Focus: Exposure Series Book Two Read online

  I looked at Nikolai again. He wasn’t meeting my eyes.

  “You owe her?” I said to him. “For what?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said.

  “Tell me now.”

  He drew a breath. “A man from one of the Russian groups around here put a hit on me for some surveillance I was doing a few years back. Sophie managed to get the hit removed.”

  I looked at Sophie. “How did you manage this, Sophie?” I asked her. “But I’m almost afraid to ask this question.”

  “I talked to the Pakhan of the family,” she said. “He can be very persuadable.”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew what kind of “persuasion” Sophie was capable of. She was a drop-dead beautiful woman. She could make anybody do anything at all.

  I turned back to Nikolai. “We’ll talk about this later.” I couldn’t believe that Nikolai was more loyal to Sophie than to me. But, then again, I never actually saved his life. Sophie apparently did. I always had his back, though. Always.

  Nikolai looked at me. “I’m sorry, Alexei. I don’t want that hit to be put back into place. And it will be, at Sophie’s word.”

  In other words, Sophie had Nikolai by the balls.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay. I will tell you right here in front of Nikolai that I will take responsibility for your child. And I won’t ever tell anybody the truth about this child’s real heritage, including CJ herself. But that is the only thing that I promise you. You and I still won’t be together. And I plan on trying to win CJ back, just so you know, once I find her. Now tell me where she is.”

  Sophie looked stricken, but she knew that she had asked for enough. It was that important to her that I take responsibility for her child. She obviously didn’t want to ask for anything more.

  “As you wish,” she finally said.

  Chapter 5

  CJ

  My breath was coming faster and faster as I kneeled down on the grass, the blindfold on my eyes. I was making my peace with God, and I was happy that I was given the chance to do this. I had this chance because this man was taking a long time doing what I knew he was about to do. I couldn’t understand why he was taking so long, unless he was trying to toy with me.

  He cocked the gun and I lowered my head.

  Then, to my surprise, he picked me up off the ground and led me back in the opposite direction.

  I was confused. He didn’t want to kill me? What did he want with me, then?

  I didn’t say anything, though. He didn’t want me dead, at least not at that moment. I certainly didn’t want him to change his mind, so I chose not to open my mouth.

  We walked and walked and walked with my blindfold still on. And then I heard the car door opening, and I was shoved inside.

  I laid down on the leather seats, and tried not to make a move.

  “Did I scare you?” the man asked me.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “I’m sorry for doing that. I needed to put that blindfold on you because you cannot know where it is I’m taking you. It is my house, and you cannot know where it is. I have to admit that I wanted to have some fun, too, which is why I put that fear into you.”

  Fun. He thought it was fun to freak me out like that, to think that I was about to meet my maker. Now that I knew what kind of a sadistic creep I was dealing with, I almost felt a little bit calmed. It was as if I had a small window into this man’s psyche, so I knew better what kind of a person I was dealing with.

  “You handled it well,” he said. “I thought that you would beg for your life. Most people in your situation would do that. Beg for their lives. But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”

  I didn’t quite know the answer to that, although I had a good idea on exactly why I didn’t beg. It was because I felt that I deserved it after what had happened to Nathaniel. That my dying in this manner would somehow be a just punishment for being responsible for the death of the precious little boy. Also, I was desperate to see him again. So, death wasn’t necessarily something that I didn’t welcome. It wasn’t something that I actively sought anymore, but, at the same time, it wasn’t something that I feared or didn’t want.

  “I asked you a question,” he said. “You didn’t beg. Why didn’t you beg?”

  As quietly as I could, I said, “because I deserved it. You killing me. I deserve that.”

  He snorted. “And why do you say this?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “I had a little brother,” I found myself saying to this man who I didn’t know, and who I had thought, up until a few minutes ago, would kill me in the field. “And he died because of me. I’ve come to terms with it, and I’m getting over it. But I don’t think that I will ever get over the guilt over that happening.”

  The man was silent for awhile after I said this. Then he finally said “and this little brother. How were you responsible for his death?”

  “I left him in a running car, and these guys stole it with him in it. It ended up at the bottom of the East River with my brother strapped into this car seat.” I had no idea why I was telling him all of this. I guess because he asked, and I somehow felt that it might endear him to me so that he really wouldn’t kill me or sell me or whatever it was that he wanted to do to me.

  “Little one,” he said, “it sounds to me that those men were responsible for the death of your little brother, not you.”

  “I was the proximate cause,” I said. “I put the whole thing into motion.”

  “I understand that. But, morally, those two men were at fault, not you. I will put it this way – if you were on trial for the murder of your brother, no jury would ever convict you. If those two men were on trial, they would get the death penalty.”

  “Actually they got life in prison,” I said. “And I know what you’re saying. But I still feel responsible.” This was getting surreal, though. I was talking to this man like he was somebody friendly towards me, and he decidedly wasn’t. After all, he was the sadistic bastard who led me to believe that I was going to die in that field.

  But, yet, he held my life in his hands. He had all the power. So, I needed to appease him and try to determine how to play him. Maybe then I would have a chance.

  Tentatively, I said “now, would you please tell me why you are taking me somewhere and what it is that you want with me?”

  “You were at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “And I bought you. I knew that I could get a better price for someone like you than those men could. They were holding you in horrible conditions, drugging you up. Yet I could tell that you were different than those other girls. I don’t think that they knew what they had with you. They just assumed that you were homeless because you were living on the streets. I knew differently.”

  Wait. How did this man know about me? About my staying on the streets? And that I was “different” than the other homeless women?

  “I don’t understand,” I said to him. “How do you know so much about me, and what do you mean by saying that you bought me?”

  “Little one,” he said. “You ask too many questions. You need to stop asking questions. You forget that I’m the one with the gun. I’m also the one who can sedate you so that you stop asking these questions. You just need to know that you’re safe with me for the time being, and I’ll make sure that I find the best man for you. I’ll treat you special, because you are special. You can command top dollar on the open market.”

  “Please tell me something,” I said to him. “You seem like a reasonable guy. I’m trying to find out how it was that I ended up with you. You seem to know things about me. You even seemed to know that I was abducted by those men. You know a lot about me. How do you know so much?”

  I had no idea why it was that I thought that he would answer these questions for me. He just seemed to be a little bit friendly towards me earlier, so I thought that maybe he would give me information.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “Now plea
se be quiet unless you want to talk about something else.”

  I sighed. There wasn’t anything else that I wanted to talk about.

  Finally, the car stopped again. The car door opened, and I was being marched out of into the cold air once again. I heard a door open, and I walked into a place that seemed very different from the other place I was in. The floor felt like cold marble, and I could smell a floral scent. The man started speaking to somebody in Spanish, and I was soon being led up some stairs. I put my hand on the bannister of the staircase, and I had to conclude that I was in some kind of mansion. I went up about one hundred steps, my hand on the bannister the entire time.

  Then I was pushed into a room and handcuffed to a bedpost. This bed was comfortable, extremely comfortable, and I was happy that I was no longer on a hard cot. “You’ll be happy here,” he said, and then I heard him leave.

  Happy. What an odd thing to say. How could I possibly be happy in a place where I didn’t know where I was or what was wanted or expected of me? And he was talking about selling me. That sent chills throughout my spine.

  Then I heard a voice. “Who’s here?” a woman asked.

  I felt a little bit comforted to hear that there was somebody else there in the room. “My name is CJ. What’s yours?”

  “Marisa,” she said. “I’ve been here for about a day.”

  “What do you know?” I asked her.

  “Not much. I’m freaking out, but I’m relieved that this guy who took me doesn’t seem to be a serial killer or anything like that. That was the first thing that I thought when I was kidnapped. I thought that he was going to rape me and kill me and throw my body in the river.”

  “I didn’t think that. I guess because when I was kidnapped, I was chloroformed or something. I didn’t wake up until much later, and I was already in this dingy place with some woman who was speaking to me in a thick accent. They had given me morphine, so I wasn’t scared or anxious or anything. I just thought that I was dreaming.”

  “What do you mean? You were taken by somebody else?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was taken by somebody else. Then this guy showed up and brought me here. We have to figure out a way out of here, because he told me that he was going to sell me.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I was actually afraid about that. I’ve seen this type of thing in the movies.” And then she started to cry. “Is that what’s going to happen to us? Are we going to be sold to somebody? Are we going to be shot up with drugs and made to work in a whorehouse? My brother told me about this. He said that sometimes these guys do this. Get the girl addicted to drugs, so that she’ll do anything at all to keep getting the drugs. Anything at all, including working as a sex slave.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to figure out a way out of this place.”

  “How? I’m handcuffed to this bed post, and so are you. And that guy has a gun. How are we supposed to get out of this?” She started to cry hysterically, and I had to admit, I felt like breaking down as well.

  But I couldn’t. I had to have my wits about me so that I could try to figure something out. I thought about the people who cared about me. Well, person. Scarlett. I wished that I would rely upon Asher, but he had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re going to get out of this. You have to have a little bit of faith.”

  “I don’t have faith,” she said. “My life has been shitty. I mean, I have a decent job as a banker, or had one. But I still have had a crappy life. I don’t know why bad things happen to me, except to say that I must have been bad in a previous life.”

  I wanted to ask her why her life was shitty, but I wasn’t sure if I should pry. It would seem that, if she were a banker, her life wasn’t entirely shitty, but, then again, one’s profession or wealth didn’t necessarily mean happiness.

  Of that, I was sure.

  She volunteered the information to me. “My step-father molested me, and then my mother died. Now this. I don’t think that I can take much more. Why doesn’t God hear me? I don’t understand what I did wrong to deserve all of this.”

  “God doesn’t play favorites, unfortunately,” I said. “I think He’s somewhat laissez faire about us and our lives. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much innocent suffering throughout the world.”

  She started crying again, and I started to feel just a bit more freaked out. “Please stop crying,” I said to her. “Listen, I haven’t exactly had a charmed life, either. But I’ve lived among the homeless population for the past week, and I’ve come to appreciate what I have. We all have our tragedies. We just have to learn to get through them. We have to have mental toughness. That hasn’t always been easy for me, either. I lost somebody I love very much recently, and he’s gone because of my carelessness. I thought that this would break me, and it almost did. It almost did, but it didn’t, because I didn’t let it break me. I’m not going to let this break me, either.”

  She seemed to calm down. “Who did you lose?”

  “My little brother. I left him in a car while I ran into a store, and two men stole the car and ended up in a police chase. My little brother drowned when the car went into the river.” I was finding that, the more I came to terms with what happened, the easier it was to talk about this without overwhelming shame and guilt.

  She gasped. “Oh my God, that sounds horrible. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Then I fell in love, and he dumped me. I’m still reeling from that, too. So, we all have something in our lives that we have to overcome. This is just one more thing to overcome.”

  I had to admit to myself, though, that this particular dilemma was going to be much more difficult to overcome. Namely because I had no clue how I was going to do it. My abductor seemed to be friendly enough in the car, but I also saw that he was ruthless and sadistic. The stunt that he pulled with me, where he blindfolded my eyes and marched me into a field while he cocked his gun, showed just how sadistic he was. He was probably more than a bit psychotic as well. He certainly couldn’t be mentally normal if he was a white slave trader.

  I met people like him in the mental hospital and in real life. Friendly, voluble and glib, they could be charming on the outside. But, inside, they had no souls. There was even a name for people like that – sociopaths. This man fit the sociopathic profile to a T.

  I definitely didn’t think that I could appeal to his conscience. He probably didn’t have one. So, I would have to think about something else. Maybe try to make some kind of deal with him. I didn’t really know what to do. What I did know was that I didn’t want to be part of the herd of girls that he apparently was going to ship off to God-knew-where. The girls probably would be smuggled to a different country, to become property of some wealthy guy. If they were lucky.

  So, I laid there and tried to think, even though the girl on the bed next to me, whose name I already had forgotten, was becoming increasingly hysterical.

  Chapter 6

  Asher

  Sophie, Nikolai and I were still in the bar, and Sophie was preparing to tell me the story of CJ and her abduction. “As you know, I have many contacts in the Kazakov family,” she began. “And I hired one of them to trail CJ.”

  “Trail CJ?” I asked her. “What the hell for?”

  Sophie shrugged. “I wanted to get the real story on the two of you. You said that you were engaged to her, and she said the same. I didn’t believe it. So, I wanted to have her tailed. To see where she goes and if she was with another man.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m always one step ahead of you, Asher,” she said. “And I wouldn’t put it past you to pay some woman to pose as your fiancée, just because you think that I might back off if I thought you were off the market.”

  I nodded. Sophie was a wily one, that was for sure. There wasn’t much getting past her. “Why would I do that?” I said to her. “And, for the record, I’m absolutely in love with CJ.” I was being completely honest with her at that point.<
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  “Well, it was a bit odd, to tell you the truth. CJ is clearly not in your league, in any way, shape or form. She doesn’t have breeding, she doesn’t have money, and she doesn’t have class. Plus, she’s a minor celebrity for what happened to her with her little brother. She definitely is not somebody whom you would be caught dead dating, let alone marrying.”

  I drew a breath. Sophie wasn’t wrong. I did tend to date women who had money, because dating wealthy women made it less likely that they were dating me for my money. CJ was different, though. I made the exception for her, because I was so drawn to her, right from the very start. I also knew, absolutely knew, that CJ wasn’t with me for my money.

  I sat up straighter in my chair. “CJ might not be wealthy, but she is everything that I’m looking for in a woman.”

  “Even so, Asher, she wasn’t exactly an obvious choice for you. So, I had her tailed. Besides, even if your story about the two of you was true, I still wanted to see if CJ was seeing men behind your back. I would then tell you about it, and you would dump her over it.”

  I didn’t really know what to believe. CJ and I hadn’t been together for weeks. How could Sophie not know this if she was having CJ tailed?

  I kept quiet about that detail. I figured that Sophie would end up explaining that as well. I didn’t want to give her ammunition, even more than she already had.

  “Yuri, who was my closest Kazakov connection, agreed to do this for me. He concluded fairly early on that you and CJ probably weren’t together, because he never saw the two of you together.” She smiled. “That was a relief, I’m not going to lie.”

  I was quiet. There was no point in arguing with her. “You’re right. Marina managed to out me at the cemetery. I still think that you’re behind that, too.” Marina knew me in the old country, although she was better friends with Sophie in Russia. I was surprised that she was in America, but I soon found out that she had been here for a week. And that she and Sophie were still friends. I dismissed that as a coincidence, and I called Sophie on the day that CJ and I broke up to read her the riot act. I didn’t mention at the time, however, that CJ and I were no longer together. I certainly didn’t want to fuel that particular fire.