𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭

𝐭 𝐡 𝐢 𝐫 𝐭 𝐞 𝐞 𝐧

"What the—" I mumbled and slowly opened my eyes.

My head hurt like shit and I could already feel a bruise forming on my forehead. I looked out of the window to see the sun already setting.

I must have been out for a few hours.

Oh god, please tell me Viktor was not—

"Tiana? You okay?"

Wait, why did Viktor just call me Tiana?

"Viktor? What's going on?"

My eyes then fully opened. I saw Viktor beside me, as well as felt my hands tied to the back of the chair I was sitting on. The Spanish man we saw earlier sat directly in front of Viktor and I, a knife in his hand.

Great, we've been captured before we even tried to execute our plan.

"Hello, sweetheart, we've been waiting for you to wake up." The man in charge clicked his tongue.

"У тебя есть план?" I turned to Viktor.

(Do you have a plan?)

"нет." Damn it.

(No.)

Our captor sighed. "I hate Russians."

"What the hell do you want? You already took my money. And as you can see, we're quite harmless. So why don't you let both of us go and you can keep the money?" Viktor tried to reason desperately.

He crossed his arms and leaned forward. "I want to know why the two of you were spying on us."

Viktor didn't falter for a second, his face remaining impassive. "We were just checking if we got the correct warehouse. This whole place already looked pretty sketchy and we wanted to make sure we didn't have a misunderstanding with the wrong people."

Damn, he's good.

"That's bullshit." Viktor rolled his eyes, "Look, I don't care if you believe me or—"

"I'll make sure you care." the Spanish man stood up and pointed his knife straight at Viktor's throat.

"Stop! Don't hurt him. We just want to have a word with your boss, Felon." I burst out, sweat rolling down my forehead.

He turned his head to me. "What's your business with him, sweetheart? Aren't you only like what, fifteen?"

"I'm seventeen, and my business with him is none of your concern." I tried to put up a strong front.

"Okay, you want to do this the hard way? I have a tech guy here who can crack the passwords to both of your phones. I'll give it a maximum of half an hour before he does, then we'll be having a very different conversation which includes the people you care about." He turned to a guy—presumably, the tech—and said, "Get on with it."
I froze when I realised he had our belongings, but let out a sigh of relief when I felt Nikita's necklace around my neck.

Luckily I wore a shirt with a high neckline.

"Well, I'm hungry, so I'll go and eat my dinner now. But if you change your mind before the time is up, feel free to let Zen here know about it." He patted a short, skinny looking guy's shoulder, who immediately flinched at the contact. He looked pretty young, maybe a year or two older than me, with a bald cut and a huge tattoo on his ankle.

"Marlene," Viktor whispered as soon as our captor was out of sight—and hopefully, earshot.

"I know," I whispered back.

We needed a plan, and fast.

I looked around. There were at least twenty men in the room and their collection of knives were all the way in the far right corner. But, even if we managed to get the knives, we couldn't fend off all the henchmen, we'd take out five guys tops.