Her Russian

Chapter 36-Putting Two and Two Together

(Tori, Galina's boss at Zoom Cafe)

As time went on, Ilia had turned into a ghost of himself.  It had been two weeks since the love of his life, his woman, Galina, had been snatched from his grasp.  At his own club!  That's what pissed him off more than anything.

Maxim had been in contact with Galina's boss, Tori, and come to find out, her father was someone that Ilia's father had done business with back in the day and his daughter still kept up with some of the contacts from her father's business.

So, Tori had become part of the efforts on locating Galina, because not only was this woman her friend, but she was seriously falling hard for Ilia Savin's second in command, Maxim.  She figured the more men they could have out there looking for Galina, the better chance they would have of finding her soon.

Ivan Romanov, the maintenance man had been a good lead and when they had gotten all the information out of him that they could, he was literally cut into pieces and fed to the sharks.  He disappeared without a trace, just as Aleryia had.

Ilia spent most of his time at his desk, drinking, smoking, yelling, screaming and throwing anything that wasn't nailed down.

It'd been two weeks and he couldn't bring himself to think about what Galina was enduring.  He knew, just as everyone else knew, that Allister Grimov was behind this but every time they got closer, they would leave a cold trail behind them.

Every single time they followed up with a new lead it went no where.  He hadn't slept and the only reason he was eating was to keep up his strength.  He couldn't interrogate people if he was weak.

One of the mornings that Maxim demanded he take a shower, he noticed how long his hair had gotten and couldn't help musing over what Galina would think of his longer locks.

Leaning down and resting his hands on the counter, he sighed and mumbled "Please baby.  Hang in there.  I'm trying to find you.  I swear."

Dressing in his always black suit and white button down, Ilia forwent the tie.  He just wasn't in the mood and honestly had no idea how much longer he would be able to hold on.

Pulling out a cigarette, he lit it up and stepped outside, through the french doors in his study.  Ilia leaned against the wall for support, he was just so tired these days.  His mind and his body were just worn out.

All of a sudden a thought hit him.  He started looking back through the documents and pictures from Zoya's.  There were lots of papers that talked about a series of warehouses, safe houses and other places that would be great to hold someone against their will.

He shouted for Maxim, Roman, Erik and Yuri, he told them what he'd found and had each man take some of the papers as they all started investigating and looking into this, hoping it would prove fruitful.

There was a soft knocking on his study door, turning they found Tori standing there and she was looking excited.  Maxim signaled for her to come over to the desk.

"What is it, babe?" he asked.  "Okay, I put out some feelers with some of the contacts that belonged to my father.  I see you are looking through the stuff from her babushka's?  See if you find any paperwork, deeds, anything like that regarding a series of abandoned warehouses" she said as she looked through some as well.

Ilia had found three separate pieces of paper that had the same address on it.  Then Max found a deed with that same address.  Erik and Yuri found some more documents and then what tied it all together was the fact that they found a deed, which Dimitry Toykin had signed over to Allister.

This had to be it!  This had to be where they were keeping Galina.  The only problem was it was in Moscow and before they all started running over there off a whim, they had to make sure this truly was the place.

Ilia, Max and Roman got the men together, got them into six teams of six men.  There were six warehouses listed on that deed and they needed to cover and hit them all at the same time, that way they wouldn't know they were coming until they were busting down the door.

With Moscow only being an hour away by plane, Ilia had his plane standing by, Maxim had set up all of the coordinates and Roman had them all hooked up via wireless and video.

And the worst part of it is...the waiting.  Ilia needed to find a place they could set up as the command center and once that was all set up, he and his top men, plus Tori, would wait until they had positively identified this as the location Galina was being held.

Once they had arrived, Max took care of getting everything set up along with Roman and Tori.  Ilia didn't have to do anything.  He'd actually wondered why he hadn't received any kind of contact from them, since they obviously had Galina's phone.

Pacing and wearing a path through the concrete, Ilia was on his second pack of cigarettes when his phone buzzed.  Snapping his fingers and running his index finger along his throat, signaling for silence, he answered.

"Savin" he said brusquely.  A distorted voice answered.  "Make sure you check your text messages."  They hung up and that was it.  Then his phone pinged.

Letting out a sharp breath, he checked his texts.  His heart stopped.  Inside the text message were five pictures, all of them showed Galina chained to a wall, her once beautiful dress dirty and torn, her blonde locks, dirty and matted.

He couldn't tell if she was conscious or not because her head was hung down in all of them.  The place she was being held looked filthy and cold.

The sleeves on her dress were torn and he saw cuts and deep bruising on her skin, her neck area looked bruised as well and so were her legs.

Before he had a chance to do anything, his phone pinged again.  It was more photos.  This time they were of her face.

It was streaked with what he assumed were tears and dirt.  They could see streaks of blood and it was apparent that she had been struck.  Her lip was busted and she had bruising under her eyes.

"Fuck!" he roared, his wrath kindling like a stoked fire.  "I want these pieces of shit found now!"  Maxim, Tori, Roman, Erik and Yuri saw what he'd just been subjected to and they felt the same way Ilia did...pissed.

Roman asked for Ilia's phone.  He gave it to Yuri so he could trace the IP address from the text messages.  Hopefully that would give them a starting point.

Maybe they had fucked up by sending the texts.  Bad for them, good for Galina.  The devil himself would cower at what he had in store for them.  They would pray for precious death to take them on it's wings, but it wouldn't come, not until he allowed it to.