Every fucking thing.
Chapter 25 - Alessandro
There wasn’t any sound when the video ended. The sounds stopped coming when Maxim had the balls to put his hand in Katya’s beautiful hair and run his nose along her throat.
“Ales!” Frankie has his hand on my shoulder when I come back into myself. He had a worried look on his face.
Maybe I wanted to say something. Maybe he wanted to say something, I wasn’t sure because it felt like all the threads holding my mind together had loosened and now everything was rolling everywhere, like a handful of marbles thrown on the ground.
Somebody was about to say something when my door burst open. Dom was already up with his gun aimed, but it was just my secretary, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“For goodness” sake Dom, lower the gun,” Frankie said. “What is it?” he asked my secretary.
Millie swallowed and tried to talk but kept stammering. “Th—the hospital called, s—sir.”
I shot up from the couch. “Yuri?” There was a stable rotation of my men that kept guard over Yuri’s room, switching shifts, and making sure even the doctors and nurses were never alone with Yuri in the hospital room.
But she was already shaking her head. “Then—they said somebody was asking about the Sorvinos.”
I furrowed my brows. “Who?”
“Samantha Thomas.” It was one of Katya’s closest friends.
We were at the hospital in less than an hour, and found Samantha in the emergency unit, having her injuries treated. Deep and shallow cuts, bruises all over her body, a black, busted lips.
She looked terrible. When she saw us coming, she left the nurse and started limping toward us even with her ruined, bare feet.
She stumbled and almost fell, but Frankie was fast and caught her before she could hit the ground. Clinging to him, she cried, begging for help.
“Paulina, please, you have to save Paulina. I don’t know what they’ll do to her when they find out I escaped,” she cried, “You have to save her, please.”
I went down to the ground, one knee on the floor, not minding my suit pant at all, so I could be at eye level with her. She was sniffling and looked too broken, crying for her friend.
I knew Paulina and Samantha were like sisters to Katya, it angered me that Maxim had left nothing untouched, but I wanted to reassure her, to calm her down.
I spoke as softly as I could to keep her calm. “Nothing will happen to Paulina, alright? You are both very precious to Katya, and I will protect whatever is precious to her. But first, I will take you to a private room, have a nurse treat your wounds, and then you can tell me everything you can remember. Ok?”
Samantha sniffled. She was shaking terribly, and maybe it was because Frankie was such a big man, but she looked terribly small in his arms. She nodded her head and tried to stand up from Frankie’s arms.
“Don’t worry, let me help you,” he offered and helped her stand.
I hadn’t known how Katya was taken. The war was on, and she had been overlooking some of it when I’d gotten the call from my guys from the hospital where Yuri was that she had called them and was supposed to have been with them over an hour ago. Then I’d tried her phone, and it hadn’t even rung. Switched off.
It was as if she’d just disappeared.
Now, I knew that she’d gone to Paulina’s apartment to visit her and Samantha, because the police had been harassing them. She’d gone to reassure them, but they’d been interrupted. Maxim’s men, disguised as police officers had gone to Paulina’s apartment to take Katya away and held Samantha and Paulina hostage.
“…she managed to lure them away, pretending that her manager was going to pay them a ransom for her. That was how I got the chance to go through the window and escape. I didn’t have any money with me, and I’d rushed so no car key either.”
Her feet were getting bandaged now, the sores and wounds numerous. “You walked here?”
“I ran. I needed to get to you guys quickly but didn’t really know where to go. After everything, I couldn’t go to the police station.”
“That’s smart,” Frankie commented, “the Trievs have very strong connections in the police force. We’re still trying to weed it out.”
“So, they are still there?” I asked, getting up. My heart was pounding, my hands itchy. This was the breakthrough I had been searching for.
Samantha nodded. “They’ve turned the place into some kind of horror dungeon where they drugged and tortured us. They’ve started to use it as some kind of base. They were just two at first, but now there’s more of them, and I think even more were coming.”