CHAPTER1
Kasia Poplawski
All my life, I’d heard story after story of the American dream.
Honestly? It smelled a whole lot like piss.
I’d rather go back to Poland, even if my raging asshole of a father was there and would be looking for me.
Two weeks ago, my mother had been shot. I’d held her as she died in my arms.
That night, I’d been taken.
My father, Piotrek Poplawski, was the kingpin of an incredibly powerful Polish mafia family. As his daughter, my only use to him was my hand in marriage. A month ago without my consent, he had arranged for me to marry the son of another prominent family, a man I knew to be cruel and violent. When I had found out, I went into hiding, not bothering to send word of my refusal. My disappearance had said enough.
I had underestimated my father’s reach though. He’d found me and as punishment for screwing up his marriage plans, he’d sold me off to the Russian mob with express orders to sell me to whoever was willing to pay the most.
Money and power were the only things that mattered to him.
I shivered. The temperature had dropped a little tonight.
A Russian named Igor had taken possession of me, shuttling me over Europe in a dirty livestock train car. For a few days, we’d stayed in a crumbling house in the countryside, waiting for more girls to arrive so they could ship us to where the real money was in America. We’d flown overseas in a freight plane, with me and several other girls hidden away in wooden crates in the back. To keep us quiet, we’d been sedated with some kind of injection. The only reason I’d taken it with dignity was because of the loaded gun pressed against the side of my head.
I’d woken up outside an abandoned warehouse of some kind. I didn’t really know much about what it was used for in the past, but there were several floors. We’d only climbed up one flight of stairs, but I knew there were one or more levels above me.
There were twelve of us, including me. From what I could tell, they were all either in their early twenties or late teens. They all appeared to be Eastern European in descent.
There was only one of the Russian bastards watching us right now. I didn’t speak Russian, but I knew enough to have figured out his name was Yuri when he and Igor were talking before Igor left.
If they had actually known me, they would have thought to have more guards.
If I was a betting woman, I would guess that the others were probably all getting drunk off some shitty brand of vodka in a dive bar not far from here. Even if they came back, they’d probably be sloshed off their asses, which would make them easy to outmaneuver and take down. They had clearly underestimated the lot of us, but I could understand why. Many of the girls were slender. A few were far skinnier than they should be.
A little while ago, there had been a smattering of gunfire and then a big explosion. Yuri had appeared unconcerned, simply taking a big swig from a steel flask sitting next to him and promptly coming close to passing out.
Whatever it was, it hadn’t come upstairs. Maybe if I was lucky, some American street gang had wiped out the rest of the Russians and the only one left was this dickhead.
That would make my life a whole lot simpler.
I lolled my head to the side, trying to keep as still as possible while keeping an eye on Yuri. I moved my hands a little behind my back. Several other girls had purple marks on their wrists from the coarse rope and I had no doubt that mine looked similar. All day, I’d had been working my arms back and forth so I could loosen them.
Yuri’s head bobbed back. His body started to slump a little bit in the chair and his chest began to rise and fall far more slowly. He’d fallen asleep.
It was time for me to move.
As quietly as I could, I rocked myself back and forth until I could throw myself up onto my feet. I stilled in a kneeling position, making sure that Yuri was still sleeping in the corner of the room. He snored loudly enough to startle one of the girls next to me who had nodded off too. Knowing time was of the essence, I slipped my hands underneath my butt. I curled myself in as small of a ball as possible. My mother had taught me to take advantage of my flexibility from a young age, so this was a trick I’d learned long ago.
Carefully, I slid my still-bound hands past the backs of my thighs and then underneath my knees. I pulled one leg out at a time and sat up with my hands in front of me. I twisted my wrist a bit more, gauging to see if I could escape the rope or not. It was loose enough, but I risked cutting myself on the stiff fibers. There was a flickering streetlamp casting dim light through the window, on and off, but it gave me just enough to see the boundaries of the rope that held me captive.
These weren’t professional ties by any means. The coarse rope was wrapped around my wrists a half dozen times with a shoddy knot that already appeared to be coming loose. Using my teeth, I loosened it a bit further. Yuri kept happily snoring across the room as I worked. Eventually, I pulled the end free.
With as much stealth as I could muster, I unwrapped the rope, taking a few scant moments to rub the soreness away. There was so much of it. It was as if they’d used an entire coil of rope to tie me up rather than cut it.
Lazy bastards.
The streetlamp flickered again, illuminating my pale skin. Thankfully, my wrists were just red and not cut up and bruised like the others. There was a pretty brunette girl with light green eyes watching me. She said nothing, but there was a spark of hope in her eyes at seeing that at least one of us was free.
Unlike me, she wasn’t wearing any clothing, just underwear. I think her bra and panties had been light blue at some point, but they were too dirty in places to really tell. I don’t know why the Russians had allowed me to stay clothed. Maybe my father had told them to let me stay that way at least until they sold me to some sordid American with a fetish for foreign girls.