Page 7 of Fall into Savagery

Damien?

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She walked away from me and sat back down where she had been before I could say anything else.

I let out a small sigh and joined them in the living room, taking a seat on the lone recliner, facing them.

“The Blood Nation Sinners said they had a group of people walk out on them a couple of months ago.”

“How is that even fucking possible?” Mikhail asked with a sneer.

I shook my head. “Because the fucking shithead who runs the gang doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s compiling a list of names of the traitors with Maxim as we speak.” My eyes briefly went to Catalina, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze focused down on her lap, on her opened notebook. She had always been so expressive that I could guess what she was thinking most of the time. Not right now, though.

My jaw clenched, and I brought my eyes back to Mikhail. His expression mirrored my thoughts.

“You remember when Bianchi deployed that bomb at the bookstore to grab Catalina?” he asked.

I frowned. “What about it?”

“Something about that has been tugging on my mind ever since. I didn’t know why until this morning when I got the full police report. Here is a list of the materials they found on site that they believed were used to build the bomb.”

I glanced down at the list briefly when he handed his phone to me, but nothing on it made sense. I looked back up at him.

“What is this supposed to mean?”

Mikhail moved his eyes to Catalina when he spoke. “It’s the same materials Luca used when he was building weapons for the Solntsevskaya Bratva. The fucker really is a creature of habit.”

My heart thudded heavily in my chest at the implication. “No shit?”

Mikhail nodded. Catalina finally looked up at us, her eyes coming up to mine, pausing briefly before she turned to Mikhail and tugged on his shirt. He cupped her cheek, and it felt like there was a tight grip squeezing around my heart.

I rubbed my chest as Mikhail spoke to her. “You know what this means,kotyonok?”

She shook her head.

“It means,” I said, waiting until she turned her attention back to me, “we have a way in. We can find Luca.”

Her eyes widened at that, and something animated moved in them for the first time since I walked through the doors. It was brief, and she turned away from me before I could look at her fully, but I caught sight of it. The grip around my heart tightened.

“We’re going to leave tonight,” Mikhail said to her.

I wanted to protest. I wanted to tell Mikhail to leave her here with me. I didn’t want to be far from her, but fuck, how could I follow them when there was still much that needed to be done here in New York?

She cocked her head to the side. “We’re going to California. We’re going to pay a visit to your father.”

She took a deep breath, looking back down at her lap. Her long hair fell in curtains down both sides of her face, obscuring her from my view.

Then she nodded.

I let out a small breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

Mikhail looked at me, and for the first time in days, I didn’t feel so fucking helpless.

We were getting Damien back. No matter the fucking cost.

3

MIKHAIL

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