Page 83 of Born into Sin

He swipes through his messages before answering. “Matvey’s driving so Danil can get more satellite footage.” After a few seconds, he gets a new text. “He said there’s only a couple of cars parked out front. I guess they thought the house was secluded enough to not warrant bringing a bunch of men.”

“They’ll regret that soon enough,” I say, passing a semi truck and hoping there aren’t any state troopers watching this stretch of the interstate. I don’t have time to fuck around with cops. Every second feels like a lifetime. My mind replays a constant loop of the video I watched, adding in all the imagined horrors that could be happening to her right this very second. He’s already a dead man, but if he rapes her, I will skin that fucker alive and then set him on fire.

“We’re going to get her back. She’s going to be knocked out for a while after the beating he gave her.”

He stops, and I know it’s so he can get control of himself. This may not be killing him in the same way it’s killing me, but it’s still killing him all the same. Natalya is like a daughter to him. I can see the love in his eyes every time he looks at her. This is personal for all of us.

“We’ll get there before he starts the second video,” he finally says, and I can tell by his tone that he refuses to accept the possibility of any other outcome. I’m right there with him. I can’t let my mind go there. I’ll never come back from it if I do.

The drive is the longest of my life, and by the time I slow down to hit the turnoff, I’m running on nothing but rage and adrenaline. “Where is it?”

Vitaly looks down at his phone’s screen. “Take the first right.”

I do as he says, following the deserted side road. I’m forced to slow down because it’s a gravel road with way too many curves in it. When I come around another corner, Vitaly points ahead of us.

“Park up there next to that fence. The house is right beyond that. We can go on foot the rest of the way.”

I don’t argue. The last thing I want is for them to see us coming and decide to cut their losses by killing Natalya and running off. I park off to the side and then reach over to the glovebox, pulling out the extra gun and bullets I leave in there. Vitaly checks his own weapon while I get out of the car and do the same. I already have one gun in a shoulder holster, but you can never have too many weapons, so I stuff the extra clips in my pocket and click the safety off on the gun I’m still holding.

“The others are about ten minutes away. We need to wait for them.”

I check my phone again. The last text from Dario is him letting me know that my men are right there with the Bratva. They’re all together, all about to arrive, and then we’ll have more than enough men and weapons to take care of any threat that might be waiting for us. The smart thing would be to wait, but my heart is telling me to run up to the house and shoot my way in. Before I can take a single step towards the house, Vitaly’s hand is on me, gripping my forearm tightly.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he warns. “We’re waiting for the others, and then we’re going to circle this place and close in. We get one shot at this, and I’m not going to let you fuck it up at the last second because you’re not thinking clearly. Adrian didn’t bring a small army with him, but there are enough men to put up a good fight.”

When I hesitate, he says, “If you weren’t in love with the woman we’re about to rescue, what would you be doing right now?”

I turn my head to glare at him, because he already knows what I’ll say. “I would wait for the others and circle around the motherfucking house.”

He can’t bring himself to smile, but he does let go of my arm and smack my back. “Exactly. Now calm the fuck down. They’ll be here in less than two minutes.”

I stare in the direction that I know the house is in, feeling like my heart is slowly being squeezed with each passing second. I was raised in a catholic family, but I’ve never been much of a believer. I’ve seen too much shit, and the day we found my sister’s body sealed the deal on me ever believing in a benevolent being on high. I may not be able to pray to a god I don’t believe in, but that doesn’t stop my mind from reaching out to Isabella. I believe in her, and I have to believe that a part of her is still out there somewhere, that she didn’t just completely disappear when that bastard stole the life from her, so I beg her to watch over Natalya because losing the woman I love will be the end of me. I’m as certain of that as I’ve ever been of anything.

I’m still silently begging my sister for help when I hear the sound of tires crunching on gravel. Looking back, I see the long line of cars, and within seconds they’re parked and heavily armed men are running towards us.

“Anything?” Lev asks, looking as murderous as I feel.

“No,” Vitaly tells him. “We haven’t heard or seen anything. We need to circle the property and close in.”

The order get passed around, and when the men start to fan out, I feel Dario and Sandro come up on either side of me. Dario hands me an earpiece, and I put it in, making sure it works and that I can hear the others.

“We’re going to get her back,” Sandro tells me in Italian.

I look at my cousins, knowing they’d give their lives for me in a second, but that’s not what I need right now, so I meet their eyes and say, “Her life comes first, and that’s a fucking order.”

Sandro nods, but Dario hesitates. When he sees that there’s no way in hell I’m backing down from this, he finally nods and says, “Fine.”

That one word is all I need, and when Vitaly and his brothers start making their way to the house, my men and I are right there with them. Dawn has fully hit, ruining any cover the darkness may have given us, but it also makes it easy to scan the overgrown field and determine it’s empty, mainly by the simple fact that no one’s tried to shoot at us yet. I don’t see anyone except the men who came here with us, but I know our luck can’t last too much longer. Experience has taught me a lot of things, and one of those hard lessons is that nothing is ever as easy as you’d like it to be, and another is that nothing is ever as it seems.

I look over to see that Roman, Danil, and Vitaly each have their sons close to them. The younger generation has been allowed to join us, but they’re only being given a limited amount of freedom on this mission. They’re here mainly to learn and because it involves their cousin. They have a right to be here, to see firsthand what happens to someone who fucks with their family because soon it’s going to be their job to make sure the women are protected and the men who dare to threaten them are dealt with.

The brick house comes into view, but we’re still unseen, hidden by the tall grass in the field that’s easily waist high. Luckily, I’ve been wearing nothing but tactical gear all week and I’m not having to crawl my way through this shit in a suit. Keeping one of my black boots firmly on the ground, I rest my other knee in the loose dirt and keep my gun trained on the house. I’m positioned at the side, and I can see two men near the front corner. They’re armed, guns in hand, but they’re pointed down, and I can tell by the lazy glances the men are giving the field we’re currently hiding in that they’re not nearly as alert as they should be. The Zolotov Bratva has gotten lazy. If my men acted like this, I’d shoot them myself just for the principle of it.

I hear Russian in my ear, and I hiss out a quick, “In fucking English,” because I need to know what the hell is going on and no one in the Bratva speaks Italian, so English is going to be our language of the day.

The same man who was just speaking starts again but this time in English. His accent is so thick I can barely understand it, but I’m not about to complain.

“Nine armed men around house. No visual on woman.”

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