Untouchable (The Blankenships Book 8) Read Online Free PDF

moment. Leo had never said anything particular about his father, and Alex certainly hadn’t mentioned him, but knowing the little bit she did about the danger and darkness Leo carried with him, seeing this other man carrying so much more left her body churning.
     
    The man answered Leo’s greeting with more Russian, and Leo snapped back. The man’s face split with a cold and vicious smile that showed too many teeth. “I told you,” the man said, “not to ever disgrace the soil of our home, pidor . I thought I was clear.” His English was barely accented, which was disorienting somehow. In the movies, the evil Russian mobster always spoke with a thick, harsh accent that you could barely decipher. Just a little more proof that we’re not in a movie , Zoey thought. A giggle, born of panic, wiggled around in her throat and tried to escape. She bit the inside of her cheek hard and forced the pain to turn into focus. She had to pay attention. If there was a chance to escape, she had to take it. She knew Alex would be looking, too, but while she trusted him to help her, if he could, that wasn’t the same as relying on him.
     
    She tightened her grip on her fingers and waited.
     
    “I didn’t come to your home, Father,” Leo said, his voice formal, and more firm than Zoey thought she would have managed in the same circumstances. There was no hint of weakness or fear in his voice at all. “I came to a place that was once safe for my mother and I, and I am not inconveniencing you in any way. I ask nothing of you. My friends and I need only be on our way. We’ll be gone as soon as I can arrange it.”
     
    It almost seemed like it was going to be enough. As if the huge man would relent, would tell them to carry on, it was all a big mistake. But the money didn’t last, and really, Zoey wasn’t sure she’d ever thought that it would. It had just been a moment of hope stretching out before it was snatched away yet again. Leo’s father shook his head. “No,” he said. He spoke in Russian to the men standing beside him, never taking his eyes off his son. The two men started forward, and she could feel fear spreading through Leo faster than he could tamp it down. Leo threw a solid punch, making the first of the two thugs stumble, but the other had wrestled his arms behind his back within moments. The man he’d hit took a moment to recover and then slammed two solid fists into Leo’s gut. Leo didn’t make a sound beyond the huff of air rushing out of his lungs. He sagged, the fight gone.
     
    The men didn’t even look at Zoey and Alex. For a moment, that hope came rushing back in. The man was going to take Leo, and then she and Alex could climb the stairs back to the plane. They could go back to London, or—God, she didn’t know where, she didn’t care, but somewhere else. Anywhere else. She hated it, she hated feeling hope as her friend was pushed back towards his father and shoved into the back of a black car that looked entirely too much like a coffin for her taste. She could feel Alex trembling next to her, and she suspected that he was consumed with the need to do something, to change something, but there was nothing that he could do. Nothing that either one of them could do. She told herself that Leo would respect their needing to keep themselves safe. She told herself that this wasn’t a moment she’d have nightmares about for the rest of her life.
     
    And then the big man, Leo’s father, stared into the growing darkness past where she and Alex stood. “I have my son,” he said, in his clear English. “You may do what you wish with these two.”
     
    It hurt so much worse to have hope and have it yanked away than it did to just give up in the first place. Alex let out a roar as several men, smaller than those who had surrounded Leo’s father, came at them out of nowhere that Zoey had noticed. She was lifted up bodily, and she tried to kick out at her attacker, but she couldn’t land a blow anywhere