Page 4 of The Brutal Arrangement

Stay out of the way.

Keep your head down and mind your own damn business.

It’s as simple as that, Luce.

At least I hoped it was.

2

DAMON

The first forty-eight hours after a disappearance are the most critical. After that, leads would likely be harder to find and even more difficult to follow.

The first day that my twin brother, Nik, was taken, it was all hands on deck. I was in the car pulling into the parking lot when those masked men captured him. On site and in charge, it had been my mission to lead from the start.

Instead of my oldest brother, Maxim, who was standing in as thePakhan,or boss, of our family for now, it wasIwho was supposed to find Nik.

I hadn’t yet.

Not the first day. Not yesterday. And now on this third day since Nik had been taken from us, I had few clues to work with.

“If it were anyone else,” Hugo, one of the loyalist Ivanov supervisors said as he entered the dining room to report in, “thenwe should worry.” He glanced at me, then Maxim, directly deferring to him since he was the interim boss. “But this is Nik.” His following shrug wasn’t a sign of disrespect. He was one ofour best. It wasn’t a hint of his lack of care. All the Ivanov men stuck together as one.

But he had a point.

Maxim sighed, furrowing his brow as he zoned out at the table as more dishes were brought in. Next to him, Sloane held his hand and rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, showing her sympathy.

She hadn’t been in the family for long, and with Maxim kidnapping her from the strip club she’d worked at, it wasn’t like their beginning was necessarily a rosy one. Yet, she was a strong woman, like Maxim told us. She wasn’t ready to shy away from danger or deep issues that revolved around our dangerous Mafia lifestyle.

Hell, he’s calmer with her at his side.

Maxim wasn’t hotheaded, usually, but it seemed that embracing a woman in his life was mellowing him out. He didn’t look worried to the point of being severely stressed out that our brother was captured.

“You’re not worried.” Without looking up, Maxim shared those words with me. It should’ve been a question, but he said it like a remark. An observation. And it was an accurate one.

“Not yet,” I replied.

“It’s early yet,” Grandmother commented from the other side of the table. While she wasn’t speaking flippantly either, she, too, wasn’t frantic with fear. Anastasia Ivanov was no coward to the hard truths of being in the Mafia. None of us were. This was the life we’d been born into, the world we ruled. Violence was ordinary, not extraordinary, and this was far from the first time we’d dealt with a capture.

When Maxim, Nik, and I were no older than ten, we’d all been kidnapped. Since we’d been rescued from that incident, we were all trained extensively on how to defend, fight, and kill.

Nik was trained to keep himself alive, and he had encountered other tough situations. We’d all been captured or nearly taken a few times throughout our lives. While it was foolhardy to get cocky or smug about our expertise in surviving, these were facts. Nik wasn’t a weakling.

Just then, my younger brother, Saul, entered the room. “Hey,” he said in greeting to Hugo, who was a staple around this building and out of it. “Are you staying?” He gestured at the table, where he promptly took his seat for this family dinner.

It was strange to carry on like usual, having dinner like this was any other evening, when Nik was held in captivity somewhere, but there was no need to freak out—yet.

“No, no,” Hugo replied, backing up. “I only wanted to update about what I’ve found.”

“Which is?” Saul asked, scooting his chair in and glancing at Maxim.

Hugo shook his head. “Nothing.”

Saul twisted his lips in a scowl. “Same.”

“You haven’t heard anything?” Maxim asked him.

“No.” Saul faced me then, and I shook my head in reply.

---