Page 61 of Lethal Devotion


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“For an enforcer, you sure are slow to get your hands dirty,” I sneer. “Afraid to get too close, Sal? Afraid I’ll bleed on your Italian leather shoes? Fucking piece of shit.”

Sal doesn’t flinch or budge. He smiles viciously. “You’ll find out what we’re capable of soon enough, Kutnezsov. Guards!”

More guards arrive, staying well out of my reach this time. One of them has a taser, shoved through the bars before I can get back fast enough, and the electricity sends me to my knees, my muscles seizing uncontrollably.

“He’s dead,” another says, kneeling down to look at the guard I dropped.

“Get that corpse out of here,” Sal snaps. “And put a heavy guard on him. I want him watched around the clock until we drag him out of here. No excuses. And no one else gets close to him. I don’t care if he’s hungry, if he’s thirsty, if he has to piss or shit. No one takes him out of the cage, and no one goes near him.”

It takes a long time for me to stop twitching from the electrical shock, crumpled on the floor with that feeling of helplessness pouring through me again, like water in a glass box. I’m caged, unarmed, too far from Sienna to help her. But it won’t be that way forever.

I’ll find a way. My mind feels clear as crystal, and I’ve never been more determined.

They have Sienna. They're planning to hurt her in ways that makemy blood run cold. And I'm stuck in this fucking cage like a rabid animal.

But I meant what I told Sal. This cage won't hold me. Not when my wife needs me.

Not when I swore I’d protect her.


The guards shutthe lights off, except for a dim one at the far side of the room where they watch. It makes time feel as if it moves differently—there are no windows in this room, so I have no idea how long I’ve been in this cell, no idea how long I was out cold for. It might have been hours, or it could have been days. I feel sure that it can’t have been more than a day or two, at most, if even that long—as soon as we didn’t make it back, Konstantin would have started mobilizing. And hewillfind us.

The question is whether or not he’ll find us in time to save Sienna, or whether I can get out of here in some fashion in time to do so myself.

My body aches from the taser, my throat is sore from screaming, and I’m exhausted, but that doesn’t stop me from pacing my cell, testing every bar, the lock, looking for any weakness that I can exploit. Every second that passes is another second that Sienna is in danger, and I can’t abide that. I can’t let that go on any longer than I have to.

I have to get to her.

There’s nothing in the cell for me to use. No bed, no toilet, no sink. Nothing but cold, hard floor and bars all around me. Nothing for me to use. They’re smart enough, at least, not to give me any means to try to escape, which is maddening. All I can do is pace like a caged animal, running through possibilities in my head, trying to come up with a strategy.

At some point, what feels like hours after Sal left and the deadbody of the guard was taken away, I hear footsteps in the corridor again. Multiple sets, moving with purpose.

There are eight guards, with Sal bringing up the rear. “Get him out,” Sal says flatly. “Shoot him if he moves. Somewhere non-lethal and non-vital, but shoot him all the same.”

So they want me alive, at least for now. That’s useful to know.

One of the men unlocks the door, the others forming a wall to keep me from making a break for it. They’re all armed, but don’t have their weapons in hand.Smart. Harder for me to disarm them, but I don’t doubt that if I put a foot wrong, any one of them could have their gun out and shooting before I could stop them all. Even if I stopped the first one, that would give the others time to disable me.

I can’t help Sienna if I’m injured. I have to be smart about this. I need to bide my time, even if I want to tear all of these men apart from head to toe, rip them to pieces like an animal.

“What’s this?” I growl as two of them enter with handcuffs, and Sal chuckles, that grin firmly back on his face.

“Boss wants to see you.” Sal shrugs. “You’ll find out why soon enough.”

I could try to fight them. I fucking want to. Even outnumbered, even without weapons, I could take out a few of them before they brought me down. But if I’m hurt…

They’ll hurt Sienna. I can’t help her if I’m caged again. If I’m disabled. I have to wait.

I’ve never had a hard time with strategy before, with cold calculations and caution. The irony of it is almost laughable. Just when I need my years of training and cold brutality the most, I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams, like I’m nothing but a beast made of rage, all because of one woman.

A woman I never expected to meet in my life.

I let them cuff my hands behind my back and lead me through a maze of corridors that smell like mold and decay. This is the kind of place where people disappear forever, where screams echo off concrete walls until they fade into nothing. This is a torture chamber, an executioner’s haven, a place for blood and fear and death. Andnow, something else, too—a hub to trade flesh, a place to move women who won’t be missed.

Except Sienna has someone who will miss her. Someone capable of doing something about it. And they picked the wrong man to take her away from.

The room they lead me to is one smaller than the room that the cells were in, with a chair in the center and a bright, dangling bulb overhead, the naked light after hours in dimness enough to make my eyes water. I already know what sort of place this is—an interrogation room. I’ve spent plenty of time in rooms like these, but it’s the first time I’ve been on the opposite side of the equation.