85
IVAN
“This is a waste of fucking time.”
Yasha doesn’t say anything, but I know he agrees.
We swept Jorden’s apartment again for clues, but found next to nothing. So we are back at Francia’s apartment building, once again approaching the emergency exit door on the side of the building.
“Are you going to let me clear the building this time?” Yasha asks bitterly.
“Fuck no.” I wrench open the door and step inside. A few feet ahead is another door. There’s a doorbell to the right of it with a speaker attached. But when Yasha pushes the button, nothing happens.
“It’s disabled,” he says.
“Then we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
I lower my shoulder. Yasha steps up next to me, bracing himself. Then we both charge at the door. It takes a few hits before the wood around the handle splinters. It takes a few more before the door shears away from the handle and the bolt and flies open.
An alarm should be sounding at this point. We’ve made enough noise that there should be guards waiting for us on the other side.
But there’s nothing.
No lights. No alarms. No sounds.
The building sounds abandoned, even though I know there are people living here.
Yasha points towards the front of the building. “We can check the front lobby first. I doubt anyone is manning the desk given what we’re seeing, but we could check and—”
Somewhere nearby, a hinge squeals.
Yasha stops talking. His eyes narrow as he drops into a crouch and eases forward. I take up position behind him.
Maybe this won’t be such a waste of time after all. Maybe the kidnappers are using this building as their home base.
Maybe Cora is here.
Footsteps sound from the hallway up ahead. Yasha throws out an arm to stop me. “Who the fuck are you?” he roars down the corridor.
A second later, a figure appears at the end of the hallway with their hands raised.
“Don’t move!” Yasha yells. “Don’t take another—Francia?”
Sure enough, she lifts her head and as her dark hair parts, I see Francia’s pale face. When she sees us, she sobs. “I’m so s-sorry.”
I shift around Yasha and kneel down next to Francia. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know.” She swipes at her nose with her sleeve. Her shirt is torn and she’s dirty, but she looks otherwise unharmed.
Suddenly, Francia grabs my shirt and hauls herself against me. She presses her face into my chest and cries. “I’m so sorry, Ivan. I tried. I tried.”
I glance over my shoulder, and Yasha’s face is creased. “Sorry about what?”
Yasha asks the question, but Francia looks up at me. “I couldn’t save them.”
Our eyes meet. Dread pools low in my stomach.
Suddenly, it doesn’t matter if Cora is a spy. It doesn’t matter if every word out of her mouth has been a lie. Nothing at all matters…
If she’s already gone.
Francia buries her face back in my shirt. I can’t formulate the words to ask her what she means.
But Yasha can. “You couldn’t save who?”
“Jorden.” She sniffles, trying to gather herself before collapsing into more sobs. “And Cora.”
“Fuck!” Yasha bellows. He slams the palm of his hand against the wall, then wheels back around. “Who took you? Tell me everything that has happened. In as much detail as you can. Now.”
There isn’t time for Francia to gather herself or calm down. She’s telling us Cora and Jorden are dead, but Yasha is going to keep working until we find bodies.
Bodies. The term feels so cold. So callous. Cora can’t be just a body. She can’t be gone.
She can’t be.
I close my eyes and sense around me for some sign of her. I don’t feel anything. But maybe that’s good. Because if she was gone—really gone—I’d feel a whole lot worse than nothing.
Francia sits up and curls her body into mine. She’s leaning on me like a crutch, her arm clutched around my bicep. “They put a bag over my head while I was asleep. I never saw their faces. Then it all happened so fast. Jorden and Cora were there, but it wasn’t long before…before…before I didn’t hear them anymore.”
Did she suffer?
Did she scream?
Did she cry out for me?
Questions that will haunt me until the day I die ring out in my head, but I don’t ask them. I can’t ask them. Not yet.
“Why did they leave you here?” I ask.
She turns to me, her eyes wide and watery. “I think they wanted you to find me. Like…like a message.”
“Unless they gave you a message to send to me, that doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
She lays her head on my shoulder, her breath humid against my neck. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that you’re here. I knew you would find me.”
I look to Yasha. He circles his hand in the air. We need to check the rest of the building. We can’t leave without making sure Jorden and Cora aren’t here somewhere.
I extricate myself from Francia and press her against the wall. “Stay here. We’re going to do a search.”
She bites her lower lip. “By myself?”
“Scream if you need help,” Yasha says.
Then we both continue down the hallway, Francia disappearing into the shadows behind us.
We turn a corner up ahead and I stop.
“Something about this isn’t right,” Yasha mutters.
I nod. “Why would they go to the trouble of kidnapping Francia just to drop her back off unharmed?”
“She heard what was going on. She’d be a loose end,” he says. “If it was me, I’d kill her to be safe.”
“Agreed.” I beckon Yasha into the room to my right and close the door. Something occurs to me. “When you put the women in the safehouses, you cloned their phones, right? Can you still see Francia’s texts?”
He nods. “Do you suspect something?”
“It would be foolish not to. She’s a victim, an eyewitness, and the sole survivor? We have to check her out.”
Yasha pulls out his phone and opens an app. He inputs a fingerprint and facial recognition before a new phone screen appears on his. This one has a burgundy red background with a black rose in the center.
“This is a mirror of her screen,” Yasha explains. “Right now she isn’t doing anything, so it’s just—”
As he’s speaking, the screen changes.
A text thread appears. The number is unknown. A second later, words appear in the box below.
Ivan and Yasha in the building. They’re searching the rooms now. I told them I couldn’t save Cora and Jorden.
I see red. My vision pulses with rage. “She’s part of the plan,” I growl. “She did this.”
I fucking said it seemed unlikely anyone would be able to pull a plan like this off without someone on the inside. But I suspected Cora. Francia flew under the radar. She never stood out to me.
By design, I realize.
I thought she was Cora’s friend. Cora thought she was her friend. And she betrayed us all.
“What’s the plan?” Yasha asks.
I grab the handle and pull the door open. “She dies.”
I retrace our steps, turning down the long hallway where we left Francia. She’s still standing against the wall, but her phone is in her hand now. She lowers it as we approach, sliding it into her back pocket.
“Did you clear the building already?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Turns out it wasn’t necessary. We already found what we’re looking for.”
I pull out my gun and aim it at Francia, but she doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. She stares down the barrel…
And smiles.
“Kill me if you want,” she says, her voice suddenly flat and sociopathic. “It won’t save Cora.”
My finger is poised over the trigger. It’s itching to retract. To wipe this waste of space off the face of the earth. “Is Cora alive? Fucking tell me the truth. Now!”
Francia’s lashes flutter. “For the time being. But whether you kill me or not, she’ll be dead before you reach her. Or rather, she’ll wish she was dead when she finds out who’s coming for her.”
That’s haunting, but at least it’s a flicker of hope in the darkness. A spark of light at the end of this horrifying fucking tunnel.
“What do you want?” Yasha asks. “We protected you. We gave you everything. Why do all of this?”
Francia barks out a laugh. “Everything? You think an apartment in some second-rate shithole downtown is everything? I want to be in the mansion. I want the ring on my finger.”
She lifts her hand and I see a very familiar ring gleaming there. She didn’t have it on before, but there it is, unmistakable: Cora’s wedding ring.
My lips pull away from my teeth as I snarl. “Where did you get that?”
“Cora handed it over,” she says. “She was more than happy to trade places with me. Turns out your fiancée isn’t as committed to you as I’ll be.”
Liar. She’s lying. Cora would have fought to her last breath to never give Francia the satisfaction of seeing her wilt.
“You want to marry Ivan?” Yasha asks in disbelief.
She tips her head to the side, grinning. “Actually, Ivan wants to marry me.”
She’s insane. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. “Not a chance in hell.”
She shrugs. “If you refuse me, hell is your only chance of seeing Cora again. Because she’ll die. Before you can wrap those deliciously meaty hands around my throat, she’ll be gone.”
“What do you want?” I growl.
Francia steps forward as if I don’t have a gun pointed at her head. She reaches out and strokes a hand down my chest, Cora’s ring glistening on her finger. “It’s simple. I want you, Ivan. Marry me and Cora lives. Refuse me and she dies. So what’s it gonna be?”
TO BE CONTINUED
Ivan and Cora’s story concludes in Book 2, COGNAC VIXEN.
CLICK HERE TO START READING