The Second Betrayal

The Second Betrayal

Cheyenne McCray

PROLOGUE

Dasha

A new life.
She would no longer live in poverty as she had in Moscow from the time she was born. Now she was in New York City, a place that would give her a new beginning.

Cold late-September rain slashed against Dasha Orlov as she stepped out of the bus and moved past the other girls to get a look at the magnificent sight.

The cold stung her cheeks and her bare legs, yet the chill was nothing but enticing wet kisses compared with the

freezing temperatures she had known in Russia.

Only twenty girls had been chosen by the American modeling agency that came to Moscow. It seemed almost unreal

that the Americans had paid her way to New York City and would give her money to model beautiful clothes. It could

be nothing more than a perfect dream.

"Can you believe it?" Yulia squeezed Dasha's fingers as she laughed and looked up and around at what the bus driver had told them was Times Square. "That we are finally here?"

"It is so...," Dasha answered in Russian as she searched for something to say that could put into words every feeling of hope, joy, excitement that she felt at that moment. It didn't matter that she was nervous, too. All that mattered was that she was finally in America. "It is all so magical," she said, then grinned at her brown-eyed new friend.

Yulia laughed, her long brown hair swinging into her eyes when she rose up on her toes and swept her gaze around

them. The petite girl's face, hair, and plaid coat were as wet as Dasha's own, but it was too precious of a moment for either of them to care.

"When do you think they will take us to the modeling agency?" Yulia asked.

"I hope now." Dasha grinned. "It seems so much time has passed since we were chosen." Her words were almost drowned beneath the sound of the deep-throated throb of the bus's engine, the other girls' giggling, and the voices of the men who had taken them all on the bus from John F. Kennedy Airport.

Yes,
Dasha thought again,
into what must be a dream. A perfect, beautiful dream.

Thump
after
thump
from luggage being unloaded from storage bins beneath the bus and thrown onto the concrete sidewalk made her turn slightly. She hugged her handbag to her chest. Three men were tossing their luggage out of the bus so hard she was afraid the suitcases would fly open and all of the girls' belongings would be strewn across the dirty asphalt street. The men flung the cases as if they were garbage.

She shook her head. Silly. They were just in a hurry.

Gray exhaust puffed from the back of the bus. Hard slamming sounds could be heard over the girls' laughter as the

men shut the doors of the luggage compartments.

Dasha looked back at the amazing flashing signs around them. ABC News, Target, Coca-Cola, Virgin (an odd name to

be flashed in the street), Cingular, Swatch, Planet Hollywood, CNN, NASDAQ ... And there were the familiar golden

arches of a McDonald's! Along with a hundred more advertisements.

"Into the vans." A man's rough voice came from behind Dasha as she was shoved toward one of the two long, white, and windowless vans.

Dasha stumbled when the man pushed her, but Yulia had a hold on her fingers and Dasha didn't bump into Jenika who

was in front of her. Who was this man with the rough voice and even rougher hands?

Dasha glanced over her shoulder and saw that the man's expression was as hard as his voice. Her belly clenched as he met her gaze with a strange look in his eyes. She didn't want to know what it meant—it was almost as if she were

staring into the eyes of the devil. She shuddered and hurried to sit in the van with Yulia, Jenika, and at least seven other girls. The harsh man climbed into the front next to the driver.

Disappointment stirred inside her as she sat in the confines of the van. No windows. She wouldn't be able to see much of her new city on the journey to the modeling agency, because it was difficult to get a good look through the front windshield from where she was sitting. Well, there would be time enough for sightseeing later.

The driver pulled out behind the other white van, and they started moving through traffic. Excited chatter filled the enclosed space as most of the girls spoke in Russian about their new lives in New York City.

Bubbles of excitement tumbled in Dasha's belly as Yulia chatted next to her. Dasha barely heard her friend as thoughts of earning lots of money made her excitement grow. She would be able to send Matushka and Otets, Mother and

Father, money to make their lives better. Her father had lost his job months ago, and they barely got by with her

mother working as a maid in a Moscow hotel.

The van came to a stop that caused Dasha to jerk forward and back in her seat. She grabbed the seatback in front of her to steady herself. The harsh man jumped out of the passenger seat, and the driver turned the engine off and got out, too. The van door slid open, and she met the gaze of the harsh man.

"Get out," he said to all of the girls in a way that made Dasha flinch.

She hurried to climb out with the others, who suddenly went quiet when they all stood on the sidewalk. One of the men walked from the vans and through a polished wood door after passing beneath a red awning with elite gentleman's

club scrawled across the street-side flap of the canvas.

A sick feeling that something wasn't right churned Dasha's stomach. She glanced at buildings to either side of the club.

The buildings were made of brick coated in grime from pollution; shuttered windows were like staring, blank eyes.

To the left of the building they faced was Rocco's Pizza. On the right was another business—One-Day Dry Cleaning.

Garbage bags were piled on the sidewalks up and down the street in front of the buildings, probably to be taken away.

Where was the modeling agency? Dasha's English wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to read each sign and not

one business had a name that would tell them they were at a modeling agency. Dasha tipped her head up to look at the blank windows again. Five stories. Maybe there were apartments above where they would live when they weren't

working.

She looked at the sign that said elite gentleman's club again. A sudden cramp in her belly shouted at her that something was wrong.

Dasha clutched her handbag tighter and took a step back. She bumped into someone hard and tall, and she looked over her shoulder to see the harsh man.

He grabbed her upper arms, leaned down, and pressed his lips against her ear, his breath hot and foul. He said in

accented English, "Don't make a sound or I will kill you."

Panic rose in Dasha so fast her heart throbbed hard enough to hurt. Kill her? Why would he kill her?

The harsh man gripped her upper arms tighter and shoved her forward through the now silent group. Men surrounded

the twenty girls. At least ten or eleven men, all hard-featured, and all had eyes filled with threats... and something she couldn't read. Maybe she didn't want to read.

Shudders started racking Dasha's body as the harsh man pressed his fingertips hard enough into her arms that she

gasped. He propelled her forward. He didn't take her into the gentleman's club, but opened a recessed door to the left of the building and shoved her through the open doorway.

Dasha stumbled in a darkened hallway but didn't fall. What was going on? What was happening? Her heart raced and

her throat tightened. She blinked to get used to the dim lightbulbs strung down the length of the hallway. It smelled of filth and as if someone had urinated on the cracked, chipped, and stained linoleum tile.

Her heart beat impossibly faster and faster and her chest hurt. This wasn't right. This couldn't be right. The man pushed her past closed doors on their right and took her all the way to a staircase. He pushed her up the staircase, and the sound of all the girls' shoes clinked against the stairs as they went up past floor two, then three, and stopped at the fifth and final floor.

The harsh man opened the first door on the right before he flung her to the floor.

Dasha cried out as she landed hard on her hip and elbow. Her handbag flew from her fingers, and the contents

scattered across the floor of a large room that was just as ugly and smelled as bad as the hallway.

Vaguely she was aware of two brown tattered couches with stuffing squeezing through tears. An old television was on a stand against one wall, a long table behind one of the couches.

She couldn't take her eyes off the harsh man as all the girls were shoved into the room and the door slammed shut

behind them. The way the harsh man looked at her made her want to scrabble back on the floor away from him, but

something in his eyes told her that wouldn't be a good idea. He would hurt her if she did. She knew it with everything in her heart.

Instead of giggles and laughter, mostly silence crowded the room. A few whimpers and sobs made her blood chill.

'Take their passports and other belongings," the harsh man said without breaking eye contact with Dasha. From the corner of her eye she saw men ripping away handbags and coats from the girls, and she heard their cries and screams.

"Forget anything to do with modeling right now," the harsh man said next. "Instead you'll be working off the cost of the plane tickets and other expenses we paid to get you to the U.S."

Confusion and fear tore through Dasha. Working off the costs, how?

The harsh man reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of syringes. He started tossing them to some of the

other men then grabbed more out of his pocket and gave the rest of the men syringes, too.

Tears rolled down Dashas eyes as the harsh man approached her then knelt at her side. She tried to scramble backward, but he grabbed her arm and jabbed a needle into a vein on the inside of her elbow.

Dasha cried out as she felt a burn in her vein that slowly died. Almost immediately after that, she relaxed as her mind turned fuzzy. The harsh man's words seemed distant, far away, and too unreal to believe.

No. Soon she would wake from this nightmare. She would be back in her small home in Moscow, asleep in her own

bed.

CHAPTER ONE

Little Red Riding Hood

It had been a mistake having totally wild, raunchy sex with Nick Donovan during our first assignment together.

Including the hundred or so times we ended up in bed—or up against a wall, on the kitchen table, on the floor, in my office—when we weren't working on
Operation Cinderella.

The breath I sucked in burned my throat as I tried to control my lust while I watched Donovan. His jeans tightened

against his muscular ass as he bent over the shoulder of Agent Chandra Kerrison to look closer at the wide-screen

monitor in front of her.

Donovan had become like a drug to me. An addiction. I couldn't get enough of him.

I pushed my hair out of my face in frustration. Lexi Steele had never allowed distractions like Nick Donovan. I had to get a grip.

I'd been telling myself that for a good six months now, since June, a couple of weeks after we finished our first op together. Here it was, the end of November, and I still couldn't get enough of Donovan.

"Damnit," I said under my breath. This infatuation had to stop. It was like being a freaking teenager.

Another thought crossed my mind as I watched Donovan, a thought that was always there and wouldn't let go of me.

The big man held so many secrets tight to his chest and had never let me in far enough to know what any of them

were. I had spilled my guts about what had happened when I was in Army Special Forces, and how I'd been forced

into being an assassin. Why was Donovan keeping a big part of his past from me?

I shook off the thoughts. This wasn't the time for lust or secrets. It was time to get back to work. I turned my attention to the current op and headed toward David Takamoto.