The Beast had come out to join us, and I knew I couldn’t let them know what was about to go down. They could only know what we were to do.

****

F reya

They had taken Emily. She hadn’t even screamed, and it was like she knew this was her final time.

I don’t even know why she thought that. The fight had left her.

Is that what happened when you knew the end was coming?

I couldn’t believe the end was coming, but she still hadn’t come back.

The lights hadn’t come on either. No one else had been taken. All I could do was lie on the ground.

My brothers used to bully me. Sorry, my fake brothers used to bully me. Hit me, push me, pretend to drown me, but nothing could have prepared me for what I just experienced. My fake father had paid to see me beaten.

The guy that had taken me, hurt me, and dragged me back here to my cell had taken great pride in telling me what was going to happen next.

Harris had originally demanded I be put on the black market.

Sold piece by piece to the highest bidder, or whoever matched the dimensions or whatever it was they had to verify, for organ donation.

Now, no one was going to get anything from me, and slowly, until he got bored, he was going to see pieces of me just taken. Like I was nothing.

I had lost the baby. The blood on my jeans had already started to soak through. I tried so hard to keep myself covered, but my strength was no match for his. I was as good as dead.

Unless they could find me, and the guy that had taken me took great pleasure in telling me exactly why that wasn’t going to happen. No one ever found his hidden treasures. That was what he called these places. They were not treasures. They were torture chambers.

Sick and twisted people paid for the pleasure of an enemy or a family member, a wife, a sister, to see them hurt. To see them slowly get killed.

The cold floor was the only warmth this place had to offer. I pressed my palm on the floor, and stretched it out wide in front of me, feeling the tears slipping down my face. Crying never solved anything, but right now I needed to cry.

I’d fallen in love with a man I had promised myself I never would.

I don’t quite know when I’d fallen for Victor, but it hadn’t been an easy fall.

The man had been a complete dick to me in the beginning.

As if I wanted to have a marriage with a man who didn’t want me?

Hell, no. If I ever got married, I wanted it to be with a man who loved me back, or who could love me back. Not like this.

But then, he hadn’t turned his back on me.

He did everything he could to save me. I knew he hated those months, moving from territory to territory, doing what he could to protect me.

How could I not fall in love with a man who fought for me to live every single damn day?

That was exactly what he did. He fought for me, so I fought for him as well.

I hoped one day he would find out I did love him.

That I would have gladly stayed married to him, and had his children, and put up with his grumpy-as-fuck moods.

I closed my eyes, and it was like my heart was dying.

I was coming to accept I was not getting out of here. Death was my future companion.

I would not be a mother. I’d never see Victor again, or kiss him, or get to tell him I loved him. I was going to die down here. With the cold floor as comfort. The lights suddenly came on, and I wanted to grip onto that floor and beg for mercy. Beg for someone to make this stop.

“Damn, boys, it looks like we already broke her!”

I recognized the feet as the man in charge here. The one who had taken me. I wanted to stay on the floor and ignore him, but that was weak. So, even though I was in pain, I got to my feet and held myself as tall as I could as I looked at him.

“You know, those people you said were coming for you, where are they?” he asked, and wrapped his arms around his body, giving a little shudder. “I’m shaking in my boots.” He threw his head back and laughed.

No one was coming for me. He knew it. I knew it. My fate was death.

“Don’t you want to bargain with me? Tell me someone is coming for you? How I should be afraid?”

I looked at him, and then I went to open my mouth, but what was the point? He was right. No one was getting out of here. Emily was gone. Probably dead. I was on that list. My fake father had put me on that list, and it was time to stop fighting.

But just then, the whole room shook as a booming explosion could be heard. Bits of concrete and dirt seemed to fall in, and the ricochet of an explosion from close by.

Then, just vaguely, I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a knife that was quickly replaced with the booming sound of a gun.

I didn’t know which it was, and I didn’t have to wait long to wonder exactly who it was, as The Butcher walked right through the gap of what used to be a door.

She’d thrown a bomb at the door, which is why the room had shaken.

The two men with my captor charged forward. She threw a knife clean through the air at the first man, and it imbedded in the man’s skull. She fired her gun at the next one, taking him out.

“Well, well, well, The Butcher,” he said.

“Eric The Tool.”

She looked so damn bored. I didn’t know how she wasn’t afraid, because the truth was, I was terrified.

“If I had known all it would take was a special kind of woman to get your ass in here, I’d have kidnapped her a long time ago,” Eric said.

“Yeah? Well, that woman is the reason you’re about to die.”

He threw his head back as if it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. When he realized she wasn’t laughing, he stopped.

“You’re going to die today, Butcher,” he said.

“You’re not the first person to tell me that. You know, I’ve never lied once, and today, you’re going to take your last breath.” She stared at him. “Am I lying?”

There was silence, and then Eric threw a knife, and I watched in shock as The Butcher dodged it. This woman was a machine. There was no fear.

The Butcher pulled out another knife, and I didn’t quite know how many she was hiding on her person, but she tossed it through the air, and this one hit Eric in the thigh.

He let out a grunt, but The Butcher didn’t sit around to see what happened next.

She attacked him, throwing her body at him, not seeming to care if he caught her or not.

She landed blow after blow, and at one point, she even head-butted him.

The anger and rage were unlike anything I’d ever seen.

She unleashed all kinds of hell on him, and didn’t once stop.

She just kept going, refusing to back down.

I don’t know what happened or how she ended up on her back with Eric’s hands around her neck, but then she reached out and she somehow had a knife in her hand, which she then plunged into his neck.

The Butcher wasn’t done, as she pulled it out and then slammed it back into his neck.

Over and over, she did this, and then tossed him off her as if he weighed nothing.

She got to her feet and rushed to my cage. “Step back.”

I did as I was instructed, and she fired her gun at the lock. Next, she looked toward the cage of the three remaining. All of them were in a bad way.

We heard the sounds of male yells, and even though Eric was dead, lying in a pool of his own blood, it wasn’t over.

“Kill us,” they said. All of them, in unison.

“Just go, and kill us.”

The Butcher hesitated. I don’t know why she hesitated, but then she had her fun, and one by one, she shot each of them. None of them flinched. They had closed their eyes, and I held it together, just barely. They had given up hope, and they knew we were not going to make it.

“Come on,” The Butcher said, and then we ran.