Page 31

The moment that my guard went down, I was overpowered, in total darkness, and struggling to breathe.

It all happened in such a blur that there was no chance to fight, not that I could have won against the three burly men.

They carried me away somewhere, the slamming of the door ringing out with finality behind me.

Only a few moments later, I was stuffed into a tight space, cramped and airless.

Was this my karma for smirking at Arkadi when he learned he was going through customs in a crate? Oh God, what about Arkadi? Was he all right, or was this a coordinated attack, and someone had him too?

There was no time to think about that for too long.

The box I was in was on the move, bumping along to the grunts of the men who were carrying it.

Terror threatened to consume me when the crate slid onto a hard surface, another door slammed, and soon the sound of an engine fired up.

The movement was smoother now and much faster. They were taking me somewhere by truck.

Screaming did nothing except wear me out and use up precious air.

Even after I got the bag off my head and confirmed I was in a wooden box, there were no cracks or air holes anywhere, and it was a struggle to breathe.

If this weren’t a short journey, there was a serious chance I wouldn’t make it to see the end.

My family might never know what happened to me.

Neither would Arkadi. If he wasn’t already taken by my captors, he had to be furious.

And what became of poor Vilen? I’d been about to bash the guy myself if it came down to it, but that would have only resulted in a headache. Now, I feared he was most likely dead.

Just as I was certain I was about to pass out, a bit of light showed at the edge of the crate. Then, there was a glimpse of gray, cloudy sky as someone yanked the box out of the truck. Even that blinded me after being in the dark so long, and I couldn’t see who was out there.

One thing that was certain was that it wasn’t a friend of mine, so I thrashed and kicked at whoever was near.

“Knock it off,” someone said in Russian. I may have been rusty, but I understood that much.

I lashed out, scratching someone and feeling blood under my fingernails.

That person swore, and the bag was again yanked down over my head.

This time, he wound a rope around my neck to hold it in place, and before I could claw at it, someone else grabbed my wrists.

At least two people wrestled me to the damp concrete, and one of them slapped cuffs on me while the other whipped some more rope around my ankles.

A fist pressed hard into the small of my back, pinning me in place with a shock of pain.

“I said to knock it off,” he told me in heavily accented English, and at that point, I was completely bound and incapable of fighting.

They hoisted me up, and this time, I was stuffed into the trunk of a car, only a little better than the crate.

When the slamming door snuffed out the bit of light I was able to see through the bag over my head, I lay still, gasping for air.

A second later, they zoomed away, over a smooth highway, with the sounds of traffic soon becoming more and more sparse.

After a few turns, the road was rougher, maybe even dirt or gravel, which didn’t bode well for me at all. None of it did.

What now? Could something worse than the forced marriage to Arkadi happen to me?

That didn’t seem all that bad all of a sudden.

Deep down, through my fear, I hoped that Arkadi was okay.

If for no other reason than that, he’d come and get me—if he could find me.

It seemed like we were deep in the middle of nowhere at that point.

Who had taken me? Who would dare cross Arkadi? My family, but they would never treat me this way, and they seemed to have no idea I was missing at all, let alone in Russia.

Attempting to reason things out was impossible, and I gave up, trying to focus on a plan of attack instead.

But what could I possibly do, being trussed up the way I was?

Wriggling out of the cuffs was impossible.

They were locked tight and digging into my wrists.

My left hand was already going numb, and I wiggled my fingers as best I could to keep it from going to sleep.

My feet were crossed, and the rope was wound around too many times to loosen it enough to get one free.

Same with the bag over my head. They were taking no chances with me getting it off this time.

Basically, all I could do was breathe the best I could through the sack and try to stay calm.

When the car stopped at the next location, at least an hour or more from where they’d transferred me from the airport truck, there wasn’t much I could do but be carried away again.

There was a crunch of gravel under the feet of the two men who hauled me out of the trunk, and after just a few steps, I was inside somewhere echoey and slightly damp, with the smell of stale smoke and alcohol.

I had to fight panic or risk hyperventilating and passing out. I knew all too well about places like this. The people who were taken to them generally never left again, at least not in one piece.

The men who carried me spoke in low murmurs, and I caught a bit of it despite them speaking in Russian. They were either waiting for someone else to arrive or for further orders. They were only the delivery men, and at the moment, nothing else was going to happen to me.

If that damn bag wasn’t clinging to my nose and mouth, I could have breathed a sigh of relief at the reprieve, no matter how brief. I wasn’t going to die right away.

But I was no longer convinced I wasn’t going to die. It was only a matter of when and how painfully.