Page 42 of Vegas Daddies

Jesus Christ.

“Oh, Alice, I’m?—”

“No. It’s fine.” She sits back on her elbows. “I’m just saying. It’s probably a one-off, right? Nothing to worry about. They tried to mug me or take me somewhere, but it failed.” She searches the floor, and when she looks back up, her eyes pool with fear. “But that only means they’ll move on to someone else. And maybe next time they could be successful.”

I bite the corner of my lip. “You definitely didn’t get any details?”

“None. They were hiding their identity. Black suit. Black pants and black balaclava. That’s all I saw running toward me as I was pulling out of the parking garage.”

“Bratva.” Brander whips around to us. “It has to be.”

Black suit and pants…

“The Bratva attack for a reason.”

“Not always,” says Alice.

We all turn to her, waiting for what else she has to say. Is this when she warps our innocent-angel perceptions of her? When she plot-twists our entire fucking lives to tell us she’s married to Vlad or some shit?

“My mom was killed by the Bratva. That was random.”

I narrow my eyes.

The Bratva might be cold-hearted killers with red-stained knuckles and angry, canine teeth, but they kill with intent. For a reason. Always.

Brander scratches his chin. “That’s strange.”

“Maybe,” Match says, “they thought she was somebody else.”

“Maybe…” I say.

But the Bratva, as much as it pains me to admit it, are smart. Possess more than enough brain cells to be able to identify the correct individual on their hit list.

They’re human after all, I suppose.

Maybe they made a mistake.

Alice, unable to prop herself up anymore, flops back onto the bed and shuts her eyes.

I follow suit along with Match and rake a hand through my hair. The fucking Bratva. If it’s not them planning to murder Peter, it’s them jumping on Alice.

What if she hadn’t escaped out of the choke hold? What if right now she was being transported to God knows where in the trunkof a car, knotted up in ropes? Working as a doctor exposes you to some very grotesque things, butneverhas my stomach churned like this before.

“What do we do?” I turn to Match, my voice lowered.

Match shrugs—something he’s been doing lots of ever since Alice walked into our lives. “I dunno,” he says. “You don’t think”—he lowers his voice—“any of this has to do with Peter Dyson’s assassination, do you?”

I turn around, unsure if this is something we should be discussing with Alice in the room. She was just attacked. Us discussing Bratva motives is the last thing I want her ears to hear.

But she’s zonked.

Shift work zombifies you.

I step away from the bed toward the other two. “What do you mean? How would this be linked? It’s two different scenarios.”

“I’m not sure,” Match says. “But you know what they’re like. It’s spiderwebs with them. Somehow things always end up being interlinked.”

Brander closes in and shakes his head. “Not always. Sometimes there’s branches. Multiple things occurring simultaneously. Besides, there’s no link between Peter Dyson and Alice.”

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