Jericho (Dance with the Devil 4) Read online

  But instead of being driven to her apartment or Boris’s home, she had instead been taken to an unfamiliar house in the center of Moscow. The second SUV hadn’t followed them, but turned off shortly after they left the airport.

  Once inside the unfamiliar house, a hard-eyed, gray-haired stranger, probably aged in his sixties, had introduced himself as Sergei Federov and the younger man at his side as his brother, Vasily.

  Marisha didn’t recognize either man.

  Nor had she received any answers as to what she was doing there and where they had taken Toly. The man named Sergei had listened impatiently to only half a dozen of her questions before dismissing her and instructing she be locked in the basement by the two men he referred to as Artur and Timur. Those two men, whose hulking forms and rough features were so much alike they had to be brothers or possibly even twins, had dragged her through the house.

  On the way to the basement, the two men had taunted her with the knowledge that Toly was already dead, shot in the head as soon as he got into the second SUV. They claimed his body had been driven out of the city to be disposed of.

  Marisha had been crying so hard at the thought of what they had done to Toly rather than her own predicament that she hadn’t even seen the fist coming toward her as she stood at the top of the stairs leading into the basement. One of Federov’s men, she didn’t know if it was Artur or Timur, had punched her in the face. The other, as she instinctively bent forward, had pushed her down the stairs.

  The last thing she heard before everything went black was their mocking laughter as they walked away after closing and locking the door.

  When she regained consciousness, it was to discover the basement was damp and cold, with only a dirty mattress in one corner for her to sit on and a foul-smelling bucket in the another for her to relieve herself.

  As evidence that she wasn’t the first person to be held prisoner down there.

  Marisha had trembled in the severe cold, sure she could hear rats scurrying about inside the walls.

  She had spent hours crying over Toly. In his early thirties but looking younger, he had been her bodyguard and shadow for the five years since Boris appeared in her life. She had been thrilled when Toly agreed to accompany her to England three years ago, while she attended university.

  The two of them had shared an apartment in Oxford and spent all their leisure time together, leading a lot of her fellow students to think that she and the handsome Toly were a couple. She had let them, mainly because explaining their true relationship was too complicated.

  Now Toly was dead and she was prisoner of a man she had never met before.

  Where was Boris?

  Had they asked him to pay a ransom for her release?

  If they had, then she knew Boris would agree to pay it. He would only look for and punish her kidnappers after she was safe.

  The hope any of that was going to happen had slowly waned over the next two days and nights, when Marisha was left completely alone in the darkness.

  Two long days and nights, when her heart continued to break for the loss of the strong and steadfast Toly.

  She’d also begun to lose all hope of ever being released from the basement or of seeing Boris again.

  The only way she knew whether it was day or night was from the amount of light coming into the cramped and filthy space from a small window high up on one wall. Too high for her to climb up. She knew because she’d tried, only to slip and fall, adding to the black-and-blue bruises she already had. Ironically, even if she’d managed to reach it, she wasn’t even sure if the small window would have been big enough for her to climb through.

  All she’d been given during her long incarceration was a single bottle of water to drink and some stale pieces of bread to eat. Both had been thrown down to her from the top of the stairs by either Artur or Timur, so that she had to scrabble around searching for them on the filthy floor. But, as Marisha had discovered, when you’re thirsty and hungry enough, you’ll do anything.

  Besides, she was frightened if she didn’t consume the bread, the rats might start coming out of the walls to eat it. And her.

  She’d put off using the bucket for as long as she could. Not only because it was disgusting to look at as well as smelly, but also because she was unsure whether there were cameras in the basement, allowing the guards to watch her discomfort. She wouldn’t put that sort of behavior past either of The Evil Twins, as she had grown to call them in her head.

  But in the end, her need to pee had overridden any sense of false modesty.

  She’d even been relieved to see Artur and Timur when they finally returned to take her back up the stairs to the main house. Only for her fears to return tenfold when, after being allowed to shower and change her clothes under the leering gaze of those two men, she was driven under guard through the streets of Moscow to a small private airfield. There she was forced at gunpoint to go up the stairs and onto a private jet. Sergei and Vasily Federov were already seated inside.

  Again the brothers had dismissed her questions. Worse, Sergei had instructed one of The Evil Twins to tie her hands behind her back and gag her so that she couldn’t ask anymore. It also meant she couldn’t sit comfortably or eat or drink for the duration of the flight.

  She’d only realized they were in America after the plane landed and she heard one of the ground crew welcoming them to the US from outside on the tarmac.

  From that private airfield, they had all been driven in several black SUVs to this enclosed and closely guarded estate.

  Once inside the house, Marisha had been kept locked in the confines of this bedroom inside Sergei’s suite, guarded and constantly watched by a rotation of Sergei’s bodyguards. More often than not, it would be the much-despised Artur and Timur.

  The windows of this house might not be too high or have visible bars on them, but from the number of guards Marisha could see patrolling the grounds, she felt sure that the windows were linked to a much larger security system so that an alarm would go off somewhere in the house if anyone attempted to open them, either from the inside or the outside. The few seconds she would have before that alarm alerted the security guards wouldn’t even allow her to reach the high perimeter wall about the estate, let alone try to scale it.

  Marisha hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone except Sergei’s bodyguards since her arrival here, but she had heard Artur and Timur discussing the fact they were now staying in the home of Leonardo Brunelli.

  Marisha knew who he was, of course. Not only because he was capo dei capi of the whole of the Italian Mafia, but she had also seen his photograph in the English newspapers a year ago when he married Carla Andretti in London. She had noticed it because it had looked like her idea of a fairy-tale wedding. The groom was handsome and distinguished with his gray hair and patrician looks. The bride was a beautiful brunette almost twenty years younger than her new husband. It was the way the couple looked at each other that showed how very much in love they were.

  And now Marisha was somehow a reluctant guest at their New York home.

  Not only an unwilling one, but she was rapidly losing hope she would ever be free of the Federov brothers and their men.

  After those two days and nights spent in the basement in the house in Moscow, with very little to sustain her, followed by a ten-hour flight to America without being given any refreshment at all, Marisha now had no choice but to accept what little food and water Sergei’s men chose to give her.

  Maybe it was so little as a way of ensuring she never felt strong enough to try to escape?

  If so, it was working.

  The only reason she had clean clothes to change into every day was because they’d brought the suitcase here that she’d had with her when they took her prisoner at the Moscow airport.

  The backpack with her passport and other personal possessions hadn’t been given back to her, but she knew Vasily had kept her passport because he’d handed it over to the authorities at the airport when they landed in the U
S.

  Marisha had been flanked by Artur and Timur at the time, their painful grips on her arms ensuring she was too terrified to ask for help. Besides which, there was no guarantee it would be forthcoming. If it wasn’t, then she would only have succeeded in making her incarceration worse.

  As if it wasn’t bad enough already.

  Since arriving at the Brunelli estate, Artur and Timur no longer tried to hide the open lust in their eyes when they looked at her. As if they knew it was only a matter of time before Sergei or Vasily let them loose to do whatever they wanted with her. The lascivious curl of their lips whenever they looked at her told her those things would be as sick and depraved as they were.

  Out of sheer desperation, Marisha had taken a risk when they arrived yesterday by mouthing help me directly into one of the security cameras. All the time knowing that if someone saw her do it, they could just as easily report her behavior to Sergei as help her. She had no doubt he would then rain retribution down on her of a much more severe nature to anything that had so far been done to her since she became his prisoner.

  In any case, it had now been twenty-four hours since she’d made that appeal, and there had been no response, good or bad.

  She still had no idea why she’d been kidnapped the moment she arrived at Sheremetyevo International Airport, or if Boris had been asked to pay a ransom for her release.

  Or if they intended releasing her at all.

  She was twenty-one years old, with a degree in history from Oxford University in England, and she was going to die before she’d even had a chance to really live—

  “I advise you to get the fuck out of my way,” a low and menacing male voice warned.

  Marisha jumped up from where she was sitting on the bed to rush over and press her ear against the locked door.

  Had someone come to rescue her after all?

  “Last chance to move,” that same man bit out gruffly. “Fine,” the man snapped when he obviously didn’t receive a positive response to that warning.

  Marisha could only imagine what was going on in the sitting room on the other side of this door as there followed the sound of fighting—fists meeting flesh, then something else, possibly boots meeting more flesh, and the grunts and groans of pain that accompanied it.

  She knew Artur was on duty this evening. He was the slightly more vicious of The Evil Twins and the one responsible for punching her in the face. She really hoped he was the one on the receiving end of the man’s fists and boots rather than the one doling out the punishment.

  Chapter Three

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  Jericho spared a second to glare across the room to where his cousin leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed in front of his chest and looking perfectly relaxed as he watched Jericho disarm and fight the two Russian bodyguards guarding Federov’s suite. “A little help would have been appreciated.”

  “You don’t need it. Besides, I don’t want to risk bruising these good looks.” Killian grinned as the second bodyguard landed unconscious beside his associate. “Natalia would give me hell if I did that,” he added affectionately. “After she’d kissed all my bruises better, of course. Mm, maybe that was a missed opportunity,” he mused as he frowned at the two bodyguards lying unconscious at Jericho’s feet.

  “Ye’re a terrible man, so ya are, Killian Price.” Jericho deliberately deepened the Irish accent that had smoothed out to a soft burr during the ten years he’d lived in New York.

  His cousin grinned briefly before sobering. “Let’s find your bruised girl.”

  “She isn’t mine,” Jericho protested as he straightened the black jacket of his suit and the cuffs of the shirt beneath it. A slight adjustment of his dark green tie, along with running a hand through his slightly disheveled hair, and he looked almost as pristine in appearance as he had when he knocked on the outer door of the suite three minutes ago.

  “I get the feeling she needs someone on her side,” Killian muttered before his eyes narrowed as he glanced at the comatose bodyguards. “If it turns out that either of them did that to her, then I’m going to kick him unconscious again, after I’ve explained to him that it’s unacceptable for a big bully like him to hit a woman.”

  “I’ll hold him down for you,” Jericho agreed distractedly as he crossed the room to open the doors leading off the sitting room.

  The bathroom and master bedroom, with clothes lying around showing that the room was obviously being used by Sergei, were both empty. The door to the third room was locked from the outside.

  Jericho glanced at Killian. He knew by his cousin’s grim expression that he was as angry as he was at the thought of the girl possibly having spent the last twenty-four hours locked in this room.

  Had those fuckers even given her the trays of food and drink they’d been bringing to the suite or had they consumed them themselves?

  Breathing in deeply in readiness for what he was about to find, Jericho unlocked and opened the door.

  His first thought was, Killian was right. Someone has definitely hit or punched this woman.

  She was standing in the center of the room, staring at them with wide and apprehensive eyes. One of her arms was raised in front of her chest, the hand resting against her throat as if she were readying herself for another physical blow.

  The bruise on her cheek was clearly visible, despite her attempt to toss her hair forward over that side of her face. Jericho could now see the myriad colors spreading out from her left eye and down her cheek: black, purple, blue, with the odd touch of deep pink. There was none of the sickly yellow color which usually appeared as the bruise was nearing the end of the healing process.

  Which told Jericho the injury had been inflicted very recently.

  His second thought was, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the security feed hadn’t done this woman’s beauty any justice at all.

  Her below-shoulder-length hair wasn’t just dark, it was so black, it had midnight-blue strands running through it. Her skin was the color of ivory, pale, and so delicate as to be almost translucent. As for her eyes… Dear God, those eyes that had mesmerized him were the color of a summer sky but with a darker blue rim that gave them a fathomless quality. Her nose was straight between high cheekbones. She had full and pouting lips Jericho could too easily imagine wrapped around his—

  Fucking hell, not only has this woman been abused, but now I’m having completely inappropriate thoughts about her sucking my dick!

  A thought his cock obviously liked as it began to engorge inside his suit trousers.

  No!

  He really couldn’t allow his thoughts to go there in regard to this obviously beaten woman.

  Instead, Jericho lowered his gaze to the slenderness of her body in fitted black jeans and a royal-blue sweater. He frowned as he realized she looked even thinner than she had when she arrived yesterday.

  Did that, along with the almost translucent quality of her skin, confirm those Russian bastards hadn’t just been beating her but starving her?

  The bastards had probably eaten the food themselves—

  “I should say something, coz,” Killian advised softly. “Before she hyperventilates any further and passes out.”

  Jericho’s gaze snapped to the young woman’s face as he realized she was taking careful steps backward. As if she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact she was slowly moving away from them and nearer to the en suite bathroom.

  With the intention of locking herself in there?

  As Killian had just pointed out, she was starting to hyperventilate. Her chest was rising and falling too rapidly, and the pupils of her eyes were so blown that only that dark outer rim was visible.

  Because she doesn’t know if I’m any less dangerous to her than the two men I’ve just beaten and kicked into unconsciousness!

  Jericho forced the tension from his body and expression. He even attempted a smile, although the increased alarm in those beautiful blue eyes told him he hadn’t qui
te pulled that one off.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.” He winced when her gaze moved pointedly past him to the two men lying unconscious in the other room. “They deserved an arse-kicking and more.”

  She continued to stare at him for several long seconds, as if still trying to decide whether he was a friend or foe. Then, apparently coming to a decision, she gave a slight nod. “They really did,” she confirmed huskily.

  Jericho tried to place her accent. Definitely an underlying Russian one, but her English sounded as it if had been spoken in the country itself rather than learned from a textbook or online.

  She was Russian, then, but had also lived in England for a time. Recently, from the look of her style of hair and clothing.

  Which posed the question, what was she to Sergei or Vasily Federov, when a security check had shown that neither man had left Russia in the previous twenty years until they flew to New York yesterday?

  Marisha had no idea who these two men were, but she recognized their accents as being a soft Irish brogue rather than American. She had no idea whether that was a good or a bad thing, but she had to take the risk it was good.

  She looked from one man to the other, noting a slight resemblance in their build and facial features, before her gaze settled on the one staring at her with eyes that fluctuated in color from blue to green to brown. His hair was the deepest auburn she had ever seen, and slightly disheveled from where, as she’d hoped, he’d fought Artur and Timur and won.

  She spared a few seconds to enjoy looking at their recumbent forms and resisting the impulse to go over and give them a kick for their glee over Toly’s death, before turning back to the man with the auburn hair. “My name is Marisha—”

  “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my suite talking to my woman?” a strident voice cut in forcefully.

  Marisha easily recognized it as belonging to Sergei Federov.

  Her response was instinctive as she moved closer to the auburn-haired Irishman at the same time that Sergei strode into the room, followed by Vasily. She knew from experience that bad things happened to her when these two men bothered to acknowledge her presence.