Page 98 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

My bark of laughter cut him off. “Nobody in this room is pressing charges.”

Dmitri Lebedev made his way over to us, watching Liam and Cormac with caution. They’d fucked him up four years before, when they thought the Bratva had kidnapped Ginevra. He tossed Cormac a cracked phone. “One of them dropped this.”

A cop tried to intercept it as it flew through the air, only for Cormac to snatch it right before it landed in the cop’s fingers. “I don’t think so,” Cormac snapped.

“That’s evidence,” the cop said, glaring.

“No crimes were committed here,” Dmitri said, his thick Russian accent cutting to the heart of the problem.

“Plenty of crimes were committed here,” the cop argued.

“No crimes that anyone in this city is going to prosecute,” Dmitri continued. “But thank you for checking on us.”

I tried to hold in my smile as Dmitri dismissed the cop and walked him to the door, nodding his head along the way as if he were expressing profound gratitude. The ballroom was clearing out as the injured made their way out, leaving only the heads of families and their security standing there, each of us intent on our own investigations.

“Is anyone else missing?” I asked quietly. “Or were Patti and Lizzie the only ones they took?”

“So far, only Patti and Lizzie,” Liam said. “When the explosions started and the lights went out, they moved through the room, grabbed Patti, and left. Sergio and the Costas disappeared at the same time.”

Tony’s voice rose as he shouted his rage. “I want you to burn this fucking city down until you find my wife and my granddaughter!”

He stared down the other patriarchs in the room, who looked at him with sympathy, amusement, wariness. “We don’t touch families,” he shouted. “That’s always been our way. Why the fuck won’t you leave mine alone?”

He fingered the gun at his hip, as if he were about to take his fury out on the rest of the room. “When the Russians stole Ginevra, I destroyed them, and it took them a decade to recover. When Alexi and Yuri took her from me again, they died. When Sergio took Sofia from me, we burned down Costa territory, and they were afraid to show their faces until fuckingtonight! And when I find Gio Costa, I will burn his house to the ground. I will destroy his child, his mistress, and his bastards. I will lay waste to everything heholds dear, and I will make him watch. And then I will string him up by his intestines and let him die a slow and agonizing death, alone.”

We wouldn’t find any clues about the disappearances here. “Let me know what you find,” I barked at Cormac before striding out of the ballroom and into the melee of emergency vehicles and sobbing partygoers outside.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The cops wanted to interview me, the paramedics wanted to check me out, and all I wanted to do was call a fucking cab and get to the O’Conner’s so I could supervise the investigation there.

Dmitri Lebedev pulled up in a large SUV. “Want a ride?”

I looked at him with suspicion. Prior to my departure from Tony’s service, Dmitri had been my equivalent in the Bratva, as their enforcer and head of security. I guess he still was, since, apparently, I was enforcing for Sofia and Dante now. The thought brought a smile to my lips.

“I’m going to the O’Conner house.”

He nodded. “Get in.”

I climbed into the passenger seat, and he took off.

“I hear they grabbed Sofia’s kid too,” he said, his voice soft with sympathy. “Anything we can do to help, let me know.”

“Are you offering for yourself, or the Bratva?”

Dmitri’s eyes cut over to me with surprise. “The Bratva. Nikolai has always ruthlessly punished those in his organization who touch family members. And he likes Sofia. She’s charming.”

“That she is,” I agreed.

Smoke poured from the O’Conner house as we approached it. Despite the men swarming it in tactical gear, the eerie silence struck fear deep into my heart. Thiswas too well planned for Sergio to have pulled it off himself.

Carefully pickingmy way through the wreckage of the house, I waved down Tommaso.

He ran his hands over his head, his expression bleak. “This was a massacre. Over a dozen men dead—the nanny, too. And—” he scrubbed his face. “And José.”

Fuck. José was good people.

“What else did you find?”

---