Page 19 of Brutal Vows

“This is none of your business,” he sneers down at me,eyes brimming with anger. “You aren’t here to snoop for your fucking brother,principessa.”

The muscles in my lower jaw tremble, and I rear back as if he physically slapped me. His cold words combined with the unrestrained disgust on his face have tears pushing at the back of my eyes. I’m still not sure what my brother did to earn Vitali De Luca’s ire, but I have nothing to do with it. Since he stole me yesterday, I haven’t made one single fuss, and here he is treating me as if I am some kind of rat beneath his feet.

A soft hand envelopes mine. “Don’t be cruel, Vitali,” Vanya scolds the man, the death glare she is aiming at him could melt steel. “The information looked important. You should be glad she was curious because she managed to fix” She turns to me. “What was it again?”

“Your software wasn’t able to fully piece together the missing videos,” I murmur somewhat petulantly. “I wrote a new algorithm that allows for special variations in blank spaces to help put it back together.”

From next to him, Volkov lets out an amused snort while Kenzo is covering his laugh with a cough.

“And it worked,” Vanya points out, her chin tipping up. “So be a good boy and say thank you.”

Eyes wide, I shift my gaze to her, surprised by her outright defiance. I’m trying to decide if she is brave or stupid. I doubt her husband would allow Vitali to punish her, but where I come from, talking to a man that way ends in a beating.

“Vanya” Volkov warns his wife softly. There is a warning in the undercurrent of his gentle tone, but it isn’t chastising.

“No,” Vanya cuts him off. “He was a jerk when all she was trying to do was help. She didn’t have to. Especiallysince he kidnapped her, but she wanted to because she knows it is for Evaline.”

An awkward silence falls around us at her statement. A rush of warmth spreads through my chest. Her words wrap around me like a protective blanket, dispelling the anxiety and discomfort that lingered moments before. I shoot her a grateful smile, her defense of me igniting a spark of resilience within me at knowing someone finds value in me.

“Thank you.” Vitali responds through gritted teeth and with a glare, like he is being forced to chew on glass. The warmth Vanya ignited inside of me dims, and I shrink back into the sofa, whispering a quiet “You’re welcome.”

Vanya, no doubt sending my distress, grips my hand tighter in reassurance. Her touch is gentle, and I struggle to hold back tears and push away the overwhelming feelings caused by her kindness, something I’ve rarely experienced back home with my own family.

For a brief moment, despite Vitali’s death glare, I feel lighter than I ever have before.

And I don’t want the feeling to end.

Eleven

She infuriates me.In less than twenty-four hours the little mafia princess has managed to get under my skin and make my blood boil. The gall of this woman. Touching my laptop and fiddling with my programs. Who the hell does she think she is?

Even if what she managed to do was brilliant.

Sitting opposite Gia and her newest savior, Vanya, I shift through the new data, pinpointing the parts of the video she managed to resurrect and inputting the algorithm needed to track Charity across the cameras.

“All right,” I huff as I stream the video onto Kenzo’s main television. “This is right before the reception” Clicking my mouse, I press play. The cameras follow Evaline’s mother from the ceremony up to the bridal suite, and then twenty minutes later she is storming from the room. This checks out with Evaline’s version of events.

Once outside the room, she takes a moment to calm herself, checks her phone, and then proceeds to the elevator. I manage to track her through several more cameras to the back entrance by the kitchens.

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself when I lose track of her. It takes me several seconds before I manage to find her again. She pops back up in the alley and gets into a yellow cab. Adrian picks up his tablet, using my backdoor software to punch a hole in the cab company’s database to track their pickups and drop-offs for the day.

“Took her to a seedy motel near the bus station.”

Fuck.

We managed to find Charity not long after we visited the jeweler shop at the mall. She’d been selling a sob story to one of the cashiers about needing cash to leave her abusive husband. She’d been ready to hop on a bus to God knows where using a fake I.D. with her dead daughter’s name on it.

Fucking scum.

The problem is that when we confronted her, it wasn’t us she was afraid of. It wasn’t us she was running from. I doubt the things we learned from Charity will help Evaline after all her mother put her through, but the witch had put her daughter first. For once.

Now we just need to find who actually ordered Evaline’s kidnapping. Someone wanted us to chase Charity LaMontagne knowing that she was a dead end. Literally.

“Why delete the footage,” I wonder. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe she wanted to give herself some time to not be traced?” Hiro, Kenzo’s second-in-command, speaks up from the other side of the room. Kenzo shakes his head, doubting that Charity would even think to do that. Or care to.

“The other video,” Gia murmurs, still curled in on herself, clutching Vanya’s hand like it is a life raft that will save her from me. “Whoever is in that deleted section is theone who didn’t want to get caught. I think the other one was amateur hour. It pieced together too easily and wasn’t corrupted because someone from inside the security room did it. The other one was done remotely, which is why it needed a new coding process to disentangle all the corrupted data.”

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