Page 106 of Born in Depravity

“I found his safe.”

Damien uncrossed his arms, one hand playing with the sleeve of his shirt. His tell.

He was getting just as restless as me.

“Where?”

“In his mistress’s bedroom.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. Alyosha was married to a woman I had only met a handful of times. She lived in Russia, and when he came to the States without her, he stayed with his mistress.

“Why there?” I asked.

“Because that’s the room no man wants to be caught dead in,” Mikhail answered.

Damien nodded. “I suppose it makes sense. Do you think you can crack it?”

“Yeah, but I need time. I’ve never encountered anything like it.”

“No shit. How many times have you been in this bedroom?”

“Enough times to know it can’t be done quickly,” he answered with a grimace. I didn’t want to know what he’d seen in that room to put that expression on his face.

“One week?” Damien asked.

That wasn’t a lot of time to do anything. We all knew Alyosha was a traitor. He had been feeding Agnello inside information. In fact, I was sure it was him who told the bastard about the shipment schedule. That was how we found ourselves with a burning ship carrying millions and millions of dollars’ worth of drugs. It was all fucking gone.

Just thinking about it pissed me off.

But there was no proof.

I could cut off his head or shoot him point blank between his eyes, but without proof as to why I killed one of our top-rank officers, we would find ourselves with insurgent groups to deal with.

“One week,” Mikhail confirmed.

Fuck, yeah. Seven more days and we could leave this hellhole.

Couldn’t come fast enough.

“Is the garden empty?” I asked.

Damien nodded. “Should be. Why?”

“I’m taking the princess out.”

One eyebrow rose at that. “Are you sure it’s a good idea?”

I shrugged, but when had I ever let something like a bad idea stop me from doing anything?

“Can you send men out there?” I asked. “I want to keep her fromthat.”

I nodded my head in the general direction of Alyosha.

Damien nodded. I didn’t wait for them to say anything to me. Or see how they would react to what I just said. I wasn’t in the mood to have my head examined by my brothers.

I walked up the stairs and to my room, just next to her. So close by, yet the wall that separated her from me felt unbearable most days.

I didn’t know what it was about this girl that got to me so badly, but I wasn’t like Mikhail. I was more of an action man, and rather than sit there and try to contemplate the why or why not, I was going to work to make Catalina Agnello irrevocably, utterly, and without a fucking doubt in this world, mine.

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