I needed to find them, I craved my Kings and their touch on my body, and I had realized that I didn’t do well without them by my side. I didn’t know how to be Everly anymore without my constant companions.
I also realized that I needed them all. I understood on some level that it might not always work for all of us. Maybe in the future one of them would want to move on because there were no guarantees with this kind of relationship. It’s not like I could get legally married to all of them or anything.
I always thought I’d be okay with that, that I’d survive if it happened, but now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know if I could handle one of them leaving, and I know I couldn’t handle one of them dying.
I had to get all four of them back to me, or my life would be over. I wouldn’t be complete, and I wouldn’t be able to survive. It would be like having a limb torn off, I could continue to limp through life, but it wouldn’t ever feel the same again.
I heard a commotion out on the lawn and ran to the window that overlooked the entire villa yard. I’d tried to signal to people down there before, to yell at them or tap frantically on the windows, but nobody knew I was up here.
I didn’t know if they couldn’t hear me or if they’d been so well trained that they were deliberately ignoring anything from the main house. I tried again, banging on the window this time, but not a single one of them looked away from whatever task was at hand. I even tried to smash through the window by hitting it with a chair, but it bounced off, useless and unable to make even a mark.
It didn’t stop me, though. I kept trying until my voice was hoarse, and my fists ached from beating them against the unbreakable glass. I was in a frenzy of desperate need to escape, to let anyone know that I was up here when the door clicked and opened slowly.
Avery stepped through, saw me standing by the window with madness creeping into my eyes, and she began to laugh.
“Your future husband wants you in his room,” she said with a sly grin. “Keep this up, whatever the fuck it is that you’re doing. You’re making me look good compared to you. Have you even had a shower?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get in the bath and clean up. I kept thinking about my Kings and how they must be suffering, taking care of myself when they were trapped somewhere below me felt wrong. Like I was deliberately ignoring the fact that they were being held down below me.
“Well, he’ll have to deal with your bullshit,” she said and reached for my hand. She grabbed my wrist and jerked me towards her, sending a spiral of pain swirling up my arm. I cried out in pain, but she only pulled harder. She seemed to like my suffering, even here when it was just the two of us.
I pulled my hand out of her grasp and slapped her before raising my knee to her crotch and brutally jerking it upward to cause her a fraction of the pain I was feeling in my heart. She grunted and doubled over, and I took the chance to shove her back, causing her to fall across a low settee onto her ass.
She had the wind knocked out of her, and I used the chance to make a run for it. I dashed past her and hit my door, pulled it open, and fled into the hall.
I was in a narrow corridor lined with deep, dark oiled exotic wood. I felt more like a hamster in a cage than a human being because it was so confining and dark. I could envision the servants of the house living up here in the olden times and briefly wondered who was behind all the narrow doors like mine that dotted the hall on either side as I hurried towards my Kings.
I found the stairs halfway down the hall to my right. I was wearing a pair of loose jogging pants and a tee shirt that somebody had brought me and left on a chair while I’d been sleeping, but I was still barefoot. This didn’t bode well for my escape out of the villa, but it helped me creep in absolute silence now.
I was down to the next floor, the one where Maksim had his room, and I was certain the rest of the family and their guards lived, when Avery finally caught up.
“Get her!” she yelled from the top of the staircase before she raced down towards me. “Guards! Nico! Dex! She’s getting away!”
Hysteria edged her voice, the fear of losing me and suffering the punishment that Maksim would surely dish out. I should have felt something for her. Normally I would have compassion for her situation, but now? Fuck that bitch. I was escaping no matter what it took.
I started to run and was halfway to the stairs at the end of this hallway when Avery reached the same floor as me. This hall was wider and brightly lit, with empty alcoves along the way interspersed between the doors. Painting or sculptures would have once been placed there to view as people went past, but now they were just empty spaces in the architecture.
Empty spaces that were the perfect size for somebody to hide in, and that’s when I found out Nico and Dex, everybody’s favorite neighborhood asshole guards, were hiding. I glanced back at Avery and was a mere twenty or thirty feet from the stairs when I looked back at it.
I smiled to myself, my flight giving me the speed that I desperately needed. I might have even emitted a little laugh as I ran, shaking my hair and letting the freedom flow through me. I barely registered the two tall, muscular bodies that emerged from the shadows on either side of me, and I didn’t fully comprehend what was happening until I ran smack into them.
“Going somewhere?” Nico or Dex asked in a low rumble that had enough contempt and smug satisfaction in it that I immediately began to fight. I punched and kicked and felt like the sprint to freedom had given me enough fire to really have a chance against both of them, but I was delusional.
I was also exhausted, depressed, humiliated, and weakened from lack of sleep and the gnawing attack of constant, unrelenting sorrow at being away from my Kings.
“Let me go!” I exclaimed as I fought them. I landed a punch on the first guard’s chin, a nice uppercut that made him grunt, but he still managed to get hold of my hands in his rough, meaty ones. “You don’t have to do this. Do you know who I am? My father has so much money. You’d never have to work again if you let me go!”
“You mean your father, who is locked up in Ilya’s townhouse?” the other guard laughed, a low mocking rasping in his throat.
Townhouse? I had to find out where that was. I made a mental note.
“What the fuck is he gonna give us? Scraps from his one meal a day?” Both of them laughed and twisted me around until I was in their arms and unable to escape. Avery reached us, and I continued to kick and struggle, but to no avail. I wanted to strike Avery again, anything to get some satisfaction in this terrible situation, but she stayed far from striking distance.
“She’s lying, anyways,” Avery said and slapped my face hard the moment she made eye contact with me. “Ivan is my father, too, so I can make you rich, too. She’s not the only daddy’s girl around here.”
“Fuck you,” I hissed as the guards began to drag me towards a door that had opened down the hall. “He wouldn’t give you a fucking cent.”
“No, but he might think about contributing to our empire, my bride,” Maksim said as he stepped out and surveyed the situation. “Looks like we have a runner, and it looks like these two sisters are having a spat. Bring her in, boys, and thank you for your loyal service.”