Stolen By The Bratva King (NYC Russian Royals #2)

Chapter 52

52

One week later…

Leon

I ’ve slept on the floor for six nights in a row now.

The first night, I was so drunk that I crashed out, but I haven’t been able to sleep in my bed—our bed—since. Emery’s scent clings to the bedding, sweetly devastating, and although I could change the linen, I can’t bear to do it.

Neither can I stand to wake up and endure a hazy few seconds when I think she’s still beside me, so the lounge rug and I have become best friends.

Roman and Viktor won’t let me search for Emery. They know I’ll be popping heads off like daisies if I think people are holding out on me, leading to chaos.

As I suspected, the cameras in Emery’s apartment were pulled out, and the hospital ones didn’t show anything up either; I watched them a hundred times. Emery came in and went out of shot, and that was that.

Viktor showed the footage to every snitch he could find, and none could pick out a familiar face.

It’s like she evaporated. My beautiful wife, the woman who was always trying to disappear, finally got her wish.

I haul myself upright and bark out a painful laugh. Vodka doesn’t get me drunk, but whisky does, and although I hate it, I drank so much last night that Roman got in a row with me about it and poured the rest down the drain.

He’s now got a key to my apartment, but I drew the line at giving him my car key; he’s not my goddamn mother.

I could get more booze, but the thought of walking around and seeing people going about their lives makes me rage. Don’t they know Emery is missing, maybe dead?

Seven days. If this were a proper missing person case, the police would be expecting to find a body after this amount of time.

The cops are looking—unofficially. A few precincts would burn if they didn’t.

All these years, and I never wavered. Committed always to order, to a code of business that kept the underworld from descending into lawless mayhem.

To Hell with all that now; I’ll do whatever it takes to find my wife. If we get the tiniest glimpse of a lead, I’ll trample anyone and everyone to follow it, but it’s been days and nothing.

I have a whole bratva at my beck and call but nothing to point it at. All this might and resource, standing around and waiting for action.

Today is the worst day of the year, every year, so it’s quite the feat for it to be that much more horrendous this time around. I wasn’t going to go, but Roman insisted I fuck off out of the city, dry out, and get my head on straight, so I’m gonna take a drive.

I stumble to the bathroom and take the first shower in a week. Everything is an effort, my limbs heavy and sluggish, but by the time I’m ready to go, I look less like a man flirting with suicidal guilt. The bags under my eyes are like hammocks, but that’s the only clue I’m losing my sanity.

Emery is lost, and I’m nothing without her.

My uncle is quiet on the drive from the care home to the graveyard. Communication is such a laborious process for him, and I’m used to rambling and letting him listen, but today, he’s not just silent—he’s subdued, a chastened expression on the side of his face that can hold an expression at all.

My parents are buried beside the same church where they were married. I remember the funeral well; business partners and acquaintances shook my hand like I was a shareholder, but their children kept their distance like horrible tragedies might be contagious.

They all knew I shot a man to death, and no one ever looks at you the same after that. Part of the appeal of the bratva was that you’re rarely the only murderer in the room.

Thirty-six years ago today, my parents died. I cowered in a cupboard, too scared to save them. I blamed myself for years, and just when I was starting to heal and forgive myself, fate handed me my worst fear.

Now, my wife is gone, and I’m no closer to saving her either.

I couldn’t protect Emery. With all the might of the bratva at my disposal, somebody managed not only to take her but hide her successfully.

Realistically, this means there are two likely scenarios; she’s long gone from New York, or she’s dead. I can’t think of either possibility without becoming useless with rage and terror, so I block my mind from going there, but I can’t suppress it all the time.

Visiting the graves is a helpful distraction and a reminder of that first failure that colored my life forever.

It’s ten a.m. when we park up. I fold out the wheelchair and help Josef get settled. He’s getting thin, and I know the cold gets into his bones, so I tuck a thick blanket around him and put a beanie on his head.

“There, dyadya ,” I say. “Let’s do this. You feeling okay?”

Josef nods, but he’s looking past me, and I glance over my shoulder to see a man standing beside my parent’s headstones.

A flare of irritation prickles my skin. I sometimes come by in the summer and cut the grass on their plot, but this is the only day I always visit, rain or shine.

I don’t own my parents, dead or not, but I wish people would pay their respects on any of the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four day of the year.

I roll Josef along the path until we reach the spot. Pulling up alongside the man, he gives me and my uncle a cordial nod.

Josef stares. Then his face crumples and a keening wail escapes his throat—high, broken, like nothing I’ve ever heard.

“ Dyadya !” I crouch and look him over, holding his shoulder to steady him. “ Bozhe moy , what’s the matter?”

A rumbling sound reaches my ears, and I realize it’s the man behind me. What starts as a chuckle works up into a full-chested laugh, and I turn away from my uncle, rising to my feet?

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask. “Who are you anyway? Why are you here?”

The man points at Josef. “He knows. I swung by his place this morning when he was having his coffee in the garden, and he recognized me the second he saw me.”

He scowls. “Hello again, Josef. I look forward to visiting you here with your brother, but I kinda like you how you are.”

There’s something I’m not seeing.

This guy is older than me, but not by enough for me to be sure I could beat him in a fight. He’s stocky, with slicked-back dark hair and the kind of strength that isn’t apparent until he’s punching you in the face. I’ve seen men like him before.

“I asked who you were,” I say, standing in front of Josef. “How do you know my father and my uncle?”

“I know you , Leon.”

The stranger leans over my father’s grave to read the inscription. “‘Always remembered’. How sweet. I’m fucking insulted that you don’t remember me after all we went through.”

His posture gives me a flash of pain, like a glitched memory. I’ve seen this before, but it wasn’t to look at a grave.

It was to spit; I see it in my mind’s eye. But why?

Josef is trying to talk, choking on his words as he pulls at my jacket. The stranger before me straightens up and smiles, and an explosion powers through my mind.

It’s the moment I pulled the trigger and shot ? —

“Don Reggiani,” Josef says.