Page 51 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

Taking a chance on the information Corrie managed to steal during her computer investigation of the Italians, I pull a list of addresses from my glove box. I’d planned to give them to my father, but I’m glad I kept them for myself.

After a quick distribution of addresses to each Bratva brigadier, I say, “Tonight, we leave no Italian alive. These are their homes.”

The implications are large. “What about their families?” It’s a random voice and I don’t care who asked. The answer will always be the same.

“Leave no one behind. Bring their women and children to the Bratva.” My father will ransom them back—untouched of course; there are rules to the game, even now—to whichever of their men is left alive. Our job is collections. And so I shall collect—as many Italian scalps as I can get.

* * *

Aleksey and I take the house most likely to be Roberto Totti’s. It’s registered to the woman long rumored to be Roberto’s second wife but is probably nothing more than a mistress.

When Aleksey turns down the road where Totti built his new house, he kills the headlights and Sergei hands us weapons.

Two men in back with Sergei climb out and crouch along a line of shrubbery to disappear into the blackness at the back of the house. Aleksey and I take the front. Adrenaline burns through my veins as I count down without making a sound.

When I get to one, I turn and kick the door open, splintering the frame. Fool. No steel reinforcements. No beams to hold it shut.

The house is quiet. Not even a clock ticks in the background. I listen for a footstep, the clank of a metal slide as a bullet loads into a chamber, a breath that isn’t mine or Alek’s. But nothing.

Until a shot takes out a lamp on a table next to me in the entry.

Shards of glass fly but I concentrate on the sound of heels slapping against the tile floor. I keep Alek on the door to make sure Totti doesn’t circle around, and I follow the echo of his heavy steps.

A motor starts in the garage. I have to keep Totti from getting out. If he gets away …

“Little Tomas Dubrovsky!” Totti cackles.

“What do you want, old man?”

“Hand over your business now and go back to Russia where you belong, and we can end this whole thing.”

He’s standing at the door when I round the corner, and it’s my rifle against his gun, but between us is one of the men who rode in the back of my SUV with Sergei. I can’t get a clean shot off without taking out my own man.

“I’d rather die.”

He laughs. “My pleasure.” He levels the gun at me, shoves the man he’s holding forward, and fires off two quick shots so I have to duck. It gives him the room he needs to leap in his car and get away.

Son of a bitch.

15

Corinne

Tomas comes home smelling like sweat and metal and with fury wrinkling his forehead. He refuses to say where he’s been or what he was doing. I hate nagging, but I can tell when something is wrong, and it’s driving me insane that he walked straight to the bar cart and hammered two shots of whiskey before he even put his keys down. After that, it took all of fifteen seconds for us to get into a fight.

“…So, you paid more than fifty grand for me to get an education you’re not going to let me use?” I’m in the middle of saying.

Russian mobster or not, he isn’t my boss or my boyfriend. He doesn’t get to tell me what to do.

Tomas turns and growls at me. Just that—a low, throaty growl—like he’s a tiger and I’m some helpless little sheep he’s got cornered (assuming tigers eat sheep, which, I’ll be honest, I have no clue about; I studied computer science, not zoology). Bad metaphors aside, the threat feels real.

But I’m not backing down that easily.

“Fine,” I snap when he doesn’t add anything beyond the growl. “I don’t need your permission. I’ll just do what I was going to do anyways.”

I turn my back to him.

Big mistake.

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