Page 110 of Bought By the Ruthless Pakhan

I stood there for a few seconds. Then I walked over, bent down, picked up the gun he'd dropped, and holstered my own.

Outside the window, rain kept falling. Droplets hit the sill, blown inside by the wind, wetting a small patch of concrete. The only sounds left in the room were the low hum from a vent and the faint trickle of water sliding down the bars.

I turned and walked out.

The hallway lights were still on, their uneven glow laying an irregular path at my feet. I pulled out my radio as I walked, pressed the button.

"Second floor clear. Take them alive."

Dmitri's voice crackled back. "Copy."

I clipped the radio to my belt, quickened my pace toward the door at the end of the hall. Sergei said Anna was in another room. Said Gary was watching her. That door was at the far end, also half-open, spilling the same yellow light.

I walked over and pushed it open.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Anna

I woke up with a stiff neck.

My head tilted to one side, chin pressed against my collarbone. The muscles along my neck were sore and rigid from holding the same position too long.

I flexed my fingers. First came the numbness—spreading from my fingertips all the way to my wrists, like my blood had been pinched off, flowing slow and sluggish.

Then the pain. A thin line circled my wrists where the zip ties had dug in, carved into the skin like a fresh trench, the surface mottled with broken capillaries.

I didn't open my eyes right away. I listened instead.

Someone was moving around. Light footsteps, deliberately slowed. Voices speaking Russian drifted through the door—couldn't make out the words, but the tone was loose. Relaxed. The kind of ease that came with thinking you'd already won.

I stayed still, held that position, waited for them to finish talking, waited for the footsteps to fade.

Then I opened my eyes.

I was tied to a metal folding chair. The backrest pressed cold against my shoulder blades. One leg was broken, propped up with folded cardboard.

White zip ties bound my wrists to the armrests, my ankles to the chair legs.

I tested them. The edge bit into my skin and I jerked back.

One door. A sliver of dingy yellow light leaked underneath, stretching across the floor in a thin bright line. No windows. The air was stale, thick with the smell of motor oil and rust.

I sat in that chair, stared at that line of light, and evened out my breathing.

A lot came flooding back, but I didn't let it pile up. I sorted through it piece by piece. One: I wasn't at Ivan's. Two: the black van. Three: the texture of a gloved hand clamped over my mouth. Four: a smell I'd had to work to place—the smell Gary always carried. Laundry detergent mixed with sweat and cheap tobacco.

Gary. My piece-of-shit father.

That smell connected all the fragments in my head.

He was part of this. He was in this building. He was behind one of these doors.

The realization settled in my stomach—not fear, not anger. Just cold.

A hard, heavy lump of cold iron, sitting there. Unmoving. Unmelting.

I didn't pull at the zip ties again. I leaned back, closed my eyes for a moment, smoothed my breathing, pressed all those churning pieces back into place.