Page 46 of Ruthless Vow

“You were expecting Nicole to meet her boss, right?”

“Yes.”

“Here? In Vegas?”

“Yes,” I say, getting a bad feeling as I round the desk.

The dot is moving, too fast for Nicole to be on foot. And it’s heading out of the city into the desert.

16

Nicole

We head northwest,through open desert dotted by the occasional creosote bush or Joshua tree. After about thirty minutes, I can see the outline of mountains in the distance, rising from the flat terrain.

We exit US-95 onto a road that winds up into the Spring Mountains, through steep canyons, pine trees rising around us as we ascend. The pine forest grows thicker. We pass no houses. The area is remote, isolated, secluded.

Perfect for my aunt’s purposes.

Finally, through the dense trees, in the shadow of a massive rock formation, I see a house. It’s rustic, with a wood exterior and a huge deck.

Several men, dressed in black and carrying machine guns patrol the deck.

The iron gates open at our approach and close behind us, as if triggered by some magic spell.

I’ve never been here before, didn’t even know the place existed, but I suspect my aunt bought this place with money she’s made over the last decade, money she hadn’t shared with my father. He’d wanted a part of her windfall and when sherefused, he’d griped about her behind her back to me, saying that Bianca had hooked her wagon to a powerful Russian family that ran Chicago, that she was neck deep in helping to import cocaine from Columbia, which is how she’d made her small fortune while he toiled away at his restaurant, day in and day out.

There were times I wondered why my aunt needed my father at all. It wasn’t like he had the funds to shore up her ambitions to reclaim our family’s name. In fact, she was definitely the one shoring him up.

Danila leads me inside. Two men guard the outside of the front door. Two more guard the inside. My aunt is nothing if not careful. I follow him into a salon. Huge windows offer views of the endless evergreens outside. A stone fireplace extends up one wall, all the way to the high, vaulted ceiling. Two sprawling, tan leather sofas face each other across a hand-carved wooden coffee table. I move to one of the windows and look out.

The view is gorgeous. And it only accentuates the fact that this place is isolated as hell. I don’t see another roof or chimney or any hint of other structures. There isn’t another house for miles.

“Wait here,” Danila says.

His Russian accent…

I wonder if he’s associated with that infamous Chicago crime family.

It makes total sense now that I think about it. I’d thought the mercenaries my aunt sent to the yacht were randos she’d hired off of the dark web. But now, I think that maybe they weren’t. Maybe they’re people she has worked with for a very long time.

I sit down on the edge of a leather sofa, my back stiff. It doesn’t take very long before my aunt enters the room.

Bianca is a beautiful woman—at fifty-two, she looks nearly twenty years younger thanks to a renowned dermatologist and a gifted stylist. She has long raven hair that she wears in a thickbraid over one shoulder. She’s clad in a black pantsuit that even my inexperienced eye recognizes as designer. Diamond rings glitter on her fingers. Her wrists are stacked with gold bracelets—Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. I recognize the brands because I researched them for Salvatore at Christmas last year. He ordered a half dozen for Sabina.

“I’ve been so worried about you.” My aunt greets me as I rise, kissing me on both of my cheeks before taking my face in her hands. I think she’s frowning, but the Botox prevents any noticeable creasing, so I can’t be sure. “Oh, Nicole, honey. You look like hell.”

“That’s totally in line with how I feel right now,” I admit.

“Tell me everything.”

I don’t plan on doing that. Not everything, anyway. But enough. My aunt is a user and an abuser if someone stands between her and what she wants. I need her to believe I am the woman she knows, the woman completely cowed and controlled by her.

Sofia’s life depends on it.

“I…I will,” I tell her. Then I glance at Danila. Even though I don’t intend to tell her anything important about Leo or the Russos, I do need to tell her about the bomber. Someone inside her organization, someone she trusts could be planning to kill her too. And Sofia… “Can I talk to you alone?”

She tips her head and studies me for a moment, then says, “We’re alone.”

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