Page 2 of The Enemy’s Defector (Ivanov Syndicate #3)

NIKOLAI

T he engine revved, increasing the vibrating rumble that thrummed through me. Lying on my stomach in the back of yet another van, I waited for the nausea to fade. Coming to like this was getting really fucking old. Tossed around and rolling in the back of a vehicle wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Just a little longer.

A month had already passed, and while even a few days in captivity were frustrating as hell, I couldn’t sneak away yet.

I could.

The fact remained that I could kill these nameless fuckers who’d kidnapped me. After many years of being trained in combat, martial arts, and numerous other methods of self-defense, I was skilled enough to evade my captors. It wouldn’t be easy because I was outnumbered, but it was feasible.

The van swerved sharply, then countered in a longer, gradual turn the other way.

Skidding over the grimy floor, my body followed the momentum of the van as it sped on.

Bile rose up my throat, but I didn’t swallow hard.

The fewer movements I made, the less these assholes would think that I was awake.

Breathe through it.

Endure it.

Tough it out.

Just a little longer.

I’d been repeating the lines of that mantra for weeks now.

Just over a month ago, I was snatched in broad daylight by masked men I couldn’t identify.

During my entire time being held captive, I reminded myself to stay strong, to grin and bear it despite the confidence that I could kill them and get away.

Bumps over a rockier part of pavement came next, jolting me with small hits and rocks as I lay seemingly unconscious.

They’d beaten me at the last location I was held. That was the pattern. Take me somewhere new, beat me, then move me again. Every time I was relocated, this fucking filthy bag went over my head and obscured my vision.

This last place, they’d attacked me so endlessly that I couldn’t have tried to fake passing out. I was out cold, only to—again—wake up in this van, on the move.

Pretending that I was unconscious was only one of my tricks of the trade. As the best spy for my family, I relied on a variety of skills to get whatever intel I could. And that was exactly why I refrained from getting away.

“You think he’s out?” one of the men asked from the front, probably the passenger seat from the direction of where his voice came.

No accent.

No familiar tone.

I cursed how often these men switched and rotated. These were no amateurs, aware of not letting me pick up on any predictable clue.

“Yeah. I’m surprised he’s alive,” another man, probably the driver, said.

I rolled my eyes, knowing the coarse fabric of his bag over my head would hide my reaction.

Making that facial expression hurt, though.

Courtesy of the punches I’d taken, my skin ached and swelled.

Still, I didn’t make any noticeable movement they could pick up on.

Letting myself look like a sleeping bag of bones would allow me more time to listen.

But how much longer?

Being kidnapped pissed me off. I bet that being captured would bother just about any sane person, but it wasn’t like this was my first rodeo.

I’d been captured before. I’d previously let myself be taken so I could get closer to the enemy and spy—much like how I was treating this experience.

When I was still a young boy, I was taken and held captive with two of my brothers.

That ordeal had lasted over a month as well, and it served as my first lesson of how not to panic when held hostage.

I wasn’t anywhere near panic now.

Only annoyance.

Frustration.

Impatience.

Because no matter how many days passed, I was no closer to knowing who had ordered this.

These men who beat me and transported me weren’t the ones I needed to end.

They were lackeys, independently hired hitmen and contractors who did the dirty work anonymously.

Even though they covered my face and I seldom had a chance to see the fuckers who were in charge of constantly relocating me, I knew that much.

These men weren’t members of the Kozlov Family. They weren’t the Romanos. And I doubted they were part of the cartels or motorcycle gangs.

Nope. These assholes were hired hands, and I was getting really sick and tired of that distance.

I had to know who ordered my capture. I needed to know which enemy was signing their death sentence by having me taken and held. With all the incidents happening at home with my family, this had to be just one more strike against us.

First, Father was poisoned.

Then, another attempt to kill him.

For months, we’d been dealing with small but accumulating attacks on the Ivanov Syndicate.

Our properties were targeted. Our men were attacked.

Fraud occurred more frequently. It was the theme of antagonism that we faced that had my older brother, Maxim, musing that we had been experiencing a calm before the storm.

Someone was intent on ruining us.

An enemy was out there, plotting to end my family.

But this wasn’t the first time we’d faced that. And it wouldn’t be the last.

I had to do my part to tough out this jockeying around. Just for a little longer, I had to let myself stay captured so I could unearth who was ultimately responsible for this strike.

“Over there,” one of the men said.

“I see it.”

I didn’t see shit, but I knew that was all part of their plan. As a rule of thumb, the more a captive was transported and relocated, the smaller their chances were to escape. Staying mobile and not keeping me in any place for long was all part of these assholes’ plan.

Sooner or later, they’d slip. Any day now, I’d have more of an idea of who’d ordered me to be taken.

And when that day comes… As soon as I know…

They’d be dead. It was as simple as that.

Staying limp and letting the men drag me, I furthered this ploy of appearing unconscious.

They weren’t gentle about it, holding me under my arms and hauling my body over gravel until they let me drop inside an unfurnished room.

It was cool, but that didn’t tell me much.

After all the steps they’d lugged my body down, I had to be in another basement level where they’d try to torture me again.

Even that didn’t intimidate me. They’d made it clear from the first day that I was to remain alive. That was their first giveaway. I was more valuable living than dead. And now I only had to figure out what they wanted me for in the first place.

Do they want Maxim to pay for me? With a deal or money?

That was entirely possible, and it’d fit into the idea of keeping me intact and alive.

Are they just trying to stir trouble as we wait for Father to recover from being poisoned?

If that were the case, they’d be bragging about this capture, not hiding me.

Or did they take me because…

I wanted to shake my head as I was tossed into the corner of a damp, chilly room. Two walls braced my bruised back, but still, I refused to let them know I was awake. Even when they yanked off the hood over my head, I played dead.

They couldn’t have taken me because of Katerina…

That was the only other reason that came to mind, though. Katerina Kozlov had once been my childhood friend. Kind of. Then she was supposed to be a potential enemy of the family with her father dead and her uncle in charge.

As of that one night when I asked her for help hacking into surveillance feeds the time my father was poisoned, though…

She’d become my lover.

For that one forbidden night, I’d dared to act on my deepest desires and fuck my enemy.

If someone knew about that ? —

I shut down that possibility, that I could’ve been taken because I slept with Katerina that one night. If someone knew that I’d consorted with the “enemy” like that, she’d be in more danger than me.

The men left me slumped on the wet, smelly floor. Tracking the sounds of their footsteps, I waited until they’d left. A door was pulled shut after their disappearing steps. The metal hit securely against the frame until a click sounded.

Then nothing.

Silence reigned.

Only the sounds of my breath were noticeable.

And I waited.

Then I waited some more.

Only once I deemed it safe, that I was left here all alone to suffer and stay trapped, did I start to open one eye. Seeing nothing but bare, blood-stained walls, I opened my eyes more to take in the grisly scene.

They’d brought me to another torture room, a place where other people had been held or killed.

As I blinked my eyes open more and let them acclimate to the nearly nonexistent light, I sighed and realized I wouldn’t be moved again for the rest of the night.

Dammit.

Anyone else in this position would be afraid. But not me. It wasn’t like they were going to kill me. If they wanted me dead, they would’ve accomplished that long ago.

So what is the fucking point?

Someone had to be making one by having me captured, but until I knew who had put this order out to these random contractors, I’d be stuck in this mystery.

Ensuring there were no cameras in the bare room, I shimmied onto my side. Forcing my arms to move with the slack in my handcuffs, I tucked in to bring my hands in front of me.

Fuck, I’m getting old.

I shouldn’t be this stiff, this hard to move.

Being cuffed and captured would put a dent in anyone’s workout plans, so I didn’t scold myself for long.

Instead, while I was alone, I bent over more until I could retrieve the small, outdated phone that remained in a thin slot sewn into my pocket.

Because it was powered off and because I’d tampered with it to make it untraceable, no one had figured out that I had it on me.

Squinting at the light as I powered it on, I winced that the battery was draining. I wouldn’t have any way to charge it soon, and it wouldn’t be any help.

Just like I did every day, I typed a single line to send to my computer at home.

Calling the program a blog wouldn’t make sense, but that was the simplest way to view this correspondence.

This single line was a code that my brothers and I knew—that only my brothers and I knew, and because they would be watching my things in my absence, I was confident they’d see these daily messages of this code and take it for what I intended it to be.

A proof of life.

A heads up that I was okay.

A reminder that I was on the case.

My brothers would know that I had access to my backup phone like this, and with that knowledge, I could reassure them that I wasn’t dead or on the brink of death. They could know that I had the means to call for help but decided not to.

Because there was no way in hell I was giving up this advantage. So long as someone wanted to mess with my family and kidnap me—something they could very well do to my brothers—I would watch and wait until I could know who to go after.

Finished with sending that simple line of code, I powered off the small device and snuck it back in its spot.

Every time I put it away, I was torn with indecision about why I didn’t tell Katerina that I was alive, too.

She and I had a complicated past, one of friendship then combativeness.

We’d faced many ups and downs as the connection between our families evolved over the years, but I had to accept that she had a limit to letting me into her life.

She had a boundary when it came to allowing me to get close, and after that one sordid night when we both caved, she’d vanished.

She’d ghosted me.

She’d ignored my calls and texts, every one of which felt so forbidden just because she was a Kozlov and I was an Ivanov.

After giving me a taste of what it was like to have and hold her, even for a few hours one night, she’d shown me once and for all that she wouldn’t fit in my life as anything more.

Peeved and confused about her treatment of me, I tried to do my best to dismiss all thoughts of her. She couldn’t be my priority now. I had to concentrate and figure out who was behind my capture. I had to focus and concoct a strategy to protect my family members from being taken like this.

Katerina couldn’t be in my mind like this.

Yet, as my body throbbed and pulsed in pain from the last beating, as the hours of the night passed painstakingly slowly, I couldn’t help but recall how much I yearned for one more chance to see her.

One more chance to hear her voice and drown in the deep blue of her eyes that once gazed at me with so much hope and mischief…

something I deliriously wanted so badly again.