Page 14 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

When it’s all said and done, I’ve easily spent more than $10,000 of the Bratva’s money. Ivan runs through the delivery dates for the different things, which are all expedited to arrive in the next few days.

It’s staggering to think about what my life would be like if I had this kind of money at my disposal. My student loans paid off. My other debt, gone. No rent—I wouldn’t even have to work.

Unless my work involved doing something with the Bratva—maybe teaching them how to bind people more effectively?

There’s a knock at the door, and I go immediately, assuming it’s another server, but with dinner this time. Instead, when I open the door, it’s Boris, looking dark and handsome in a plain black suit.

“You think the Allards are respectable people?” he questions, his eyes roaming over my face. His voice is terse. “Come with me.”

Chapter 7 - Boris

“You’ve never even met Mr. Allard, have you?” Fiona asks, her voice high as we drive through the city. At this time of night, Vegas is bright and busy, the lights shining through the night, bright enough to see from space. Tourists and locals crowd the streets, many of them wearing Vegas Golden Knights jerseys. My brothers and I have been meaning to make it to a game, but it’s just difficult when there’s so much going on with the family.

“Have you ever met Hitler?” I return, glancing over at her.

“Oh my god,” she says, “that is so tired. Do you not know a single other bad guy from history?”

“Fine,” I mutter, “Mussolini, Stalin, then,”

“Just more dictators—and all dudes from WWII. Boring.”

“What—okay, Fiona, what about Thomas Jefferson? Saddam Hussein? Alfred Hitchcock?”

“Alfred Hitchcock? He was a bad guy?”

“Are you kidding?” I ask, turning to look at her. “He was—you know what? That’s not the point. The point is that you don’t have to have met someone to know they’re evil.”

“Now you’re saying Mr. Allard is evil. Are you forgetting that I’m literally talking to the man who kidnapped me right now?”

“That’s different.”

“Oh, yes, I can’t wait to see what it is that Mr. Allard does that’s so bad.”

The car comes to a stop on the hill overlooking the dock. I turned the headlights off half a mile back to make sure we wouldn’t be spotted, so now all I have to do is pull the binoculars out of the glove box and hand them to Fiona, who takes them, rolling her eyes as she does.

We watch together as men hurry around, loading crates onto the dock.

“Drugs,” I say, “opioids, more than likely. Feeding into the epidemic of drug addiction in this country. You wouldn’t call that evil?”

“And you ferry cocaine and heroin,” she says, pulling the binoculars away from her face. “Drug addiction is a terrible thing—but ultimately, you’re not taking away someone’s choice by making drugs available. We, as a society, are actually the evil in the situation by outcasting people struggling with a disease.”

I stare at her for a moment. How did she know—so specifically—which drugs our organization handles? She’s been busy gathering information, apparently. But that doesn’t matter.

“Opioids are different,” I mutter, putting my binoculars to my face again. “And Allard's stuff is almost never pure—never safe. There’s often a lot of other chemicals that cause complications for the poor addicts you seem to care so much about.”

“That’s terrible,” she says, looking through her binoculars again. “But is it evil? That’s to be—”

She cuts off when we see what I really came here to show her. A line of women, chained together, ushered onto the ship. Many of them were crying. One of the men laughs as he “pats” them down, taking liberties. Fiona pulls the binoculars away from her face, letting out a breath.

“So, there’s human trafficking in the world,” she says. “That doesn’t mean that—”

To my absolute delight, Mr. James Allard walks out onto the ship, his hands clasped behind his back. He’s wearing one of his ridiculous suits—a fashion statement with a dark green lining. Like by not wearing a black suit, like the rest of us, he’s somehow better.

When the truth is that, to gain the upper hand amongst local organized crime, Allard has stooped to the lowest form of trading.

Human trafficking.

The thought makes bile rise in my throat. It’s one thing to sell weapons, guns, to launder money and avoid taxes. That’s all crime, sure, but it's crime that I’ve made my peace with. But to take these people—these women, some of them girls—from their lives, and subjugate them to a life of nothing more than pain and torture? Of being treated as an object, rather than as a person?

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