CHAPTER18
Briana
When I saw him frown, I knew what I had done. I had never had a more intense, more stomach-dropping uh-oh moment in my life—even when the judge had told me I had earned a ticket to something called Advanced Guidance.
Even when my first daddy in bad girl prison had shown me the paddle and told me to bend over.
I knew immediately what the look meant, and I also knew what my stomach-lurching reaction to it meant. I had heard other bad girls describe it in Advanced Guidance, but I hadn’t really understood: suddenly I knew that what had divided them from me lay in their having felt for one of the daddies in bad girl prison the same thing I felt for Papa Georg. Not just love, but a very special kind of love—the kind a little girl has for her true daddy.
For me, that look said, You’re going to be very, very sorry you just did that. It didn’t say it to me the way Papa Nicolai’s face—or even Daddy John’s face—might have said to me, You’ll be punished for that later. It had its special meaning for me because to me it said a lot of other things, too: so many I couldn’t even have counted them, let alone listed them all.
I’m the man who has taken responsibility for you.
I have a very, very firm hand, because that’s what you need.
Your little bottom won’t be comfortable to sit on for quite a while when I’m done with you.
I love you.
The fear, for myself but even more for him, for what I had to done to him and what the consequences of my stupid words might be, struggled so hard with the love and the sheer joy of recognizing that I had really, actually found my papa, that it made me feel faint. Like, very close to swooning and passing out right there.
The moment of my idiocy seemed to take forever as the world spun around me, but then events unfolded all at once. Papa Nicolai, whose attention had been fixed on Daddy John’s assault rifle, turned to look at Papa Georg. So did Ivan, and then the rest of the guards. Daddy Omar walked forward from behind me and quickly grabbed Papa Georg from the gaggle of Russian prisoners. Daddy Omar pulled him out of the group, as Papa Georg cursed in German.
He turned to me, then. The loving, warning look had vanished from his face and now he gazed at me with a contempt so absolute that a cry of anguish burst from my lips to see it. Had I made a horrible, horrible mistake? Even worse than giving him away, if he really were on my side? My mind tried to tell me that he could only be acting, but my heart felt completely devastated by the scorn in my papa’s face.
“I have no idea what this whore is talking about,” he said to Daddy John. “But if you want to throw me a party, go ahead.”
“More like we need to keep you safe from the rest of these assholes,” Daddy Omar responded. “We know you’re just a German asshole yourself, Georg Richter, but I can’t imagine Mr. Garonov here is going to take any chances.”
“Scheisshund,” Papa Georg replied, tossing his head defiantly. He turned back to look at Papa Nicolai—Nicolai Garonov. For the first time I realized that the man who had kidnapped me was the same warlord whose communications network the Lumberjacks had been working on hobbling. They had only ever just called him by his last name.
Then I remembered asking Daddy Trevor once why they didn’t just take Garonov out. He had responded, “Someone else would just take his place—someone even more brutal, maybe, and, what would be much worse, a good deal smarter. Garonov we know, and right now in the world we’re working for a little stability.”
Oh, my God. I had fucked it up completely: everything. I felt my face crumple. All I could think of was the horrible look on Papa Georg’s face. I needed so badly for it to be fake that I almost wailed, there on the floor. The tears stung the corners of my eyes but I blinked them back.
Reeling, I watched six spec ops guys come into the room where the Russians had gangbanged me so brutally just a few minutes before and lead them all out. Papa Nicolai didn’t even look at me, but Ivan—he was back to just Ivan the asshole, now, in my mind—turned and gave me a look that clearly meant he would have made an obscene gesture if Daddy Omar hadn’t cuffed his hands behind his back. They led Papa Georg out after that, and my heart soared for just an instant as he turned around and his face had the same Later look it had had when I had first ruined everything.
I knew then that my situation wasn’t good—but at least Papa Georg loved me, and no matter how much I had screwed up, he intended to keep loving me.
* * *
Daddy Trevor gave me fatigues to wear. Daddy Omar led me out into the freezing night to a waiting chopper. My mind had gone so numb that it took me several minutes of the chopper flight to wonder where they had taken Papa Georg.
I tried to yell my question in Daddy John’s ear. “Where is…” I screamed over the noise of the rotors, but then I stopped, blushing, because I didn’t want to call him Papa to one of my real daddies. They still felt like my real daddies, but real took on a different meaning when my brain applied it to Papa Georg now.
“What?” Daddy John shouted back.
“Where is the… the German guy?” I yelled.
Daddy John nodded, though I thought I could see a quizzical expression in his eyes, as if he had heard something in my hesitation that he needed more information about.
“Georg,” he shouted. “They’ll probably hold him for a few days at the FOB.”
“FOB?” I asked, though my throat had started to hurt with all the yelling and, you know, the oral sex, so I just mouthed the words.
“Forward Operating Base,” Daddy John said.
I wanted to ask so much more, but at the thought of all the questions I needed answers to I felt my blush grow even hotter. I shut up and looked out the window at the snow passing under us.
The chopper took us to a new bunker that looked exactly like the old one Garonov had raided. On the outside, a tiny, nondescript building—a concrete and steel hut, really—built atop the snow-covered tundra. Down some stairs, a metal door into an American office building, or that’s the way it always felt to me.
I heard the helicopter dust off as Daddy John uncovered the hidden keypad for the door and started to key in the access code. I shivered even in the parka Daddy Trevor had put around me over the badly fitting fatigues.
“How did P—” I started, and cut myself off before I could say Papa. I must be in shock or something, I realized. “How did Garonov find the old bunker?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at Daddy Omar. “How did his guards get past the perimeter?”
He had a grim look on his face as he responded.