Saving Anya (8 page)

It wasn’t long before the caravan of SUVs packed with men pulled back up and parked in the circular drive. The doors popped open and men sprang forth like clowns in a circus. Only these men were not playing. Every one of them carried large weapons, even Dmitry, who stepped out giving orders to the men. He pointed on top of the house, then around the perimeter. He was setting up…possibly for a war. But the one thing Royal wanted to see…needed to see wasn’t there. Anya did not pop out holding her father’s pinky finger or wrapped in his arms.

Right then, she knew that someone had her little angel.

Her body trembled in fear. Her gut wrenched. Where was her baby? That’s all that mattered to her. The rest was cosmetic.

As she went to turn the knob to the front door, the bodyguard insisted that she stay back, but Royal pushed passed him. “Get out of my fucking way!” she said as she opened the large, oak double doors.

Looking down at Dmitry and his men while still in her pajamas and holding a semi-automatic rifle, she wiped the tears from her face.

“
Is she gone, Dmitry?” Royal asked, cutting through the crap. That was the only thing important to her. She hadn’t even noticed that Davyd was nowhere in sight.

Dmitry stopped talking and looked at his broken wife. He could handle his own emotions, but hers were not so pliable.

Quietly, he made his way up the long stairs to the trembling little figure and quietly whispered the news.

“
Our Anya has been kidnapped.” That was all that he said before she nearly collapsed. He caught her quickly in his arms and looked back at his men.

“
The men have been called up, sir. They will be here within the hour,” one of Dmitry’s closer bodyguards answered at the base of the limestone staircase.

Dmitry didn’t answer the man. There was no need. Everyone knew that the boss was the verge, and all he needed was a little nudge to go completely over. And no one wanted to see a seven-foot, three-hundred pound killer get anymore pissed off this morning.

Still in his own pajamas, Dmitry turned away from the people who were supposed to protect his family and picked his wife up in his bulging arms and carried her quickly inside. His robe flew back in the wind as he opened the door.

Royal felt as though she was having another out-of body-experience, like this wasn’t really happening. She could handle being raped, nearly killed, even abducted herself, but the thought of what could be happening to her daughter at that very moment was enough to drive her insane.

Even though she knew what he was about to say before he said it, when he said it, it became real, unbearable. The weight of Dmitry’s words tore at her troubled soul and all that she could manage to get out in between the wretched, helpless sobs was her daughter’s name.

“
Anya,” she moaned in sheer agony. “Oh, God. My baby,” she wept.

Dmitry did little to comfort his poor wife at first, but finally he came to his senses. Snapping out of his own shock, he held her close to his concrete chest that was now freezing from being exposed in the cold Czech air while he searched for his daughter. His large, dirt-stained hands rubbed through her hair as he carried her back up the many stairs to the second floor, but his eyes were cold like the icy lake lining the back of their property. The lines on the sides of his face showed as he frowned and his age was suddenly apparent as he strained to hold it together, when all he wanted to do was explode.

When he arrived back to their bedroom, he placed her on the bed slowly.

“
I want my boys,” she said, trying to get back up from the bed. At this point, she didn’t want anyone out of sight, not even Dmitry.

“
They don’t need to see you like this,” he said, holding her back.

“
And where is Davyd? What did he do in all of this?” her eyes were wide with curiosity.

Dmitry looked away. “Davyd is dead. He lost his life trying to save Anya’s.”

“
No,” Royal cried again. “No, Dmitry…” Even in the pain that she felt for her own daughter, she knew well how much Dmitry had loved Davyd. They were like brothers, more so, Davyd had been the only father that Dmitry had truly ever known. Now, he too was dead. It was all too much. Feeling as though she was suffocating, she tried to move again, to get to her boys and hold them tight, make sure that they were okay.

“
Wait,” Dmitry said in a deep baritone that shook the room. He swallowed hard and kneeled down in between her legs to talk to her. His dirty, wet pajamas left smudges on their plush crème Venetian rug as he did. Holding both of her arms in his rigid hands, he adjusted his tone, knowing that she needed to be soothed, not further agitated.

“
Look at me,” he said, lifting her chin to see into her worried pupils. His eyes, a pale blue now, barely blinked. He took another breath as he tempered the growing chaos inside of him. “I know that right now your faith in me has all but disappeared, but you have to believe me when I say that I will get her back…or I won’t come back. I love Anya with my entire being.” He fought the tears that pushed against the back of his tired eyes. “And I
will
find her. I will search the ends of the earth for her, leave no stone unturned, but I need one thing to do that…” His seductive voice was void of anything but raw strength.

Royal frowned, confused at what he
needed
– a man who had everything needed something from her.

“
What?” she asked sincerely. Tears ran freely down her neck as she sat up a little straighter.

He turned his face towards her and batted his eyes. A single, painful tear fell to his cheek. “I need you, baby. I need you to stand by me, trust me. I need you to know that what you see in the upcoming days isn’t really me. I need you to look over it, no matter how hard it is on you. I need you to trust that what I do is for us, for our child.”

Royal sat back a little. She knew her husband’s potential. He was an aficionado of pain and torture, capable of the most heinous and painful things known to any man. And now in order to get the child that they both dearly loved, he would have to summons everything evil in him to get the only thing good left inside of him.

Shaking her head, she placed her trembling hands on his face and wiped away the dirt. “I will be there for you until the very end. Just promise me that you’ll bring her home safely at any cost and that you’ll make whoever is responsible for this pay with their life,” she cried.

Dmitry rested his forehead on hers. “Thank you.”

Royal did not understand truly what she was allowing to be unleashed in her husband, but she could sense its incredible power as he rose from his kneeling position. He rose and rose and rose until all seven feet of him appeared to be much larger. With a stone face, he wiped the single tear that he had shed for his daughter and made a promise to himself that it would be the last.

Suddenly, she had hesitation. Suddenly, Royal was afraid of the man whom she had shared a bed with for so many years. His eyes grew hollow, his face void of emotion. Heaving heavy breaths from his thick, muscled chest covered in tattoos, he stepped away from her. “
Da, da
. Everything will be alright,” he promised. “You’ll see,” he said, running a hand through his blonde tendrils.

Royal believed him strangely enough.
What man in his right mind would stand against Dmitry Medlov and expect to live?
She had honestly seen none.

Standing up from the bed, she walked behind him and pulled off his silk robe. “Let me get you ready,” she said dutifully in a soft voice. Touching his back where the stab wound scar from Ivan still mangled the skin, she took a deep breath and allowed the tears to flow. They had been through so much together, now this.

God, what else could their family suffer?

She wrapped his robe in her hands and went to the bathroom to run his shower. Slowly, in thought, he followed behind her. Royal checked the water and gathered his towels and shaving kit. Turning around to face him, she kneeled before him and pulled down his pajama pants to reveal his taut, long muscular legs. Looking up at him, past his hanging manhood, she helped him move his legs.

He did so slowly, watching her every move.

Taking off her own clothes, she stepped in the shower with him and began to wash his body. She stepped up on the permanent step made especially for her and lathered her towel with soap. Occasionally, as she washed him, he would move the strand of hair from her face or kiss her forehead, but she bathed him in absolute silence, letting the stillness of the moments resonate for those long nights ahead when she would surely miss him and be forced to grow used to the silence.

When they were done, she dried him fully and dressed him in one of his finest black suits, put on his watch, combed through his hair, sprayed on his cologne, slipped on his dress socks and shoes and helped him slip on his infamous four-gun leather holster under his suit jacket.

“
Well, you look ready to me,” she said, wiping tears still.

Dmitry kissed the crown of her head. “You can’t leave this house for any reason. The children have to sleep with you every night. Renee and Bridgett will be here soon to comfort you in my absence.”

“
Where will you go?” she rasped in a thick voice.

Dmitry hunched his shoulders. “Where ever she is,” he said, leaving her alone in the bathroom.

When he left and closed the door, Royal crumpled under the gravity of the situation and fell to the floor. Pouring out her heart in an angry sob that left her drained, she tried to utter something, but words were too difficult. The cold tile against her skin numbed her face and soaked up all of her angry tears, but when they were gone there was still no solace.

Normally, the maids would have come to help her, but Dmitry had called everyone downstairs to the dining hall to begin interrogations. So, she was left alone with her fears and pain. Eventually, when she could cry no more and the echo of her sobs became too much, she curled into the fetal position and began to pray.

Chapter 7

Dubrovnik,
Croatia

The jostling of the wooden cart in the back of a black windowless van that she was being escorted in helped pull Anya from her drug-induced sleep into a groggy reality. Opening her eyes slowly, she peered out of her box to a group of men surrounding her, all sitting with guns and wearing black tactical uniform. They ignored her as she sat up and continued to talk in a funny language – one that she was certain that she had heard before but just couldn’t place at the very moment.

Trying to sit up, she placed her small hands under her and pushed her body up. Her head hit the top of the box when the truck hit a bump in the road, so she stuck her little fingers out of the openings and held on to keep from falling back. Feeling claustrophobic, she pushed back salty tears and clenched the wood tighter. “I want my daddy,” she said in a loud, commanding voice.

The men finally stopped talking and looked over at her, unsure of how to take her little tantrum.

“
You get to see your daddy when he pays,” one man replied, looking back at her from the passenger seat up in the front of the van.

She turned to face him. “How much?” Anya asked, raising her chin. Her father had told her once about kidnappings. He had, in a way, guided her on how to behave and what to look for if she were ever captured. That had been one of their private conversations – ones that her mother was not privy to.

“
How much for what?” the balding, blue-eyed man asked with a grin.

“
How much do I cost?” she asked again.

“
Millions,” the man answered. “Many, many millions, my dear.”

The men erupted in laughter around her as one from the back said something in the funny language again.

Anya didn’t like to be mocked. Pushing further up against the constricting box, she stared the man in the passenger seat down. “Daddy has more than millions. Why don’t you just tell him how much I cost, so I can go? This truck stinks.”

The man was instantly intrigued by her persistence. She had such an authoritative presence for a five year old. Adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses on his long, broken nose, he chose his words carefully. “It’s not that simple. You’ve been relocated so that negotiations can begin with your father about the money, and until he pays, you won’t be delivered. So, you’re going to be staying with me…your uncle Balthazar.”

Anya cut her eyes at him. She didn’t like that name or that idea in the least. “You’re not my uncle,” she corrected. “I only have one uncle and his name is Davyd.”

The man cut his eyes back at the little girl and gave a wicked smile. “Your Uncle Davyd
as you call him
is dead. Consider me his replacement.”

Tears welded up in Anya’s eyes, but she refused to cry. Letting go of the sides of the box, she plopped back down in the far corner and put her head against the crate. “Do you know who I am?” she asked as she looked up at the top of the box.

“
Of course…you’re Dmitry Medlov’s first child. And you’re going to make me a very rich man.”

The tears finally began to fall down Anya’s face as she thought of Davyd. “I am the daughter Czar Dmitry Medlov, and you are going to be a very dead man,” she said, repeating the words she had heard whispered around her house since before she could understand them. “My father is going to come and collect me and while he’s at it, I’m sure that he’ll also collect your head.”