She took them, too.
Took them for herself.
And now she was gone.
That meant he was gone, too.
Pav could not be trusted in these moments. Not to care about someone else, even if it was Grisha or the people he was trying to help. He certainly couldn’t be trusted to show them care or concern if they got too close to him, when all he wanted to do was cause the worst kind of violence to make himself feel even a little bit better.
Yeah.
A bad fucking place.
Pav was almost to the front door—almost gone, but not at all better. Walking was difficult when he felt like his legs were unsteady. His head pounded hard enough to make him think it might explode at any moment. The constant taste of blood in his mouth had him worried.
Oh, he’d gotten worse beatings.
He’d been in far worse places.
It didn’t matter.
Pav didn’t quite make it to the door—trying yet again to dial the correct fucking number on the stupid cell phone—when Grisha got ahold of him. The man grabbed the back of Pav’s jacket … a mistake, if there ever was one, and yanked hard.
It was enough to stop Pav.
He turned fast, his lips already pulled back to showcase bloody teeth as a sound left his mouth that was entirely inhuman. And yet, Grisha didn’t even blink at the sight. As tall and as wide as a brick shithouse, he wasn’t easily intimidated.
He should be scared of Pav.
Terrified.
And he just stood there.
“Are they coming back?” Grisha asked.
Pav blinked. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“They got what they wanted. I … have to go.”
He turned, but Grisha was still there, blocking his path as he scooted past him in the hallway. A part of Pav was warring with himself on the inside. He didn’t want to hurt this man—he didn’t want to ruin a part of his past. The one connection to his father that he had left. But he was going to do it if Grisha didn’t get the fuck out of his way, and fast.
“Get out of the way,” Pav said, his voice pained.
“Let me help.”
“Help?”
“That’s what I said. Give me the phone—I will call. You’re not in any kind of state right now, Pavel. Give me the phone, dammit.”
Grisha didn’t give him the opportunity to argue when the man simply yanked the phone out of Pav’s hand. To his credit, Pav was starting to think he was three seconds away from vomiting all over the floor from the intense pounding in his head.
Concussion?
Probably.
“What is the number you want to call?” Grisha asked.
Why wouldn’t his heart calm?
Why did his hands hurt?
Maybe because he’d balled them into tight fists at his sides to keep them still and hide their shaking. Now, his fingernails were cutting into his skin, causing him more pain, but he didn’t even care.
She was gone.
“Pavel!”
Pav rattled off the number he needed to call, and when Grisha had the call ringing through, he handed the phone back. Phone at his ear, Pav turned his back to his father’s old friend, listening to the call ring and fucking ring.
Pick up. Fucking pick up.
On the fifth ring, just before the voice mail, Konstantin finally picked up the goddamn phone call. Pav wasn’t sure what he expected the man to say. A hello, maybe, because there would be no possible way Konstantin could know what happened here tonight.
Pav fucked up.
They weren’t supposed to leave the hotel.
This was his fault.
He would pay for this.
He already was.
Instead of hello, Konstantin said, “Every man to the Compound, now.”
He didn’t even ask who it was—not that he would have needed to if he looked at the caller ID and saw Pav’s number. Did he even do that?
“Konstantin—”
“No time to talk,” Konstantin barked back. “We’ve had two attacks tonight. Every man to the Compound before the hour is out.”
Pav swallowed hard. “They took Vik.”
Silence echoed.
And then, “What?”
“Viktoria. They took her.”
• • •
It was pandemonium.
Chaos mixed with rage.
Pav stood silent in the corner as words were hurled, and anger spilled between men. He watched them all, their faces unimportant to him as he went over each and every mistake he had made in his lifetime. Every second that led up to this moment right here. He didn’t need others throwing his errors in his face, when he was quite aware of how and why this happened.
He was sorry.
They didn’t care.
He got it.
He understood.
“We decided,” Kolya hurled at him. “The hotel was the safest place as long as she stayed there!”
‘Kolya,” the man’s wife whispered. “Calm down for a second and—”
“No, he fucked up.”
“But did he?” Konstantin asked. “The attacks—the ones on our homes and the one on the loft—seemed very deliberate, didn’t they? As though someone knew she would be in one place, or the other. It would have needed to be someone who knew she left the hotel because they would check.”
“Are you saying …”
“A man of ours, yes,” Konstantin said.
“It still wouldn’t have happened, had he just kept her there, then,” Kolya said harshly.
“Or they would have made a bigger mess when they went in on the hotel, Kolya. Think about it. It was made very clear during our attacks that this came from Boris, so he clearly has access to something or someone that is helping him. If not tonight, then it would have been another night.”
“Konstantin is right,” Amelia said from her position on a couch in Konstantin’s office. “And it won’t help for the rest of us
