Page 21 of In Her Blood
Lina huffed. “You’re being dramatic again.”
“Pyotr has supporters, Lina. Grisha’s not the only asshole in his corner.”
She didn’t respond for several seconds. “I know that.”
Otto navigated them through a turn at a four-way intersection, immediately checking his mirrors as the car straightened on the new road, and flexed his grip again. “Not even Mikhail can will the title of pakhan to someone,” he said.
Lina slumped to the side. “It’s more than that, Otto.”
“We’re being followed.”
Chapter seven
To (Not) be a Damsel
Otto nearly had aheart attack when Lina suddenly began shoving herself forward, climbing between the front seats and over the center console. She was smaller than average, but notthatmuch smaller. He sucked in a mildly stabilizing breath and snapped, “Evelina Mikhailovna Nikolaev, get your fucking ass back in your goddamnseat!”
The infuriating woman froze, twisted sideways with one knee on the console and one hand braced on each of the front seats. Then she slipped the hand nearest him forward and slapped the backside of his head. “You know I hate my patronymic. Don’t talk to me like that.”
Otto spoke through gritted teeth, feeling significantly less than apologetic. “And yet it’s yourpatronthat’s gotten us into this fucking mess. If we crash right now—”
“So don’t fucking crash!” Lina finally shimmied her hips through the opening, promptly twisting herself to the side and dropping with a huff into the passenger seat. “Wouldn’t have been a big deal if you hadn’t stuck me back there in the first place.”
“Lina,” he tried again.
She obliged at least a small portion of his concerns by reaching for her seatbelt. “Look, I know you’re mad, okay? And we can talk about it. But not while we’re dealing with whatever the hell this is.” She clicked the belt into place and scooted herself into a seemingly more settled position. “You think it’s Artem?”
Otto spun them around another turn and checked his mirrors as soon as he dared. He hadn’t signaled or slowed, but his objective was probably predictable. “No.” Not to say he fully trusted Artem so soon. More that he doubted Artem had turned on the entire Nikolaev clan.
And there it was, the pursuing SUV spinning around the corner behind them only a couple of seconds away.
“I’m gonna need more than that,” Lina said, “because this is awfully convenient.”
“How many people do you think saw you leave?” Otto challenged. He pulled a hand off the steering wheel to motion to the dashboard. “You’re drivin’ a monitored car, for Christ’s sake. Off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen people with authority enough to demand the tracking information in a single call. Not to mention you used GPS to get to the lawyer’s office,andyou kept your phone on you. All. Fucking. Traceable.”
Lina sighed. “Yeah, okay. But you’re the one who brought in a new face, and only after that did this happen.”
“Neither of us knows how long these bastards were parked outside.” Otto glanced at the mirrors again. The SUV was closing in. The next turn he needed was still a few blocks away.
Filtered sunlight glinted off a distinct design welded into the SUV’s grill and Otto felt his insides clench.
“Artem claims he wants to support your bid for pakhan,” Otto said. “You have to decide whether you can trust him on that, but at least you can use him ‘til you make that choice. The one thing I am confident in is that if he’s workin’ for anyone else, that other person is your damn cousin.”
Lina popped open the glove box and pulled out a pistol. “I don’t see how that’s helpful.”
Otto eyed the upcoming turn in the road. “The bastards behind us are Morozov.”
Evelina nearly dropped the gun she’d just settled in her hand, her blood running cold at Otto’s words. “What?” She bumped the compartment shut with her knee and tilted sideways, squinting through the window into the side mirror, trying to see whatever Otto had seen about their pursuer that made him so sure. The SUV was close—closer than she liked—but they swayed outward almost as soon as she started looking, and she saw it.
The emblazoned steel ‘M’ in metallic silver paint that dominated the face of the otherwise standard grill. It was exactly the way she’d pictured every firm warning against getting into strange, suspiciously marked cars.
“Fuck,” Evelina muttered, years of trauma throwing her into a conflicting state of panic and rage. For her entire life, the Morozov Bratva had been their enemies. For her entire life, the Morozov Bratva had been the boogeyman lurking in the dark spaces. For her entire life, the Morozov Bratva had been the explanation as to why she went to school behind solid gates, why she’d grown up with a stern-faced shadow, why she was forced into self-defense classes at the age of six, and why she had neither freedom nor privacy.
The Morozov Bratva had killed her brother.
The Morozov Bratva had killed her father’s previous wife.
Evelina dropped her head against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d researched therapeutic breathing techniques in lieu of being allowed to go to real therapy, but it had been years since she’d needed them as much as she had in the past month.
