Hey, Daddy (Semyonov Bratva Book 2)

Today I chose violence.

—Haze to Nastya

NASTYA

A hand covered my mouth, and I inhaled deeply.

That turned out to be my last thought for a very long time.

How did I know it was a long time?

Because when I next woke, the sun wasn’t nearly as bright.

I could tell that it was still up based on the way the sun shone through the windows that I was tied to a chair in front of.

I’d been awake for ten minutes, and I only knew that because, to steady my overreacting heart, I’d started counting.

I was at six hundred, and my heart rate was still galloping.

“What are we going to do?” I heard asked.

They—three people—had been talking in the other room for all ten of those minutes.

“We have to take her back!” The woman’s voice sounded desperate.

I liked her idea.

“We can’t take her back. If we take her back, my son goes down for kidnapping,” a man vehemently disagreed.

“Well, your son should’ve thought of that before he kidnapped my ex-husband’s new bitch!”

Ahhh.

So that was who it was.

Julia and I guessed her boyfriend.

The ‘son’ must’ve been the man who’d threatened me the other day when he’d been looking for Desi.

“We can’t take her back, because now we’re accomplices,” the man, who I assumed was Julia’s boyfriend, Rich, said. “We’ve had her for over two hours now.”

Two hours?

That explained the shift in the sun.

“Her phone’s been going off like crazy, too,” Julia said. “They know that she’s missing.”

“Why the fuck would he even bring the phone?” Rich grumbled.

“I brought it because I didn’t want to leave it on the ground and alert anyone that I’d taken her,” the third voice chimed in.

He was listening to it all, but he barely ever replied.

It was like he was disconnected.

Like he was a part of the conversation, but only peripherally.

“Why did you do this, Eddison?” Rich growled. “Jesus Christ.”

“You said that she was ruining your life, Julia,” Eddison said, sounding…lost.

As if he really couldn’t believe that he was having to explain it to her.

“I know, son. I know,” Rich said. “But what did we tell you about the private conversations that we have? We talk about it, but we’re not actually going to do them.”

“You talked about running over that dog, and Julia did it,” Eddison pointed out.

“That was an accident.” Julia tried to cover her tracks, but Eddison disagreed with her.

“No, I watched you from across the street. You tied his leash to the door handle and then made it to where he couldn’t go anywhere else when you started backing up.” Eddison sounded confused.

“Really, Julia?” Rich groaned.

“No one was supposed to see!” she cried out, as if that was an excuse.

The roiling in my belly hyped up at Eddison’s words.

Julia was fucking sick.

What kind of disturbed woman did that to an animal and lived with herself afterward?

What was she trying to do? Gain sympathy while ridding herself of a problem?

“I was just trying to…”

I didn’t hear anything more because a wave of dizziness overtook me.

At this point, I didn’t know what the dizziness was from—whatever they’d dosed me with, or low blood sugar.

I tried to remember how much of the Snickers I’d gotten to eat and failed to produce the memory.

Probably not nearly enough.

Pairing it with whatever Eddison had given me to lose consciousness, my body wasn’t too happy right now.

The sweating and the trembling would normally indicate low blood sugar.

The confusion, nausea and blurry vision would explain it, too.

But at this point, I didn’t know which symptoms were from what.

Not that it mattered.

I doubted they’d care if my blood sugar was low.

Then again…

“Hello?”

The talking in the living room stopped.

“No, you go,” I heard Julia hiss. “She doesn’t know who you are.”

“Put on a mask,” Eddison suggested. “That way she can’t see your black hair and full beard.”

I would’ve laughed had this not been so serious.

“Seriously, Eddison,” Rich hissed. “Be quiet. You’ve done enough.”

The man came in with a ball cap pulled low over his face, so I couldn’t see his eyes.

He was big and bulky, and looked a lot like his son.

“I’m having a hypoglycemic episode,” I said. “My phone’s in there making a ton of noise because if I don’t get something to eat and fast, I’m going to start having issues.”

And that’s when I realized my mistake.

I shouldn’t have told them that there was an easy way to get rid of me.

Because now, I could practically see the wheels turning in the man’s head.

He knew that all he had to do was not feed me, and I’d be in trouble.

“I have a tracker on my phone,” I reported. “My brother is Shasha Semyonov. Not to mention, my fiancé, Haze Hopkins, has my phone tapped. He can follow me anywhere he wants. Plus, I have an app on my phone that sends alerts to him, and lets him know my last known location. If that phone is in this house with me, then he’ll know exactly where to find me.”

The man shifted on his feet nervously.

Another wave of nausea rolled through me, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from throwing up.

It didn’t work, and I bent as far to the side as I could and threw up everywhere.

It splashed all across the floor, up the wall, and even got onto the window.

“Goddammit,” the man hissed and left.

I heard more talking, this time way too quiet for me to hear.

Footsteps sounded, and I looked up to find Eddison staring at me with a glint in his eyes.

That’s when I saw the cables in his left hand.

I frowned, wondering what the hell was going on, when he bent over and plugged something into a battery that was on the floor.

His hands separated, and he showed me two wires. “If I touch you with this, it’ll stop your heart.”

Fear slid through me, thick and viscous.

I didn’t have the feeling that I was getting out of this alive, and even worse, Haze and Shasha would find me, but only after I was no longer here to be saved.