Page 59 of Reign of Four

I grit my teeth. “You wouldn’t dare. I’m your boss.”

He shrugs. “Ezra is our boss. Take it up with him.”

They shut the door in my face, leaving me fuming on the doorstep. I rattle the handle, to no use. All the curtains are closed. The lights are on upstairs, and I catch shadows moving around the room. She’s got to be up there with one of them.

I speed-dial Ezra immediately. “Get your men out of my sister’s house,” I hiss, “before I gun them down.”

Ezra sighs. “What is wrong?”

“She’s been—I don’t know, kidnapped!”

“In her own home?”

“Yes! Your fucking guys are in there—the brothers. The ones with the names. I want them out.”

Ezra is silent for a moment. “Has your sister contacted you?”

I pace across her driveway. No, she hasn’t contacted me. Not since the botched wedding. She was furious with me for what happened. What I allowed to happen.

She doesn’t understand Bratva business. We had traitors among us; they couldn’t be allowed to live another moment, or the infection could have spread and made things much, much worse.

“No. She won’t return my calls.” I’ve watched her work through her boutique windows, but I haven’t gone inside. “I know she’s safe because she’s been working. But they’re in there, Ezra, doing God knows what to her!”

Ezra chuffs. “You know what they are doing.”

I keep the mental image as PG as possible. “She wants a family, Ezra, not three—or four—psychopaths.”

“They can be family, too.”

I roll my eyes. “Please. The day Celia gives up her picture-perfect life for anything remotely resembling those three, I’ll go insane.”

“What do you think is happening now, Mikhail?”

With a growl, I hang up the phone. Ezra is of no help. I march back up the two little porch steps and—the big one is watching me through the curtains. Fuck me.

I take a deep breath and try to think things through. Where did she even meet them? It’s not like she crosses paths with the Bratva regularly. They’re not her cookie-cutter clientele. She wouldn’t be caught dead with them in public.

A lightbulb goes off, and I absolutely fucking hate it.

She wouldn’t be seen with them in public, so where would they have met?

The brothers run that fucking sex club.

The only way in is through direct invitation.

They saw her at Andrei and Valentina’s second wedding. They saw her defend all those people with nothing but her fury and her fists. It’s a kind of determination that my sister normally keeps locked up tight until that exact moment she needs it. At the chapel, she needed it to protect complete strangers from annihilation.

She let her inner fire burn bright, and it caught the attention of three demons.

I run a hand down my face. I don’t like it. They’re not safe men to be around. They’ll hurt her to wring their pleasure from her in any way they can. But I’ve seen them in action; they helped rescue Valentina from the late mayor’s mansion, and they’ve worked with Ezra on dozens of retrieval and removal missions. He trusts them with his life.

Now, they’re asking me to trust my sister’s life with them. No. Demanding it.

But what if that’s what Celia wants?

I glare at the window one last time before turning around and heading back to my car. I’ll ask Celia herself about it instead of speculating on her behalf. For now, I know she’s at least well-guarded, if not safe in the firmest sense of the word.

That will have to be enough.

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