Chapter 8
EIGHT
ava
“What the fuck…?”
I stand in my apartment, jaw dropping as I look around. My heart slams hard, my hand slipping into my bag where I have Murphy’s gun. I wrap my clammy fingers tight around the handle.
The place is a mess.
As in it’s been completely ransacked.
Deliberately.
I make myself move through the debris. I ignore the bedroom and the kitchen and go into the bathroom. It smells like a soap store exploded in here.
There’s a smashed bottle of perfume that makes my insides contract, the sweet floral scent sickeningly strong in the air.
It stings my eyes and I blink hard as they blur, my throat suddenly scratchy.
I never wear it. But I like, in moments when I’m a little vulnerable or sad, to smell it when I lift the stopper.
My mother’s perfume. Gone.
I press my lips together and swallow hard.
I can buy another bottle.
Tiny shards of glass glitter on the floor, my bath salts and oils forming swirls on the tile. My makeup bag is emptied and all of the contents smashed to hell. I kneel down and reach around under the sink, knowing what I’ll find, and when I do, my heart still drops.
Nothing. There’s nothing taped to the underside of the vanity.
How…?
Does it even matter how? My money, my jewels. Everything is gone.
The few things I call mine. Gone.
I get up on shaky limbs, slowly moving into the bedroom.
That’s worse, in a way, because someone’s been through my underwear. Doesn’t look like any were taken, but still. I feel so violated. My pillows are slashed. And my clothes…
I’m sure I can cobble together a few outfits, but most of my dresses, coats, evening wear, and even my jeans are in pieces.
I grab on to the wall, my knees buckling. All I wanted was to get home, change, and take a long hot shower before my appointment with Dad’s lawyer. It’s been a handful of days since… since I left Seamus in that building, and Claudetta hasn’t returned my calls.
So unfortunately, my digging’s gotten me nowhere.
My mind races through possibilities to get answers.
The meeting request was unexpected but makes sense considering the fact that my uncle just died.
It probably has something to do with that.
Not that I was contacted when Dad and Elena died under suspicious circumstances, so hopefully this meeting will give me some clarity and direction about what the heck I should do next.
My lips press into a tight line as my memory trips back to the hot Murphy brother I skipped out on. I still have the business card I lifted off him. Weird that the guy had nothing else but that on him. And he doesn’t strike me as careless or messy.
Gritting my teeth, I kick through the shredded clothes, looking for something to wear.
This disaster area is probably the work of Iosif.
I pull out my phone and stab his number onto the screen, then sort clothes into piles of things I can wear and things I need to toss while I wait for him to answer.
My wearable pile is piteously small, but it’s bigger than I first thought.
It does zero to placate my anger.
Romanov picks up. “Ava—”
“Keep the fuck out of my life, Iosif!” I spit.
“Is that any way to speak to your future father-in-law? Leonid will be here in a few days, and when you marry him, you can see little Tatiana. I’ve booked the wedding for this coming Friday. Nine a.m.”
My stomach knots as acid surges in my throat. “I don’t want—”
“I don’t care what you want. I let you have freedom as long as you didn’t do anything stupid like steal the crest. Your uncle’s been dead for a week. Show some respect.”
“I barely even knew him.” The conversation spirals, and my pulse keeps leaping as greasy waves of nausea rock me.
“Family, Ava. Respect—”
“The way you respected me?” I clutch the gun. I don’t care that it’s a Murphy gun. It makes me feel better. Protected. “Breaking in, wrecking my apartment—”
“Ava,” he says, cutting through my rant. “Maybe you should come here. You shouldn’t be on your own.”
I let out a snort. “That’s what you want—”
“I don’t carry out cowardly acts. You just told me someone broke into your place. So we should err on the side of caution. I’ll send a car. With Volkov leadership unclaimed, someone might want all heirs gone to pave the way for a new leader. I can protect you. I can—”
I hang up.
Protect me. He’s so full of shit.
My heart’s in my throat as I paw through my closet, finding some salvageable things. I grab my backup hard drive—my laptop is smashed on the floor. Luckily, there’s nothing on it, just photos, and they’re saved on the drive and in the cloud.
I throw everything into a bag, and then I get the hell out.
I need to get to Launceston Law offices, and then I need a plan of action.
One that doesn’t involve marrying Leonid Romanov.
James Launceston, Dad’s lawyer, stares at me from behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“Don’t,” I say, “ask.”
I shift under his curious gaze, dressed in a femme fatale-style suit in red, the only respectable-type outfit I could find in the apartment mess.
I paired it with a black patent leather handbag that I found buried in the back of my closet.
Before heading to the law office, I stored my big bucket bag in a storage locker near Penn Station.
It has everything from my apartment that wasn’t completely destroyed, including the gun and some clothes.
He holds up his hands. “First, condolences on your uncle’s passing, but this meeting is regarding your father’s will.
Right now, Volkov Shipping doesn’t have a president.
Non-family members can petition in a year to take that position if there are no family members available to take over.
It’s my duty to let you know since you’re not twenty-five years old yet, you can take control for that year if you’re married, and your husband can run it with your help.
If you do marry, you have two weeks to do so. ”
I grip the arms of the chair.
Two weeks?
Thoughts of my life with the boring Leonid claw at my brain. I could— No, fuck no, I couldn’t. Because there’s no way Romanov would let me rule Volkov, and he would never accept a divorce.
“I have a marriage offer,” I say slowly. “How long do we need to stay together?”
“Good,” he says, “good. Take the offer. Twelve months will be enough, but the marriage needs to be real. You need to consummate it, live together, the whole deal. For optics.”
“You’re coming to inspect the marital bed?”
He gestures for me to sit, but I remain standing, so he rises up from his desk, the will in his hands.
“No, I won’t do that. The will says you need to be married for twelve months, but you have to convince others you’re in love, that you want to carry on the family line.”
I hear what he’s saying. He’ll accept that any marriage I enter into is real. We both know most, if not all, mafia marriages are until death do us part, but if something happens and it dissolves after twelve months, it will count. I just have to live with someone.
Then make those in the bratva and those hovering around it believe in that marriage.
But I’m not marrying Leonid.
Launceston holds out the will and I take it.
My hands tremble slightly as I skim over the black print, the legalese making my temples pound.
The clause is right there in front of me.
If I’m not twenty-five, not married, and Dad’s gone, marriage is the only way I get control.
I don’t see mention of the crest, but… that doesn’t matter.
I need a husband.
The business card from Murphy is tucked away in my black patent leather bag.
A crazy plan starts to form in the fog of my desperation.
And if I can pull it off, maybe I can kill all the birds with the one stone.
An hour later, I get a text back from the number on the business card. I gape at it in shock, my heart rocketing into overdrive.
Nine p.m. Tonight. Second floor. Don’t be late. 9653
Those last numbers… A code, it has to be a door code.
I check the time. It’s still early, and I don’t want to go home to my mess of an apartment.
I have a part-time job at one of the last diners in Manhattan.
It’s open twenty-four hours a day, and the pay is crap, but I manage to scrape by between the pittance of a salary and the monthly payments from the trust Mama set up for me.
And some occasional thievery.
I get nothing from Volkov and nothing from Dad. Everything goes to Romanov for Tatiana’s care. Sure, I should get my share, but as her guardian, he’s manipulated the terms of the inheritance to mean I don’t see a dime unless I do what he wants.
So thievery it is, and I’m good at it. Men don’t pay attention that they are being pickpocketed when a girl is pretty and wears a tight dress.
I call to cancel my shift for tonight and arrange to meet Maria at a small coffee shop in Chelsea.
The hairs on my arms stand on end as I hurry to our meeting spot, unable to shake the feeling of being watched.
But anytime I turn to glance over my shoulder, nobody suspicious is tailing me or watching.
Just regular people going about their business.
How the hell do I feel so alone and vulnerable in such a crowded city?
When I arrive at the coffee shop, she’s already waiting. She’s pretty and under her long-sleeve flowery dress, no one would guess she’s a fighter. I mean, aside from the bruise and scrape on her cheek.
She flips her long blue-streaked ponytail over one shoulder and stands up, holding out a cup. “Walk and talk?”
I prefer it to sitting, feeling less like a target if I’m on the move. We head to the High Line and she just listens to the carefully sanitized version of my story.
“Man, Ava, I don’t know what the real tale is here, and I’m not sure I want to. We’ve all got our own shit, y’know? But you really want that kind of life where you’re always looking over your shoulder?”
“I do. And I need your help to get it.”
I desperately want a way to secure my future, my birthright. My bratva. And I’ll do almost anything to take control of it.
Except marry Leonid. It’s too much of a tie to Romanov. Too much of a gift I fear he wants. Total control.
She sighs. “Fine. I’ll meet you at eight forty tonight, on the east side of the park near Sixty-Ninth.”
Scared isn’t an emotion I allow myself to feel.
I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen, since Mama was killed… murdered. Losing her sent Dad into a tailspin.
I hunted the man who killed her, some lowlife who wanted to use Volkov and Dad said no.
I found him, seduced him, and shot him dead. Badly. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I somehow managed it. I never let myself feel fear. The entire time. Just motivation and purpose.
But I did feel abandoned and alone because of what this bastard took from us, and the fact that I never really got my father back, not even after he met Elena.
Dad might have cared for Elena, but it was a marriage that reeked of convenience, and he’d clocked out emotionally after Mama’s death. His spirit left with her.
And nothing feels lonelier than when you live with people who either aren’t present or just treat you like a stranger passing through.
Elena did that. I don’t blame her, but marrying a man with an eighteen-year-old daughter wasn’t her thing. She was probably nineteen or twenty when they married. And close to Romanov. Tatiana was everything to her, for as brief a time as they had together.
I wasn’t scared when I confronted Mama’s killer. I wasn’t scared when Dad and Elena died. Or when Stan did. I was angry, though.
So fucking angry.
My hatred for Seamus Murphy has fueled me, and it’s going to continue fueling me through this, too, because the Murphys are the perfect family for me to use.
But I won’t lie. I’m fucking scared right now while I loiter outside the sex club, Silk and Leather.
It’s a high-end place because the people I’ve seen turn up are dressed to the nines like they’re going to a fancy dinner party.
Each time the door opens, warm light casts a glow on the stairs, soft and inviting, and a man in a tuxedo greets all who enter.
But I’m not here for what happens behind closed doors.
I take a breath, that feeling of being watched still hovering over me like an ominous cloud I can’t seem to escape.
I duck my head to hide my bruised and bloody lip, courtesy of Maria’s fist. I needed to show up here looking like I was desperate for protection, so she did me a solid right before I was set to show up at the address on the card.
I cross the road and look for a side door.
When I find it, I see the keypad and punch in the number texted to me.
A dark set of stairs leads upward. I grab on to the railing and slowly ascend, my heart thrashing in my chest with each step I take.
One foot in front of the other.
Heat creeps up the sides of my neck and floods my cheeks.
There’s another keypad at the top of the stairs. I punch in the number again and the door opens to an expansive grand room. I walk through it, past the art on the walls, the sofas and chairs and coffee tables, and I look around.
There are a couple more doors, and for a moment, I’m flummoxed.
No keypads. Just old-fashioned locks. I look down, all the gaps between doors and floor are dark. Except for one.
I go to the door with the golden sliver of light streaming out from under it.
A shudder runs through me as I palm the gun and knife in my bag to give me a sliver of confidence. I let out an unsteady breath and look at my phone.
It’s eight fifty-nine.
I knock.
Footsteps cross a softly creaking floor.
My heart leaps into my mouth.
If this is Seamus, then… then I’ll kill him.
But no, I know I won’t. Not if I want my bratva. Not if I want to stay out of the clutches of Iosif.
The lock turns. Metal against metal.
The door finally opens and my vision wavers. I grab on to the wall next to me.
It’s him.
Of course it’s him.
His smile is a slow burn fire.
“Hello, sweet thing.”