Page 161 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

From my awkward angle, I can’t see much, but it looks like we’re in an alley. Further ahead, I can see fences and lights glowing from inside nice-looking houses. It’s a good neighborhood.

“This is Jorik’s house? This is where you took my son?”

“Mychild,” Brigitte snaps. “And yes. You’ll be sad to know you let a good one go, Arya. Jorik is a wonderful father. So doting. So protective. For instance, he’s inside right now killing two people who were coming after our family.”

It takes me a second to wrap my mind around what she’s saying. Once I do, my heart drops.

Two people.

“Who?” I ask, not daring to face the truth. “What two people?”

Brigitte turns to me and grins, her teeth glinting in the overhead light. “You know who.”

Tears spring up in my eyes, but I blink them back. An hour ago, I never wanted to see Dima again. Now, I want nothing more than that.

I just want to know he’s alive.

“Jorik isn’t strong enough to fight Dima. He’s going to lose.”

“They don’t call him ‘The Butcher’ for nothing. Your man may be a don, but mine’s a killer.”

The Butcher?

My head is still aching like nothing I’ve ever experienced and there are too many facts floating around in my head.

Dima told me his brother asked him to kill someone named The Butcher. Dima said he didn’t know who the man was.

Could it be that it was a sick coincidence? A strange twist of fate that sent Dima into the very house where our son’s kidnapper was living? Where my ex-fiancé is living?

There were things Jorik never told me when we were dating. Questions I had that I was too afraid to ask.

One of them was what he was out doing at all hours of the night. In the darkest part of my mind, I thought he was cheating on me.

Now, I know the whole truth. He was dealing drugs—and killing people.

And I had no fucking idea.

Fear grips my chest in a vice, but I breathe through it and try to think. Dima is a fighter. I’ve seen him kill people. I know what he’s capable of.

And if Dima finds out the truth of who Jorik is—about what he has done—Jorik doesn’t stand a chance.

Someone just needs to tell Dima the truth.

Brigitte keeps talking to Lukas in the front seat. “Daddy’s taking care of the bad men inside, precious. He’ll be done soon.”

For Lukas’s sake, I hope Brigitte’s right. I hope hisrealfather is doing just that.

I wiggle my ankles together. I can feel the knot around my feet growing looser and looser the more I move.

As quietly as possible, I slide my ankles up and down and then forward and back, undoing the knot until it’s loose enough for me to kick my shoe off. Once I’m barefoot, I can slip right through.

Lukas starts to get fussy. Brigitte sets him in his car seat, which she’s moved to the front seat to accommodate me taking up the back seat. It’s perfect.

As soon as she sets Lukas down and turns to grab his bottle from the center console, I throw both my arms over the front of her seat and wrap the ties holding my wrists together around her neck.

Brigitte lets out a strangled, shocked cry. “You bitch—!”

But I pull back even harder, pressing my feet against the back of her seat for leverage.

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