Yeah, because he definitely had his phone right next to him in that hole I just pulled him out of. I smiled along with her.
“Tell me where you are, and I’m on my way.”
With a short gasp, she rattled off an address and ended the call. I started running toward the room where Dima’s head of security was monitoring the tracker on Tati’s phone.
“Tell me you’ve got her,” I yelled, bursting into the room.
He looked up, beaming as he pointed to a red dot on a map on his screen. He was already sending me the location as it winked out. “And it’s off again. Better hope she’s not on the move.”
The address he gave me was different from the one Tati told me, not similar enough to have been a mistake in her saying the numbers. When we compared them on the map, they were miles apart from one another.
“Damn it,” I hissed.
Did I go to the one Tati told me to go to or the one where her phone was? What if she was going to meet me at the second location?
But what if it was an ambush? Both places could be crawling with Yakuza, but was that going to stop me? Hell no.
I sent a team to the location she gave me, warning them they were probably walking into a firefight. After having to run from the last fight they were in, they were amped up to cracksome skulls, and started loading enough guns to take over a small country into several cars.
Dima insisted on heading out with me, and my miserable, dumbass old friend had dragged himself out of his bed for an update.
“Tell me you found her,” he said.
“Possibly,” I answered, sliding on a holster and making sure both guns were fully loaded. “We’ve got a couple of choices.”
“Well, I’ll be going with you.” He began pulling himself along the wall, a saline drip rolling behind him, and the doctor swearing up a storm as he tried to haul him back to bed.
“Like hell you will. We’ll just trip over your corpse when you expire from the ride over there. Now get your ass back to bed and let me save… your daughter.”
I was a breath away from calling her my woman. He narrowed his eyes at the pause before realizing how useless he was in his condition and letting the doctor steer him back the way he came. I softened my tone, taking pity on him, knowing exactly how worried he was about Tati.
“I’m bringing her back alive and well,” I hollered as I took off. “Count on that.”
With a team of men following close behind us, Dima and I set out for the location that showed where Tati’s phone was, not the one she told me during her call.
“You sure about this?” Dima asked.
“As sure as I can be,” I answered. If Riku had her and meant to try to ambush me, he wouldn’t want to risk losing his hostage in a firefight in case he needed her later on. Then again,he wouldn’t risk any harm coming to her if she had been working with him all along, either.
“I mean about Tatiana,” Dima said, interrupting my confused train of thought. “You sure she needs to be rescued at all?”
I suppressed a sigh. “As sure as I can be,” I repeated in a tone that kept him from asking any more stupid questions.
It didn’t matter if she needed me to rescue her or not; I was damn well going to rescue her anyway. I was getting her back, no matter if her betrayal would kill me as painfully as Riku ever could.
Chapter 41 - Tatiana
As soon as Riku cut the video call, he turned off my phone and triumphantly left me alone again. I dropped my head into my lap, barely able to stay on the chair he brought me to sit on during the call. Everything hurt, but more than my body, it was my spirit that was broken.
The beatings went on for hours with barely any breaks, and I could have kept withstanding the pain, but then Riku just left me all alone in the dark. I fell asleep, only to be awakened with another slap across the back of my head. Riku yanked me up by my tangled, matted hair and laughed in my face.
“We found your father. My men are with him now. He’ll be dead in a few minutes if you don’t do what I want.”
I didn’t believe him, didn’t want to believe Papa was on the verge of death. Demanding proof, Riku only laughed some more.
“I’ll be happy to bring his head to you when this is all over. Or you can sit and smile and tell Konstantin what to do.”
Riku’s cruelty and lack of any human feeling were no longer just scary stories from Kon. If I kept calling his bluff, Riku would surely deliver my Papa’s head to me on a platter. There was no choice but to give in.