Page 70 of Depraved

“What does that have to do with Karolina?”

He looks at me with something like pity.

“The highest bidder gets to have her,” he says carefully. “They know it’ll kill you. They don’t need to torture you to make you suffer for what you did to them.”

My fist punches through the wood-paneled wall, but I don’t feel the splinters cutting into my knuckles.

“Where?” I roar. “Where did they take her?”

More clattering of his fingers over the keyboard. “A warehouse outside London. The auction starts in less than an hour.”

I won’t be able to get to her in time to stop it.

“Send the coordinates to my phone.”

My muscles bunch with impending violence as I get to my feet.

“You can’t go alone,” he insists.

But he can’t manage to rise. He’s far too pale, and his features are taut with pain.

“Goodbye, Logan.”

I won’t be seeing him again.

I’ll give anything to save Karolina, even my life. It means nothing without her.

18

KAROLINA

My head is full of cotton wool, and my wrists ache.

“She’s pretty.” A man’s voice floats through my hazy mind. “You’ll get a lot of money for her, Sokolov.”

“I don’t care about the money.” This voice is deeper, with a light Russian accent. “This is about revenge. Ragnarök thought he could humiliate me and then slip into the shadows. He’ll regret ever meeting me. I gave him everything. I made him what he is, the ungrateful little shit.”

I shake my head, struggling to clear it. My eyelids are sandpaper when I force them open.

Fluorescent light sears my eyes, and I squint, willing the unfamiliar room to coalesce around me.

The space is grey: concrete walls and floor. The ceiling must be at least twenty feet high, and there’s a balcony to a second floor that surrounds this room. Armed guards lean on the railing, looking down at me.

I jerk back to full awareness as terror suffuses my senses.

Brandon’s enemies came for me. They shot Logan. They captured me.

My wrists hurt because I’m suspended from the ceiling by a chain. The cuffs are supple leather, but my hands are going numb from lack of circulation; my full weight has been resting on my wrists while I was out.

I struggle to find my balance, and my feet barely move an inch. Shackles encircle my ankles, keeping my legs spread and mostly immobile.

I can’t kick out. I can’t punch my captors.

There’s nothing I can do to fight them off.

My chest caves in.

Brandon isn’t coming to save me. They cut the tracker out of me. My shoulder stings where they sliced it open.