Page 9 of Ruthless Vow

“Nicely done,” I tell Luca with a smile, savoring the adrenaline surge of the hunt, one step closer to finding my little wolf in ugly clothing.

4

Nicole

I walk alongone of the narrow, paved roads of Woodlawn cemetery. The grass is manicured, the trees mature—stately palms and cypress and evergreens. I pass simple markers and elaborate tombstones, some old, some new, marking the final resting places of famous gamblers, gangsters, and gunfighters. A couple showmen, a few boxers, and…my father.

Wariness crawls through me as I pause to scan the stones, the trees, the old caretaker’s building in the distance.

There’s a small group of people standing by a grave about a hundred yards away, and another about fifty yards in the other direction.

No one who makes my hackles rise or looks like they don’t belong.

After I fled the yacht, I scoured the papers for days but found no news of Leo’s death. He’d definitely taken a bullet, but somehow it seems he survived.

Forget tourists hitting the jackpot, Leonardo Russo’s got to be the luckiest bastard in Las Vegas.

I just hope that luck doesn’t extend to finding me. If he does, he’ll kill me. After he makes me suffer. He is a man with no conscience, no remorse, no capacity for mercy.

I’ve been careful since I left the yacht. First thing I did was cut my long hair in a ragged bob that barely reaches my shoulders. I discarded my glasses in favor of contact lenses. I’m wearing black leggings and a fuchsia linen button-up shirt. White Adidas Gazelles on my feet. I’m painfully uncomfortable walking around like this. I crave the shield of my shapeless, colorless dresses and oversized frames. But I’m hoping the changes are enough to make me look like a completely different person. Unrecognizable.

I’m staying at a cheap motel, the Desert Mirage, nondescript but clean. I wear a hat and sunglasses any time I leave the room. I used a fake name and fake ID, and paid in cash. Because Leo will be looking for me, and if I know anything after working for his family for so long, it’s that he is very good at finding things—people, information, weaknesses. Anything he sets his mind to.

But my brilliant disguise as ‘Random Tourist #43’ should fool him completely, right? I mean, who wouldn’t be fooled by the classic hat-and-sunglasses combo? I’m practically invisible.

In other words, I better make this quick.

I wrap my arms around myself and keep walking. I wish I could get on the next bus heading anywhere but here. But I can’t. I need to reach my aunt, beg her for another chance, beg her for my sister’s life.

Someone stronger than me would have pulled the trigger. I should have been stronger. It was my duty, my only purpose. For all my doubt while holding the gun in my hand, the fact that Leo Russo lives is not a relief.

Because Sofia will pay the price. Maybe she already has.

The thought makes me sick.

I glance over my shoulder. Coming here is a huge risk, but I’m desperate. I need to reach Bianca and I’m out of options.

My aunt forbid me from contacting her once I was hired by the Russos. The only contact I had was through her underlings via the burner phones. She said it was to protect me, that she wanted no chance of revealing my connection to her and my father’s family while I was a plant in the Russo organization. I think it was actually to protecther.

Still, I’ve been trying—and failing—to get in touch with her since the debacle on the yacht.

I’ve reached out every way I know how. Called the cell number I had for her years ago; it’s been disconnected. Checked social media; she has no accounts. Waited outside the building she used to live in. When security asked me to move along, I begged them to carry a message to her. They told me no one by that name lives there. I went to the office building where she leases space for her real estate brokerage, except, her company no longer exists. Not at that address or any other. I looked for her online. Other than a dozen or so mentions that are at least five years old… nothing.

How long ago did she take precautions to make certain I couldn’t find her? To distance herself from me in every way possible? To make sure that there was no link between us?

I’m guessing at least two years ago when she first sent me into the lion’s den. Maybe longer. She and my father had been planning this for years, and their father before that.

I’m here at the graveyard because Bianca left me one tiny opening. When I first went to work for the Russos, she’d said that in the event of an absolute emergency, I could get in touch by leaving a note at my father’s grave. Yesterday, that’s exactly what I did. I left a note with the coordinates of the motel and a single word:Please.

Then I’d gone back and waited in the room, hoping she would come or send word.

She didn’t.

So today, despite the danger, I’m back in the graveyard, hoping with every cell in my body that she’s left a reply and that the men I am certain Leo has scouring the city for me don’t know where to look.

Or if they do, that they won’t recognize me with the changes I’ve made.

Coming here is a final, desperate step.

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