Page 1 of Ruthless Vow

1

Nicole

My heart startsto pound loud and fast when the burner phone buzzes. I pull to the shoulder on Summerlin Parkway and take the call.

“It’s happening this weekend. Sunday morning at ten,” says a deep male voice with a hint of a Russian accent.

How delightfully cliché. Because sounding like a villain in a B-list action movie absolutely screams ‘take me seriously.’

But I do take him seriously. His name is Danila. He is one of the mercenaries hired by my aunt Bianca.

“Okay,” I say, feeling sick. My hands are sweating.

“Get rid of the phone,” he says.

“Okay,” I say again.

He ends the call and I stare down at the screen before it goes dark. The burner is the latest in a continuous stream that have been delivered to me anonymously for the past two years. I mostly keep the phone in airplane mode which cuts off all cellular connections. I allow cellular connection for only five minutes at a time on a random, rotating schedule so my aunt’s people can reach me.

I have no way to contact them. There are no numbers stored in this phone, no personal information.

And now, they have no further need to contact me because their plan is in motion, set to take place on my boss, Leonardo Russo’s weekend retreat on his family’s yacht. The place where he’s the most at peace.

It’s the best place to strike. Out in the middle of nowhere. No witnesses. No surprises. No chance arrival of reinforcements.

Leo dies this weekend, and I tell myself I won’t shed a single tear about it. He’s a psychopath, a killer, a blackhearted villain who has destroyed countless families.

Including my own. Twenty-seven months ago, he murdered my father.

Which is why working as his executive assistant for the last two months has been… difficult, to say the least.

For two years before that, I worked for his father, Salvatore Russo, watching, gathering information, spying, reporting back to my aunt. I was supposed to hate Salvatore Russo too, and in the beginning, I did.

But two years is a long time to be in daily contact with someone without acknowledging the layers they reveal.

I fought against myself every time a part of me grew softer for the man who’d given me a job because he and my mother had known each other when they were kids. The man who seemed so kind and generous, who’d never raised his voice to me, even when I made mistakes.

As I sit on the side of the road now, cars whizzing past, I remember the time I dropped an armful of folders, business documents, spreadsheets. I knew it would take me hours to put them back into order. It was only a week into my new job, and I’d been nervous and unsure of myself, terrified that I’d be fired, that I’d fail my aunt.

She’d expected me to fail. She’d told me so, point blank.Your father had no faith in you, she’d said.He knew you are good at nothing, goodfornothing.

Her voice and his are always lurking at the edges of my thoughts.

“Stupid,” I’d admonished myself as I dropped to the floor, desperate to gather the papers. “I’m so, so stupid.” I could hear my father’s voice in my head, spitting the words at me in stereo.

I hadn’t realized my new boss was close enough to hear me.

“You are not stupid,” Salvatore had said, squatting down opposite me and gathering papers into a pile. “No more beating yourself up for no reason. You’re a smart, capable girl, Nicole. I see that even if you don’t. I have complete faith in you.”

Yeah. Times like that, I’d almost forgotten who and what Salvatore Russo really was. And who he and his family had destroyed.

Then, while out for dinner with his four sons, he’d been murdered. Two bullets, one to the heart, one to the head. My aunt would be horrified to know that I’d cried for hours when I’d heard the news.

A day later, Leo Russo was at my door. I hadn’t been able to tell if he was grieving his father’s loss. His expression had been made of cold, hard stone, his eyes black ice.

“You work for me now,” he’d said.

It wasn’t a question, it was a command. One I had expected. Because once you get a glimpse behind the Russo curtain—both the innocent exterior and the not-so-innocent interior—you're automatically enrolled in the ‘lifetime employment’ program.

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