Chapter 19 #2
From the room, a distinctly Russian voice cries out, “I will saw off your balls with a butter knife, boil them while you watch, and then feed them to pigs.”
“Charming, isn’t she?” Scorpion asks, unperturbed.
“Scorpion,” Alessio says, his tone filled with warning.
“What?” His brother’s tone is carefully innocent.
More shrieks follow from the room.
Alessio sighs and presses his fingers to his temples like he’s staving off a headache. “Tell me that’s not the Sidorov sister I just heard threatening to castrate you with a butter knife.”
“I would tell you that if I could,” Scorpion hedges, not looking sorry at all. “But I can’t.”
“You brought the sister here?” Alessio demands, his voice booming.
“Yup.”
“To our fucking safe house?”
Scorpion nods again. “Yup.”
Alessio taps the side of his brother’s head. “Is there anything fucking in here? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with me is that those Russian bastards blew up our fucking restaurant,” Scorpion says, his face going expressionless. “They’ve been following your woman around, and then they handcuffed her to your bed like she was a criminal.”
I’m drinking all this in as it unfolds, so overwhelmed that I miss part of what he just said.
I thought it sounded a whole lot like Scorpion called me Alessio’s woman.
Which, of course, I’m not. He must have said something else.
Besides, I wouldn’t even want to be referred to that way.
I’m my own woman, thank you very much. Even if the most primitive part of me secretly finds it a little thrilling to be called Alessio’s, I’ll never admit it out loud.
“She’s not my woman,” Alessio growls, shattering any illusion I might have had that he was catching feelings for me.
I don’t want that anyway.
I don’t fit into this insane world of theirs. Of his. I’m a professor. I wasn’t built for a life of crime. For evading police and enemies and hiding in underground Mafia bunkers.
“If you say so,” Scorpion says. “Look, they’ve been fucking with us. They deserve everything that’s coming to them and more.”
He’s talking about the Bratva.
The woman who’s locked in the room begins shouting obscenities, her English blending into Russian, which is just as well because none of the words I can understand are particularly nice.
“We don’t involve women and children,” Alessio is telling his brother. “You know the fucking rules.”
“I know those were the rules,” Scorpion concedes. “Until they came after Isla.”
“She’s not a member of the family.” Alessio downgrades me even further.
I try not to allow that barb to find its way into my heart. It’s pointless anyway, feeling bad about it. Alessio is only speaking the truth. I don’t belong here. I know it, and he knows it. But somehow, it stings anyway.
“She is family to Luna,” his brother counters, “and that means she is to us too. The Russians know this. That’s why they were using her to get to us. They started this war, and now I’m going to fucking finish it.”
“What are we going to do with the sister?” Alessio demands. “We can’t keep her here.”
“I’m getting a place ready. It’s upstate, and no one’s going to find us there.”
“But what are your plans for her after that?”
There’s steel in Alessio’s voice, the bite of warning.
Scorpion flicks a glance in my direction. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Alessio looks at me. “Isla, want to get Cid situated in the laundry room? It’s the third door down, on the left. Should be food and water stocked in there, his bed, his bowls, the whole deal.”
He doesn’t want me to witness this. I’m being dismissed. I’m good enough for his bed but not part of the family. Not trusted with their secrets.
To be fair, I guess if I overheard something and was called to testify against them, I’d have no choice but to do so. He’s only protecting the family. Maybe even me. But I’m still feeling raw.
“Fine,” I say tightly and go back to where I left poor Cid abandoned in his carrier after I heard the screams.
He rubs his face against the mesh on the front flap and offers me a loud meow of protest as I approach.
“Hey there, little guy.” I scoop up his carrier and go in search of the laundry room as Alessio and Scorpion continue arguing.
True to his word, Alessio has made sure the laundry room is stocked with all Cid’s necessities.
The litter box is already set up. There’s a scratching post and his favorite stacked tower with colorful balls that he loves batting in circles.
I unzip his carrier and he shoots out, relieved to be free.
I can’t blame him, but little does he know, this place isn’t exactly freedom. It’s more like a prison.
“Home sweet home for now,” I tell him, giving his head a gentle scratch.
He’s soft and fluffy, and he instantly starts to purr.
At least I have someone here who values me, even if he’s only eight pounds and a foot tall.
I’m trying to keep my panic at a minimum.
But now that I’m finally here, in the last place I wanted to be, surrounded by walls and no windows, the tightness in my chest is starting to grow.
On the way here, I was still in shock over everything that went down.
But now that the dust is settling—with the notable exception of the screaming Russian captive—I can’t keep my mind off the fact that I’m locked underground.
The more I try to focus on something else, the more persistent my uncomfortable awareness is.
I feel trapped.
Old panic resurges.
I tell myself I’m going to fight it off. That I can control the anxiety, the panic. Taking a deep breath, I pick up Cid’s bowls. He’s accustomed to them being in the kitchen. I want to make everything as normal as possible for him, because God knows I can’t do that for myself.
But the panic is strong, clawing at my throat. As I make my way back down the hall, my vision is getting darker around the edges, until it’s as if I’m walking down a tunnel. Blood roars in my ears. My heart pounds, and my mouth is dry.
Somehow, I manage to fill Cid’s bowl with spring water and get him his food.
He instantly starts to devour it, and maybe it’s the fact that I can’t stop thinking about how I’m now inhabiting a windowless space, that I’m God knows how many stories underground.
Or maybe it’s the poor Russian woman whose muffled outrage is still reaching me from down the hall.
Could be the hell I went through earlier today—waking up helpless to a psychotic Bratva intruder, the bomb that went off…
God. It’s all so messed up.
I’m not sure which one of these things triggers me. All I do know is that the band around my chest is tightening. The pressure is painful, and it’s official. Whatever the source, I’m having another panic attack.
I slump onto the floor, put my head between my knees, and try to breathe.
Saint
By the time I finish with Scorpion and go off in search of Isla, I find her curled up on the floor of the kitchen. Shit. Seeing her like this hits me the same way as seeing her naked and handcuffed to my bed, knowing she was at another man’s mercy, did.
I can’t fucking stand it.
Instantly, I’m hunkering down at her side, running my hand up and down her spine in slow, calming motions. “Another panic attack?”
She keeps her head bowed, not looking at me. “I’m fine.”
Her voice is muffled, but I can hear that she’s upset.
And she’s obviously not fine, so I settle onto my ass on the hard floor and pull her into my lap.
She protests with a squeak, but I ignore that.
I’m not going to let her suffer on her own.
I caused this shit by dragging her to my apartment and leaving her there, thinking she’d be safe.
I let down my guard too much. My men weren’t prepared.
I’m failing the family, failing Priest, and now I’ve failed Isla too.
“What are you doing?” she asks, still refusing to look at me.
“Holding you,” I tell her gruffly.
I’m not used to being this way. Not used to caring about anyone or anything other than the family and the empire we’ve built. She makes me feel things I’ve never felt before and I don’t fucking like it, but we’ve gone too far for me to undo what’s between us now.
She sighs, and I think she might start to fight, but instead, she curls into my chest like she’s surrendering. I hope it’s that she feels safe here in my arms and not that she’s given up on being a stubborn badass. We haven’t had much chance to unpack everything that happened today.
“Just breathe, tesoro,” I tell her, holding her close, inhaling her scent, absorbing her warmth.
Not much rattles me after everything I’ve been through, after the things I’ve had to do and see.
But today sure as fuck did. It’s still sinking into my brain that our restaurant is gone.
And we have to make a battle plan for how we’re going to deal with the Bratva moving forward.
Scorpion’s latest acquisition makes the stakes all the higher.
He fucking kidnapped the Pakhan’s sister.
We’ll be lucky if Priest doesn’t kill us both when he gets back. That is, if the Russians don’t get their hands on us first. I’ll go down in a hail of bullets and blood if need be. I’m an Andriani to the end. But I’ve got to do everything in my power to keep Isla out of this war.
There’s a whole hell of a lot on my shoulders, weighing on me.
“You’re not going to kill her, are you?” she asks, her voice quiet.
I realize she’s talking about Ekaterina Sidorov, who’s still wailing like a banshee from another room while Scorpion gets the supplies for a stay at his cabin upstate sorted with some of our men.
“I’m not going to, no,” I say honestly.
The truth is, I don’t know what my brother has planned for her. I didn’t ask.
“But what about Scorpion?”
“He’ll do whatever he has to do,” I say instead of giving her a real answer.
She stiffens, her head shooting up. “He’s going to murder that poor woman?”