Page 56 of The Bratva's Christmas Bump
My cheeks flare hotter. “What does?”
She points at me. “I knew Maxim would never marry someone boring out of choice.”
“Choice?” Anger surges inside me. “I’m the one who didn’t have a choice!”
“Bullshit,” Nancy replies, unfazed. “You know who he is, which means you know who his father is. You saw something you shouldn’t have and that man would have cut you up for it. But he can’t, right? Because you’re Maxim’s girl, which means all their funny laws and rules protect you. He saved your life and you don’t even see it.”
Igor flashes back up in my mind, and I swallow around the memory of his hands. “The cops would have protected me from both of them,” I mutter.
“Who did he kill?” Nancy looks me in the eye. “Who do you care about so much?”
“Does it matter?”
“With Maxim, it always matters,” Nancy says. Xena leans over and whispers something in Nancy’s ear that makes her eyes go wide and then narrow at me.
It’s like I’m back at school watching people gossip about me thinking I can’t hear while trying to make it obvious.
“Does she know?” Nancy looks up at Xena, who shrugs.
“Dunno.”
“Did you tell her?”
Xena rolls her eyes. “Like I’d make it that easy for her after the shit she pulled.” She glances at me. “Maybe she doesn’t deserve to know.”
“Know what?” I glance between them both.
Nancy sighs and turns in her stool until her back is against the bar and she’s staring out into the dance floor. “You’ve no idea what you’ve fallen into, have you?”
“If everyone stopped being so damn cryptic, then maybe I’d know.”
“A few weeks ago, there were three other women at this club. Ana, Bea, and Zoe.”
Nancy speaks slowly, almost lazily, but there’s something else in her tone that I can’t pinpoint.
“You know Maxim is in the Mafia. He’s a good man. A kind man. And he takes things very seriously. Those three women were my friends. They were good people. Ana was going to join the military soon, and Bea was saving up to open her own boutique store. Zoe’s got a kid with the brightest smile you ever saw. So when men came in flashing the cash and promising the bigbucks, why would they refuse? It’s pretty common here, actually. Nothing makes a man show off more than a pretty woman.”
Nancy speaks casually as if she’s reciting something that happened at the grocery store, but Xena’s silence makes me uneasy.
“So they took those two men for a private showing. And those two men kidnapped our three friends. They beat them and dragged them out the back, killed one of our security guards, and got away into the night.” Nancy rubs her jaw slowly. “I’ve never seen Maxim so focused. He tore the city apart looking for them. No one else would do that. His father wouldn’t care about three missing women. No other family in this city would give a damn. But Maxim does. He cares. So he searched.”
Xena’s hand lands briefly on Nancy’s shoulder and squeezes.
“Those bastards took their time. Two fucking weeks. They carved Bea up so I couldn’t even recognize her. They beat them, tortured them, raped them, and then when it was all over, they drowned them in a water tank. It’s a sheer miracle that Zoe survived. But Bea and Ana?” Her voice quavers. “They’re gone. But Maxim hasn’t stopped looking.” She turns to me, and her eyes shine with tears. “That man you saw Maxim kill? That bastard was one of the men who took our girls. Maxim found him, and I don’t know what he did to him. I don’t care. All I know is that he didn’t stop until he’d torn the identity of the second bastard out of him. And then he killed him, and the only peace of mind we get is knowing that he suffered until his last, worthless breath.”
Nancy’s hand covers her mouth and she winces.
I’m frozen.
Not even my heart seems to beat.
I can’t think.
The story laid out to me is so horrific that I can barely comprehend it. Not once did I see anything about missing women on the news, nor did Maxim give me any indication that the man he killed deserved it.
“So you see,” Xena says softly, rubbing Nancy’s shoulder, “Maxim is a good man. I’ve known him for fifteen years and he’s never killed without cause. What you saw was him delivering justice to a monster who robbed us of our friends. He’s the kind of man who knew what would happen to you in the hands of his family, so he got you the best protection he could by marrying you. Your yelling that he kidnapped you? We all knew there had to be a good reason. Maxim doesn’t hurt people. Not intentionally.”
There’s still an urge to defend myself, to deny this and claim that he should have let me go to the cops or something, but if I’ve learned anything these past weeks, it’s that his father’s reach is long.
