Molly handed the cell over and gave her the passcode. Sonia didn't wait for a reaction. She had worked up the nerve to enter the SUV, and she had to do it before she lost it. She stood up, brushed Molly's face with a kiss and ran down the steps to the vehicle. The door was thrust open before she got there. She dove in without even looking at the driver.
"Go. Hurry, before they realize we switched places."
"Boss says not to draw attention. I'll hit it when we get to the street. Give me your cell phone."
Sonia recognized the man as Dmitri, one of Sasha's best friends. They were together quite often. He worked for Nikita as well. Her heart thudded when she righted herself in the seat and realized the driver wasn't alone. Two more men occupied the backseat. Even if she managed to grab the driver's gun, she wouldn't get away. She thought about lying and saying she didn't have it, but she knew Joshua would come after her no matter what. Breathing a silent apology to Molly, she handed the cell phone to him and he tossed it to the others in the backseat. They opened the window once they were on the main road and sent it flying.
"Do you really have Bastien Foret, Dmitri?" She kept her voice low, unconcerned, as if she didn't expect them to take her to the nearest swamp and feed her to the alligators. Surely, they wouldn't do that without Nikita gloating at her first.
"Yes. He's safe." He glanced at her. "Put on your seat belt." The vehicle picked up speed.
She complied with the order. So far, he was treating her gently. No roughing her up, no slapping her. No dragging her into the backseat so the others could have their fun while Dmitri drove. She glanced in the back. "I'm sorry, I don't remember your names." They didn't look all that familiar, although she could have sworn they looked a little like Sasha around the eyes.
"Koldan," the one on the right said gruffly.
"Vasili," the other told her.
Both looked directly at her. Yep. They were definitely going to kill her or they wouldn't have been so free with their names, nor would they have wanted her to see them. She took a deep breath and let it out. Dmitri was driving very fast, but controlled. She remembered that about him. More than once he'd picked up both Sasha and Sonia and taken them to a small, intimate cafe. They'd been among the few times she'd ever been out in public with Sasha. She supposed that gave Sasha plausible deniability that he was with her if her dead body turned up.
"Where are you taking me?"
"We'll switch vehicles. Leopards can track a car."
She stiffened. She'd all but forgotten Joshua had told her the Bogomolovs were leopard. Of course they would know leopards tracked vehicles. They'd prepared for that. She hadn't thought out her plan very well. She had to hope she could leave her scent, or Joshua would just track the new vehicle.
"Please make the call to have Bastien let go. He isn't part of this. He doesn't know anything." She knew it was stupid to even ask. Nikita's answer for everything in his way seemed to be to kill someone.
"He'll get loose on his own. He saw no one. By the time he makes his way to a phone, we'll be long gone."
She nodded, trying to hear the truth in his voice. Honesty had a tone to it, a note easily recognized. She was too tense, her heart beating too hard and fast to be able to discern if Dmitri was being honest.
Gatita? Do you think he means it?
He sounded truthful, but then Sasha always sounded truthful. Joshua and Shadow sounded truthful. I am confused.
Sonia stared out the window at the scenery passing by. Mostly it was a blur. Dmitri turned down a road just off the main highway near the town. There was a theater there. Several vehicles were parked together in the lot. He drove right into the center of them.
"Stay put. Don't remove your seat belt."
She nodded and stayed put. She didn't want a bullet in her brain. Joshua would lose his mind and go on a rampage. If he was really going to sell her out to Nikita, they wouldn't have found it necessary to kidnap her. She'd been right in believing in him. She held on to that. He would come.
The men got out of the SUV, each using a different door. Dmitri came around to her side, opened the door and stepped back. First, Vasili came to the door and leaned in to remove her seat belt. He turned and hurried to enter one of the other cars. Koldan was second, and he leaned in and acted as if he might pull her out of the darkened vehicle, but then he turned and went to another car. Dmitri actually lifted her.
"I can walk," she protested.
He kept her in tight to his chest. "No, you can't. Your scent would be on the ground. This way, they have to track multiple vehicles."
The door to the dark SUV opened in the back and Dmitri thrust her inside. The instant the door closed, she drew in his scent. Sasha. The man she loved. The one who had betrayed her. He reached for her, drew her into his arms and all but crushed her.
"You're alive. Slava Bogu. All this time, I thought he'd killed you. Why didn't you reach out to me? I would have come for you, protected you."
His arms were the same. She remembered them from her childhood. All the times he'd held her when she cried over her father. He'd known Nikita had ordered the man's torture and death. He'd known Nikita had been forcing her mother to sleep with him. Still, he'd been the one to pay for her mother's care. For the hospice expenses. For the memorial and cremation.
"Sasha." She whispered his name, tears welling up.
The vehicle sped down the road. She couldn't see through the blur of tears. If it had been Nikita coming for her, she could have been stoic, going to her death without drama or weeping, but even knowing Sasha had tried to kill her, she couldn't block out all those years, from her childhood on, of caring for him.
"You're safe," he whispered. "You're safe with me."
She knew better. She had believed him once. Just as she believed Joshua. What was wrong with her that this kept happening?
She pulled out of his arms. Immediately he dragged her seat belt around her. "We have a house. It will be well guarded. If my father or Joshua Tregre try to come for you, we have weapons that will give us the advantage in protecting you. It's all been planned out carefully."
She shook her head and stared out the window, afraid if she looked at him she'd start screaming. His betrayal cut deep. He'd been her everything after her mother had died. Not just after, before, after her father had been murdered. Then during her mother's illness.
"Look at me, malen'kiy, you have not even looked at me."
"I can't. I'm very confused by the things you're saying to me, Sasha. I don't understand why you're playing this game with me."
"Game?" He caught her chin and tugged until her head came up and her eyes met his. "What game? I thought you were dead or I would have looked until I found you."
"I heard you, Sasha. I came in early and I heard you and your father talking about me, my father and mother, and how you had to kill me."
He inhaled sharply. Dmitri shared a long look with him. The driver glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. She'd been an idiot to admit that, but she'd had it with the lies. She doubted if she was going to come out of this alive, so at least she'd get Sasha to look her in the eye and admit he wanted her dead.
"I have no reason to kill you, Sonia. I love you. You know that."
"Oh. My. God. I'm so done with the declarations of love and then finding out every man who says that to me is a criminal. Just pull out your gun and shoot me. Get it the hell over with." Her voice was swinging out of control, but she didn't care. She was ready to fling herself at him. All she had to do was unsnap the seat belt and lunge for him. Gatita would do the rest--except she couldn't quite make herself do it. Not yet. Not until she found out why.
The road they turned on was a narrow dirt track leading into the swamp and away from town. "Where did the other vehicles go?"
"Various houses we rented. The others will make their way back here. This property was the most defensible and has the better escape routes."
She took a deep breath as they parked in front of a large old plan
tation house. She recognized the architecture. It was very different from her home, but still quite stately and beautiful. Dmitri hopped out first. He and two others circled the house before going in. Dmitri motioned and someone opened Sasha's door. He slid out and then reached for Sonia.
She hesitated before sliding across the seat to him. Sasha lifted her down and they walked together to the porch. Gatita, look around. We have to be ready to move fast. She took a slow, careful perusal of every aspect of the grounds she could see.
Sasha took her hand as they went up the stairs and entered the older, well-kept mansion. It was definitely a find. Trust Sasha to find it. Like Sonia, he'd always been interested in architecture. "This is beautiful," she ventured, trying to decide what to say, how to handle the situation. She needed to know what he wanted and he wasn't giving her much to go on.
"I found it online and then destroyed my entire laptop and hard drive so Nikita wouldn't know about it. He's on his way here with a large group of men. You know how he likes to make a show of force."
She hadn't known. She'd been kept in the dark until that day. She tugged her hand from his the moment they were inside and stepped away from him, her arms going around her middle for comfort. "Why did you lie about us being married?"
"You took what you heard out of context. You don't know the entire story."
"Then tell it to me," she invited. "And let Bastien go."
"He's safe enough. He'll get loose but it will take him a while before he can make his way to a phone to call for help. I imagine his girlfriend has already called for help, but they won't find him so easily. We've got time to prepare."
She threw herself into a chair, very conscious of the fact that she wasn't wearing underwear. She'd been with Joshua so many times, she felt him inside her. She felt his hands on her. She tasted him in her mouth. To look at Sasha, the man who was supposed to be her husband, made her feel guilt and shame, even though he'd tried to kill her by planting a bomb in her car.
"When did you know you were leopard?" he asked. He took a bottle of water from Dmitri and handed it to her. Light was streaking through the windows, the outside still gray with fog. "That was a shock."
"It was a shock when I smelled my husband's scent in the car just before it blew up," she countered.
He whirled around. "You think I planted that bomb?"
"Sasha, even my leopard smelled your scent. It wasn't just me." She tried--and failed--to keep the hurt out of her voice. To have time to regain her composure, she took a drink of water, allowing it to slip down her parched throat.
"I was there, in the car. I worried that he would try it. I was pulled from the car and taken physically into the house. There was a fight between me and the men my father had restraining me. He sat in a chair with a glass of bourbon in his hand and watched while they beat me. It was a lesson, he said, I had to learn to be strong. He didn't want a weak son, and you made me weak."
It was impossible to miss the ring of truth in his voice, and more, the behavior was so Nikita. He always acted a little detached and superior to everyone else. A surge of hope swept through her. Sasha, her Sasha, hadn't been the one to try to kill her.
"Tell me the entire story, Sasha. I'm a little lost."
He set his water bottle on the mantel and turned completely toward her so she could see his face. "My father's world is one of violence and revenge. There can be no loyalty to a woman, especially not one's wife."
Her heart jumped and then accelerated. He was telling her essentially what Joshua had revealed about Nikita Bogomolov.
"He killed my mother when I was ten. He made me watch as he beat her to death. He said no member of our family would ever put a woman first. Those kinds of women were to be fucked and then killed. He liked to say that."
She knew. She'd heard him. "What did he mean by 'those kinds'? I heard him say that about me and I thought . . ."
"He meant every woman. Every woman, Sonia. He didn't single you out because of where you came from. He singled you out because you were too important to me. Your father betrayed him, and that isn't tolerated. The penalty for stealing or really any infraction is death for the entire family. Nikita enjoyed making a statement. Your mother had been keeping our house since you were a baby. You were a beautiful child, a ray of sunshine in a world of madness. So was your mother."
She had always believed he thought that of her mother. He had spent a great deal of time talking to Valeria. She remembered him as a teenager, tall and handsome, his dark eyes flashing with smiles at her while she followed her mother from room to room.
He paced across the room. "Of course she would catch Nikita's eye. He wanted her. When your father made such a terrible mistake, he ordered him tortured and killed. He went to Valeria and offered a proposition. She could live in our home permanently and sleep with him whenever and wherever he wanted to pay off Roberto's debt, or he would kill both of you and be done with it. He made certain I was there. He wanted me to see how a woman would 'whore' herself out for her child or her own life. That was supposed to be another lesson, but I knew he did it so he could have Valeria."
"How could you stand him? Stand being in the same room with him?"
"I went to your mother and told her I would always watch out for you, that I'd do anything it took. I told her to make the deal with my father, but add that you weren't to know, that your childhood would be happy. Your mother took care of me after my father's many, many lessons. Broken bones, cigarette burns. He liked watching his men beat me. She was always there for me." He looked down at his hands. "Making sure you had a good childhood and remained alive was the only thing I could do for her. It was better than what I did for my own mother."
"Sasha." She breathed his name, her heart breaking for him.
"I couldn't save her. I tried, but I couldn't save my mother, Sonia. I was too young, not strong enough, but I vowed one day I'd take him down. He's just so good at what he does. Had he known you were leopard, you would have been a prisoner until you gave me a child. As it was, I was careful that couldn't happen. He might have killed you both, especially if the baby was female."
"I'm so sorry. I never realized how terrible he was, not until I overheard that conversation and I did a little research. I'd been so sheltered, I'd never even heard gossip. I was picking up the language, though, and things weren't adding up."
"I asked you to marry me in order to keep you close. Had I sent you away to school, which I considered first, he had already indicated he would have had you killed as an example. Your father's debt, he said, would never be fully paid. I couldn't actually marry you because then he would demand your death, but when I told him I made the same deal with you that he had with your mother, he left you alone--for a while."
He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. "I was in a difficult position. You're so young. You were innocent. I had no right touching you. It didn't feel right, Sonia, and I tried to keep my distance. I stayed away as much as possible, while still keeping you safe. I went clubbing with Dmitri. I was seen around town. I threw myself into the business. I kept you home and away from him. When you wanted to have sex, as any normal wife would, I obliged, but I knew it was wrong for you."
"I love you, Sasha. I always have," she admitted quietly, "but I didn't love you the way a woman should love her man. It's different." She had to tell him the truth. She knew the difference now.
He nodded his head. "I'm well aware of that. I love you too, but not the way a man loves a woman. You were like a little sister to me and touching you that way felt wrong. Still, you deserved to be happy, and without your knowledge you were almost kept a prisoner in that house."
"Thank you for trying to keep me safe."
"I did my best to grow strong, to recruit my own men, men loyal to me. I had to be extremely careful because if even one of them betrayed us, if there was a whisper of conspiracy against Nikita, he would have tortured everyone until someone talked. If he thought, for a moment, I was behind it, you would hav
e been tortured in front of me. I apparently gave myself away by being too protective of you."
"You were always protective of me, even when I was very little."
He nodded. "But just before he talked to me, do you remember the accident you had? The one where a car nearly hit you? You were coming out of your yoga class and crossing the street to get to the car where your driver waited."
She nodded. It had been close. Very, very close. It had been Dmitri who had saved her that day, throwing her out of the path of the speeding car. They both rolled on the asphalt, scraping skin, but other than a few bruises, they were both fine.
She'd been surprised that Dmitri had been in the vicinity, but hadn't questioned it because she'd been so shaken by the near miss. Dmitri had acted angry. Her driver had scowled at him and they'd had a very heated exchange. That hadn't been anything compared to what Sasha had said to the driver. He'd pulled out a gun and put it to her driver's head and ordered her out of the room. She didn't know what had happened after that.
"He worked for your father, and he set me up by parking across the street," she guessed.
Sasha nodded, his eyes burning with anger. "Yes. Then he texted the hit man and he was supposed to make it look like an accident."
"Why? If you father had decided to kill me, why didn't he just do it?"
"He wanted me to do it, and when I made it clear I wasn't done with you yet, he gave the job to two of his men. I made the mistake of killing them both and threatening him."
She opened her mouth to say something, but the reality of his life hit her. The reality of Joshua's life was the same. They killed people. It was part of their world. Deliberately, she took another sip of water, taking her time to try to process everything he said. It fit. The way he'd treated her from the beginning of their marriage. She'd been so shocked by her mother's death and his marriage proposal that she'd gone numb and just let Sasha take over. She hadn't really woken up for months after. He hadn't touched her, saying she wasn't ready yet.
She'd been the one to go to him. She'd been hurt, afraid he didn't want her. He'd been patient and gentle with her, always loving, but after, she'd wake to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. She'd even gone so far as to wonder if he was gay. He'd rarely come to her and only at her insistence. It made sense that he wasn't in love with her. He thought of her as a child. She'd grown up in his household and he felt protective of her, but he didn't love her the way a man loved a woman. He was right, they were more like little sister and big brother.