Dragusha Revenge ✓Completed✓

VIKTOR

MIRA IS GONE when we return-gone with Tito's car, his phone, his gun. Tito tells us what happened. I thought Aleksio would be enraged, but he seems more hurt. He can't believe she's escaped-again. "I thought she...I thought we..." He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to. He thought she was with him, that she would wait to see us together with Kiro. He was wrong. "You kidnapped her, brat," I say. "You filmed her sucking your cock. Threatened her. She tried to get away once already." "But-" "But what? But you saved her from getting her finger cut off?" "We were together." He calls everywhere. He sends two men out to look for her. Our tech guy tries to activate Tito's GPS remotely.

They find it disabled. Of course. Aleksio looks like he wants to crush the phone. "She won't even answer." He storms into the study. I go to my bedroom and check my laptop to the Valhalla feed. There are webcams to all the girls' rooms, including the one we chose for me to bid on. The one we chose for me is not the one I watch. There's only one woman I watch in Valhalla. I haven't slept at all since I saw her on the webcam. I place the laptop on my bed and sit in front of it.

Turn, I think. She will not. She’s dressed as a nun, and she prays at the side of her small bed to a small icon. Her blonde hair peeks out from the bottom of her head scarf. I would know that hair anywhere. I know that cheekbone, that way of sitting. I know that walk as she steps out of the room—to use the toilet, or maybe she’s called from the room. Even the casual way she avoids the camera, never showing her face…this, too, I know..

I don’t need her to show her face. I know it’s her. I know. I’m not the only one who wants her to show her face. Men type things to her. Some of the girls answer when men type things to them, but she never does. She sees the notes—there’s a monitor there for her, always on, always lit. What the other men type comes across the screen. Sometimes lewd, sometimes not. Some speculate that she doesn’t know English. She knows English. She’s quite fluent. Not so much as me, but close. There’s a dollar number below her, as there is with all the girls. For the nun, the bidding is highest. A night with her is well into six figures now. This is Valhalla, the brothel, the nerve center of Aldo Nikolla’s billion-dollar flesh trade. We don’t know where Valhalla is located; nobody does. This will soon change..

We’ve set up a bulletproof identity and an account for me with a credit card to match. I’m bidding on the cheapest girl, a young scrawny one named Nikki. Nikki’s virginity auction closes soonest. The plan is for me to get in there and hook up surveillance. It’s the scrawny girl I should be watching, but it’s the nun.

I can’t take my eyes from. A knock. Yuri. I grumble and shut the lid. I can’t let Yuri know. He comes in. His gaze goes to the closed laptop. “What?” “Valhalla feed. Disgusting. So many of our women in there being auctioned off to the highest-paying…” I attempt to channel my emotion into it. My emotion needs somewhere to go. “Virgins, girls. A nun, even.” Though I happen to know she is not a nun. I force myself to ask about the search for Mira..

I pull up the Valhalla feed on my phone as Yuri speaks. I felt sure she would turn just a moment ago, but no. Tanechka and I used to be able to sense each other. Why can’t she sense me now? I want to tell Yuri what I’ve discovered, but he’d say I am crazy. I threw her off the side of a cliff into Dariali Gorge. She could not have survived. Yet there she is. Alive. It has to be her. I fall back into the picture. Turn, dammit..