I didn’t know how many hours later before I was the only living man left in the room, with blood everywhere on me, but there were five dead men tied to chairs on the floor, and I still wasn’t any closer to finding Katya.
I called Frankie first, but he too had nothing. He’d raved through another of Triev’s property but found no fucking information.
Dom too, only that he was having a lot more fun with the torture.
I threw my head back and looked at the badly painted ceiling, finally remembering the rhyme that was stuck in my head.
Wherever she was, I was going to find her.
Chapter 22 - Katya
Five men in police uniforms had come with guns, and I’d shot one in the skull with my handgun before one of them had taken Paulina hostage.
I knew better than to continue to shoot because they could have sprayed the apartment with bullets, and I would have had two dead friends. Still, the moment three of them led me out, I rushed at them, managing to stab one and shoot the other two before more of them, not in uniform, had rushed out of a corner at me.
The bodies of the men I’d brought with me were crumbled on the ground with blood leaking from their heads and onto the carpet of the hallway.
Fucking cowards.
They came in droves, and I shot at them. Ten dead but they didn’t let up. How many had come to take one woman?
Maxim was apparently very good at estimating his enemies because the goons kept coming. But I wasn’t a loser, and I refused to be taken without putting up a fight.
It was a concussion gas grenade that took me out.
***
I opened my eyes, and I couldn’t recognize where I was. All the muscles in my body were killing me, but I could attend to that later. First, I looked around me to evaluate my surroundings.
I was in a bedroom, big with simple but excessively lavish furniture, and on a bed.
I went for the door I assumed led out of the bedroom, and tried to open it, but it was locked. Then, I went for the windows. The blinds were drawn, but I pushed them aside and tried. The windows were sealed shut.
Literarily.
I wasn’t in some apartment building though. Outside, through the window glass, was the compound of a private residence: manicured garden, trimmed hedges, patrol men were everywhere armed with big guns.
Then I started to search the room for anything. Anything I could use as a weapon, anything I could use to communicate, anything I could get intel out of that I could use when I got out of here.
But I found nothing. I was trying to look under the bed when the door lock turned, and somebody entered the room.
“I see you’re awake.” An older woman entered, pulling a service cart covered with a drape in before locking the door again.
I stood up slowly and looked her over. Possibly in her sixties, either German or Dutch because she had a very faint accent, and very much a bitch because who else would look at a captured, injured woman with such condescending eyes. Especially because of the black uniform that looked like something that belonged to a housemaid in the 20s and the tight mignon her grey hair had been forced into.
“Sit there so I can tend the wounds. Otherwise, they’ll scar,” she said, pushing the cart to a desk with a chair but it. When she pulled the cover, there were first aid tools, pomades, and a covered dish that might have been food.
Even though I was weary, I still took the seat. The injuries I’d gotten from resisting were many, and first aid was very needed, especially since I was going to try to escape.
Soon enough.
“Where is this?” I asked as she took my arm and started treating me.
“Where do you think? Are you not that newly married Sorvino woman?”
“I know this is Maxim territory, but where in New York are we?”
She glanced at me with her disinterested brown eyes, before focusing on my arm again.