Page 37 of The Bratva Contract
“Someone from the organization told you not to pursue it?”
“Yes, and he was adamant that they had it under control. They decided to handle it internally. Didn’t want word getting out or something. I didn’t ask questions because it’s stupid to question a man like that.”
“Was it my husband?” I ask, suspicious.
“No.I’ve never spoken to thepakhanpersonally. This was somebody else, top-level clearance in the brotherhood.”
“I want a name,” I say. He clears his throat and I can tell he’s uncomfortable.
He gives me the name. I make him repeat it, then spell it, just to be certain. If I’m signing a man’s death warrant, I need to send the right bastard to the flames awaiting him. I close my eyes, curse softly, and absorb the betrayal. Then I end the call and message Dima at once.
I need you to come home it is an emergency. The baby is fine, but this cannot wait.
I’m jumping out of my skin, restless, desperate to get him here so I can tell him in person. I want to deliver the information myself, to take him in my arms, in my body, whatever he needs to help him deal with this crisis. It is a greater disaster than I had imagined possible.
I stare at my phone, half-crazed, for several minutes before diving into the breach myself, forcing my racing thoughts to focus. I can do this. I have to. It has never been this important or this personal. But my fingers keep hitting the wrong keys, futile and infuriating. It feels like a nightmare where every door is locked and the killer is right on my heels.
When he doesn’t answer right away, sweat beads on my skin and my hands tremble. I need him to respond. No, I need him here next to me. I can’t bear for him to trust that traitor for another second. Protective fury flares in me like wildfire: this bastard has attacked from within, striking at my husband, his business, our family. The sooner he bleeds, the better.
CHAPTER 23
DIMA
It’s late, later even than my usual graveyard shift at the casino. Tonight, we hosted a pair of VIPs from the UAE: interesting men, astoundingly wealthy and well-connected. We already share one venture and might build more. I’m tired, but not the way I used to be. Back then, after a long day, exhaustion scraped clear through to my soul. I’d stumble home to silence and wonder,what’s the point of all this?No heirs, no one to carry my name, no one to remember me once the lights went out. I felt weightless as ash, ready to scatter on the wind. Now every step has heft, weighted by the holy promise of a child and the fierce possibility of a family that’s mine. Hope hums in my blood, an anticipation that has nothing to do with the next acquisition and everything to do with getting home to my wife.
I dig my phone from my pocket and flick off silent mode. Buried among dozens of work-related messages sits one from Karina. She needs me home right away since there’s a crisis. She adds that the baby is fine, and my heart slides out of my throat as that particular panic subsides. But that’s all she wrote: come home. The timestamp says it was sent nine hours ago and counting. Ishould’ve checked sooner. She’ll be furious it took me this long. I only need to hear her voice, to know she’s safe. I stop where I’m standing, still yards from the car, and dial her number.
It doesn’t even ring.
It doesn’t kick over to voicemail, and there’s no cheery recording telling me the mailbox is full.
Nothing. I end the call. Maybe I misdialed, maybe the connection glitched, maybe the towers are acting up. I tell myself anything that sounds remotely reasonable.
Again, I dial her number, careful, double-checking each digit. Then I get a robot voice telling me that the number is not in service. I call again, and a third time. Then I call the lead on her protection team. It goes to voicemail. I dial every officer tasked with guarding my wife. Not a damn one of them is reachable. I’ll have their heads for this, I try to tell myself, as if they are merely loafing, watching a YouTube short and ignoring my call.
I know before I even let myself form the thought. I know that they are dead. That she is either stolen or dead herself.God, let it not be, I think in a ragged sort of despair. I check the location and find that her car is still at the house, her laptop and tablet as well. She doesn’t answer on any messaging app. I am unable to reach anyone involved. The housekeeper, the guards on the grounds, the fucking cook, no one. It’s like a horror movie. Every human contact has gone dark. The driver speeds toward my house.
The windows are dark. The exterior floodlights that stay on twenty-four hours a day for security are extinguished. There is no sign of life. If I let that thought take hold of me, I’ll go insane. She has to be alive. If I walk in and find only her broken body,blood soaked into the carpet… I gag at the thought. I retch right there in the driveway. Some of my guards check the perimeters while the rest head inside. It could be a trap and probably is one, in fact. I don’t give a damn if it’s a trap. Let them think they can snare me. I’ll slaughter the lot of them without bothering to say a word.
I flip on lights as I go, flooding the empty hall with pitiless brightness. My entire body is ice-cold. It feels as if my soul has shriveled and climbed into a vault somewhere deep and hidden, and I stare out of hollow eyes taking in the wreckage. The fresh flowers I always send to Karina are scattered across her office as if the vase was thrown against the door, showering the carpet in bits of glass and wet stems and petals. I step over it and force myself to look around, behind the desk, on the floor. There’s no sign of her. Thank God there’s no sign of her. Maybe she got away, I think. My clever Karinka, she could outsmart such brutes as these.
My blood stays frozen as I step into her room, and everything is wrong. The usual chaos—discarded clothes, mismatched shoes, a lone earring, papers scattered everywhere—is gone. Karina has threatened every housemaid who dares touch her piles, except to hang up clothes or send them to the cleaners. Now not one slip of paper is out of place, no half-finished glass of water, no teacup, not even a crumpled chip wrapper. The trash can is empty. Unnatural. I search the bedroom, the closet, the bath. On her vanity waits a thick cream-colored envelope, my name scrawled across it in her bold handwriting. I slit the seal and read the letter twice.
Dmitri,
I subdued my guards so I could make my escape. I would never be content as the trophy wife of such an arrogant tyrantwho does not respect my abilities. Though I tried to honor my father’s wishes and marry you to unite the bratvas, I will not go on like this. The baby is not yours. I could not live on only the pitiful efforts of a much older man in the bedroom,it was all I could do to hide my disgust for you. The baby is my lover’s, not yours. You were a fool to believe otherwise. I cheated because I care nothing for you and because you are not entitled to me in your bed each night.
Do not attempt to find me. I will not come back to you.
I read the letter a second time to be sure. Clever, clever girl. She left me a breadcrumb, her line about not being entitled to her in bed, the very condition she laid down when she told me she was pregnant. I almost laugh. The fools who took her have no idea how sharp she is. They see only a pretty, pregnant wife. I nearly pity them. They forced her to write this, and she still told me everything, slipping in that nod to honoring her father’s wishes, something we once bonded over when we discovered both our fathers despised us. Fools, every one of them.
My phone pings with an email. Her name lights the screen. She must have scheduled it. I open the message and skim: the identity of the traitor inside my brotherhood, the name that will lead me straight to her. I vault down the stairs and roar for my driver. I have a destination now. I pause only long enough to unlock the safe and arm myself before barreling out the door.
She could probably make them beg for mercy on her own, but I plan to be the one who rides in and finishes it. She’s carrying our child; rescuing her is the least I can do. The thought electrifies me, being partners in crime, unstoppable together. Honestly, that describes how I feel about the rest of the world, too.
He wants something from me and is using her as insurance. I don’t care what he wants. I’ll promise it to him and then put a bullet in his brain once Karina is safe. Knowing me as he does, he would never expect me to accept her supposed abandonment without a fight. He’s trying to lead me on a chase, taunt me with the idea that she cheated on me, that I can’t trust her and she’ll never be mine.
As if a man like that could begin to understand her at all. Or all the ways I belong to her and always will.
