Page 5 of Cruel Redemption

“I’ll have the full team ready. Anything else I should know?” Nik asked.

I closed my eyes. I loved her. More than my own life. That didn’t do Nik any fucking good.

“No. That’s all I had,” I snapped and hung up, upset with myself and not Nik.

There was another call I needed to make. There was someone else who knew things about Amara that I didn’t. As much as it gutted me to admit it, I needed his help.

I didn’t want to do it. But what choice did I have?

I picked up my phone and dialed a number I swore I’d never use. I hadn’t wanted to store it in the first place. I only did it because of Amara. Because of a scenario when I would need to put her life above my pride. Fuck it.

“Ciro,” he answered brusquely.

I ran my hand through my hair. “It’s Luka Novikov.”

“What’s happened?”

I stood in the construction site of our new offices. “I need your help. With Amara.”

Four

Luka

There was a long pause. One that made me ball my fist at my side. He wasn’t going to make it easy for me, even if the call was about Amara’s life.

“Ciro?”

“What’s happened?” His voice was rough.

“Where the fuck are you?” He never left Amara unattended, despite how much I hated it about him. His absence is what allowed this to happen.

“I don’t answer to you.” He didn’t soften his tone. Why the fuck would it? We hated each other. Ciro’s voice never changed octaves. It rarely had in the years I had known him.

Amara said he was out working on a security assignment for her. I assumed it was within driving distance of the city, but I realized now he was much farther away.

“I can be there by morning. What’s happened? What are we dealing with?” It sounded as if he was breathing harder, shuffling something in the background. “Why hasn’t she called me herself?”

“Don’t you think that’s what I’d prefer?” I growled. “I don’t want to have this little chat with you, Ciro.”

“If you’re calling me. It must be a life and death emergency. Is she safe? Is she alive?” I detected pain in the question. It threw me. The stoic giant had a soft spot. It was Amara.

My first encounter with Ciro was at the pool house during Katya’s engagement party five years ago. Amara and I had ditched his cover for a night at Marguerites and eating champagne and oysters. He had never forgiven me for it. I was certain Lorenzo had given him hell for the embarrassment. He’d let a member of the Bratva steal his daughter out from under him at a cocktail party. There were hundreds of guests and we had managed to slip past him and everyone else there ready to toast my sister and Andrey.

I cleared my throat, ready to answer him. To tell him the truth. She had to be alive. I believed I would know if she wasn’t. Besides a kidnapping of someone of her status would be pointless if she was taken only to be murdered. My mind easily crossed into the dark realities facing her future.

“Novikov!” he shouted into the phone.

No one knew her contingency plans for an escape other than Ciro. I knew he had trained her. For fuck’s sake he had a tracker in her neck. He would know where Nikoli and one of the Bratva teams could begin a search and recovery. I was prepared for him to put up a fight when I asked for all their security secrets.

However, before I could explain the circumstances, the elevator began to churn. I heard a clunk then a screech. Were these fuckers coming for me next?

“Hold on. Someone’s here,” I hissed into the phone, lowering it.

I retrieved the gun from the holster inside my suit jacket. Nik would be here. He could take over the retrieval of information down at the docks. All I had to do was injure the attacker enough to stall. I paused. The elevator car was getting closer.

Was that my best option? Should I fight or should I surrender? Let them take me to where Amara was and at least together, I could save her. I would get her out. I’d risk my entire life to give her another night of freedom.

I needed to know who was behind the attack. And why was Enzo missing too? I braced myself for who I was about to meet when the doors began to slide apart.

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