Page 7 of Ruthless Vow

And if Leo is still alive, I know my sister will pay the price.

3

Leo

Two weeks later

Beatingthe shit out of someone usually puts me in a good mood but today it’s just not working.

Maybe that’s because Enzo Bianchi, the man who shot my father, is dead—thanks to my brother Damian—and I didn’t have the chance to kill him myself.

Maybe it’s because my right leg still throbs where I took a bullet on the yacht. A flesh wound. It’s healing well. But the wounds inflicted on my perceived invincibility, my ego, and my temper are not healing well at all.

Most likely, it’s because I have yet to find Nicole Milano. She betrayed my father. She had us all fooled, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Fuck, Papa even once asked me to take care of Nicole if anything ever happened to him. And now, she has betrayed me. Betrayed the family. Almost got my brother and sister killed. And she is still out there.

I tell myself that’s why I can’t stop thinking about her. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I’ll start to believe it at some point.

Nicole Milano. Innocuous. Invisible. Until she wasn’t, until she stood staring at me with those wide, dark eyes, her expression laced with lust. I’d stared back while I fucked another woman’s mouth, wanting to fuckhermouth.

Which makes no fucking sense because she is not a woman who would normally catch my attention. She wears her dark hair scraped back in a tight bun, no makeup, no jewelry, thick black-framed glasses, unpainted short nails. She’s tall, but keeps her shoulders hunched, her neck jutting forward. She wears the ugliest clothes I’ve ever seen, so shapeless I can’t even begin to imagine what her figure looks like.

Nicole Milano. A little mouse. Until she wasn’t. Until she stood glaring at me with a gun in her hand, her expression laced with hate.

Nicole Milano. Spy. Betrayer. My former executive assistant. My would-be assassin. An assassin who hadn’t been able to make herself pull the trigger.

Why? Why hadn’t she taken the shot?

And why the fuck am I thinking about her again?

I bob and weave as my opponent feints and lands a solid blow to my ribs, but his hook to my jaw catches air as I duck to the side. He’s a brawler… likes to exchange punches, gets in close, relies on aggression.

Which is fine by me. I’m feeling aggressive.

The sharp scents of sweat, leather, and disinfectant hang in the air, familiar and welcome. Beneath our feet, the canvas mat is scuffed and stained. Thick, padded ropes line the regulation-size ring sitting under the bright lights that hang from the metal supports of the unfinished ceiling. Around us are heavy bags, speed bags, free weights, kettle bells. Lining the cinder-block wall to the left is a row of older-model stationary bikes andtreadmills. This place has no bells-and-whistles. No frills. It’s a place people come to hit things, or each other.

I slam my fist into my opponent’s gut, the hit brutal and targeted. I’m aiming for maximum pain. He hunches forward, the air forced out of his lungs on a sharp exhale. But he’s no amateur. His arms come around my torso as he clinches me, stealing a moment to recover as he draws a deep, gasping breath.

“Hurts, huh?” I say close to his ear.

“Fucker,” he says, his voice tight. He releases the clinch and dances back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

My opponent is my brother Damian, who fully deserves an ass-kicking.

“You fucking killed him,” I snarl. “Didn’t occur to you to keep Bianchi alive so I could question him?”

In our business, knowing your enemy gives you power. My father knew Vlasta, the head of the Ivanov syndicate, even had a grudging respect for him. That meant that for almost twenty years the Russos and Ivanovs had been able to divide up Las Vegas in an amicable way, run our affairs without treading on each other’s toes.

Then Vlasta died. His brother Mikhail inherited the leadership position. And Mikhail hired Enzo Bianchi to ice my father.

Nothing amicable about that.

Damian got a confession out of Bianchi before he shot him. But a confession isn’t enough for me. I want to know every detail—when Bianchi was hired, how much he was paid, what information he was provided in regard to the hit. Because when I kill Mikhail Ivanov, I want to repeat every tiny morsel of information to him as I slice off parts of his body one at a time. Fingers. Then toes. Then ears. Then balls. Then whatever snags my interest.

He will not die quickly. He will die screaming and sobbing, drooling, begging, pissing and shitting himself. He will die like the pathetic worm he is.

“Bianchi laid hands on Alina,” Damian says, his tone like ice. “He hit her. Bruised her. Hurt her.”

“So why didn’t you just fucking beat the shit out of him, cut off his hands, and bring him to me alive?” I snarl.

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