Chapter 36 Gabi
GABI
I have an arm around Milana’s waist. She’s trembling so much, it feels like her legs are going to buckle. It’s a wonder she can walk at all.
She’s in shock.
In her room, she collapses on her bed and smothers a wail in her pillow. It’s as if her heart is being wrenched from her chest and she can feel every tug, tear, and rip of muscle and flesh.
“Milana—” I start, not knowing what to do as she curls into a ball, crunching the envelope to her stomach. “Let me help you. Please.”
She’s showered. Her bed is made. The window is slightly open to let in fresh air. This morning, she woke up with hope, having me cornered with my secret, and now this…
I reach for the envelope, expecting her to cling tighter, but she lets go and curls into an even smaller question mark of broken human. I sit and rest my hand on her back, waiting a moment. “May I?”
“Yes,” she whispers between sobs. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I just can’t—”
To think last night I slipped out of character, broke my rules, and gave Milana the sword she’s holding over my head.
Now she’s here, gutting herself open for me, so desperate she doesn’t care it’s me, a woman she accused of being a spy, here to traffic the girls.
I didn’t realize she was this desperate, but to just have a fraction of the hold on her that she has on me could flip my situation completely.
“It’s okay,” I say, not really feeling smug about the situation. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
She grips my arm, squeezing hard, her eyes begging. “Promise me, promise me you won’t tell anybody.”
I nod, but curse in my head. Until I know what it is, it would be stupid to make promises.
“Say it,” she urges, digging her nails into my skin, her other hand on the envelope.
Seconds pass, in which I grapple with the need to have a hold on her, if just to save myself. And then my past crumbles down on me like a pile of bricks and I close my eyes. Women need to stand together; how else do we survive this brutal world of men? “I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
I wait for her to jerk the envelope away again, but instead she lets go, slumps back, and cups her hands over her mouth.
The room becomes painfully quiet, both of us holding our breaths as I pull a photo from the envelope. My heart chills. My pulse thumps in my temple. My stomach twists into a fist.
I pull the other photo out, and it’s similar, a different image, but a close-up.
The intent is clear. I glance at Milana, at her face, at her sky-blue eyes swimming with tears.
I look at the photo again, the background, the signs in the shop windows, the cars, the people.
These photos weren’t taken here. They were taken in Russia.
This is so much more than me speaking a measly bit of Russian. This is a ticking time bomb.
“This is why you need to go back to Russia,” I say, my voice bland in shock. “Is this yours?” It’s the last thing I expected. She has left something behind.
She nods, struggling to sit up. “Nobody knows. Please, Gabi, we need to burn these.”
“Nobody knows? But Ivan said there were three more envelopes.”
“Of photos that were online. Those”—she points at the envelope—“are different. And nobody knows about it.”
How is this even possible? I’m stunned. “Not even Ivan?”
She shakes her head.
“Yuri?”
“Nobody.”
“How?”
She just stares at me. “It’s complicated. I—they can never know, okay?” She clutches my fingers in such a desperate grip, I almost flinch, but I bite down on the pain and let her. “You don’t understand the consequences—”
“Someone knows, Milana.” And whoever it is, they’re blackmailing her. “Do you know who sent these?”
She sucks her lips, trying to stop the tears. “The Chertnikov Bratva is behind it.”
Deep inside me, a tremor of recognition hits like a little earthquake. I’m not even sure it happened. But that name— “Who?”
“The Chertnikov Bratva. It’s a big crime ring, from Russia. They run drug rings, smuggling, weapons, people, you name it, sex trafficking.”
“Where? Surely not here?”
“Russia. The whole of Europe and everything in between. They wanted to infiltrate, hijack, the Petrov Bratva’s operations. They want—” She wipes at her cheek and sniffs. “They want our infrastructure, to use our distribution network for whatever they’re doing.”
“Surely, the Petrov Bratva, just like Il Consiglio, isn’t into…
” I circle my hand in the air, not finding the words for what I’ve experienced firsthand.
Now I’m trembling, too. What do I even know about all this?
It’s not as if I know what my brothers are doing to earn their millions, but what if they are into—into— “Human trafficking? Sex trafficking? Of girls?”
“No, never. It’s never been a Petrov thing. My dad, our Pakhan, his thing has always been weapons, tech, importing from Russia but also getting things into Russia around sanctions—”
At least it isn’t the depravity this other group is involved in, but given what they know, given these photos, they know too much.
Now I understand her desperation to get out and back to Russia.
The horror of her situation is an echo of my own so long ago, and there’s nothing for it: any plan for escape I might hatch, I need to hatch for two.
And we can leave no trail. “How do you get out?”
How do we get out? How does one caged bird set another caged bird free?
Milana stares at me, and in her eyes, I see the cool, calm, calculating Russian she’s warned me Ivan really is. This is how fast she is, quick on her feet, unlike me, cautious, ready to run, but floundering.
She already has a plan.