Page 13 of Agony

“Oh,fuck,” I muttered. I would know that face anywhere.

Amaliya Balakin—the daughter of the Bratva Pakhan.

Amaliyawas bound, her arms behind her back, and her ankles pulled behind her to be bound with her wrists, making it harder for her to escape or do anything to her captor. She was awake, but the vacant stare in her eyes was a clear sign that she was drugged. I wasn’t even sure if she was aware she had an audience of two staring at her.

I turned to Blakely, my mind already scrambling to form a plan. I couldn’t leave Amaliya here. “Can you drive a motorcycle?” I asked Blakely.

She shook her head. I cursed and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to think of a plan. I had to get that girl out of the backseat and get her to safety. I had no doubt she was the reason the Bratva were in town, disrupting our peace.

She’d been fucking kidnapped. And the Pakhan was no doubt on the hunt for her.

“How good are your defense skills?” I asked as I looked toward the store. We had a tiny window of time to get this girl out of here, and I was going to have to steal the damn car to do it.

Fuck my life.

“On point,” Blakely assured me. “What do you need me to do?”

“Provide a distraction,” I told her. “I’m going to push the bike into the woods over there.” I nodded my head in the direction of the woods beside the store. “Then, I’m going to steal the car.” I handed her my phone. “Give me yours.” She frowned but handed me her device. “My passcode is three-nine-seven-four. When I get the hell out of here, get somewhere safe and call Arlo. He’ll come get you and bring you to the clubhouse.”

“And you?” she asked, worry filtering into her tone.

I gripped the side of her neck and pressed a hard, quick kiss to her lips. “Don’t worry about me, sweet girl. I’ll meet you at the clubhouse. I promise.”

She nodded. “Be careful.”

I brushed my thumb over her cheek. “Always.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jax

Blakely was a damn good person to choose for a distraction. She was barely in the store for two seconds, and she had already begun screaming about the chip selection, giving me time to get the bike hidden by the trees. As I worked on getting the car door unlocked, she switched to complaining about her “douchebag boyfriend”, and by the time I had the driver’s side door open, she was ranting about the quality of the gas.

I slid into the driver’s seat and began fucking with the wires until the car started. “Fuck yes,” I whispered. You could take the man out of the streets, but you sure as hell could never take the streets out of the man. This girl’s life was relying on me knowing how the hell to do a bunch of illegal shit.

I dialed Shaw’s number from heart as I tore out of the gas station parking lot, heading for the clubhouse and praying to whatever god that may be real that I didn’t get pulled over. Because if I did, this was going to lookreallyfucking bad.

“Who the fuck—” Shaw growled.

“It’s me,” I told him before he could lose his shit and not let me get a word in. I’d called him on his burner, which meant no one outside of us should’ve had the number. He was probably going to chew my ass out for calling him from a random phone, but he’d get over it. We had bigger fish to fry. “FAME, we’ve got a fucking problem.”

FAME was Shaw’s road name. The acronym stood for Fuck All My Enemies, and honestly, it worked for him. It’d been a joke when he mentioned it, but it stuck.

“What the fuck is going on, Agony?” he snapped, using my road name.

I quickly made a turn onto a side street so I could avoid the main highways where the asshole cops in this town tended to linger. “I figured out why the Bratva’s in town. The princess was kidnapped.”

Silence rang for about thirty seconds, but I knew he hadn’t dropped the call. “What the fuck do you mean the princess was kidnapped?!” Shaw finally barked.

I sighed, the speedometer inching toward ninety. The car was shaking badly. I clenched my fingers around the steering wheel, willing the damn car to make it to the clubhouse. “Pulled into a gas station. Blakely saw Amaliya in the backseat. She’s bound and drugged. Her eyes are open, but this girl ain’t seein’ a goddamn thing.”

“Mother fucker!” Shaw roared. “Did you steal the goddamn car, Agony?!” he shouted at me.

“What the fuck else did you expect me to do?!” I yelled back at him. “Fucking leave her there? Ride the fuck away like she wasn’t just laying there?”

“If the Bratva catches you, you’re dead, you know that? They’re not going to ask you fucking questions, Agony. They’re going to put a goddamn bullet between your eyes.”

“They won’t catch me, FAME,” I promised him. “Open the fucking gates.”