Chapter 28
Bones
A sickening crack to my right caused my head to snap in that direction just in time to see Indi crumple to the ground. “ Te voy a matarte, carajo ,” I snarled. I would fucking kill them, all these perros who thought they could attack my family, my home. My right hand was cradled to my chest, something in my arm most likely broken from the blow that knocked my gun from my hand. Indi and I had managed to kill two of the five men, and I wished viciously that we could have killed more of them in the minutes since the power had gone out. This attack had to have been planned ahead for some time. Somehow they knew that the compound would be virtually empty…something that rarely ever happened.
“Leave him,” the man behind me says in a bored tone. “We just need the girl.”
“Fuck that,” snarled the man who I’d shot in the chest. I'd have aimed for his head if I had known they were all wearing bulletproof vests. An exit wound would have improved his looks greatly in my opinion. “This asshole killed Chains. He’s coming with us, and I’m going to take my time making him my bitch .” The goon next to him snickered.
“Sorry, cabron , you’re not my type. It’s really inappropriate to flirt on the job, you know. Keep that shit up, and they’ll have you down in HR.” I blamed the pain in my arm and Indigo’s bad influence, but I just didn’t have it in me to cower to these fuckers. They’d have to kill me if they wanted to take Indi off this property, and if I was going to die, I might as well do it with a snarky fuckin’ attitude. A sinister chuckle came from behind me, along with an uncomfortably familiar sound.
Snick. Flick. Snick.
Snick. Flick. Snick.
Pyro waltzed around the corner of the clubhouse, bloody hands playing with that goddamn silver lighter.
“Bring him.” Snick. The lighter opened. Flick . Flame ignited. Snick . The lighter lid flipped closed, extinguishing the light illuminating Pyro’s sinister face. His hands and shirt were splattered with blood, and I wondered which of my brothers…or God forbid, the women, he had hurt. My mind instantly flashed to a mass of dark, curly hair and kind eyes. Dios mio , please don’t let it be Lennon. Not her. Not my gatita .
“You’re dead,” I hissed out between clenched teeth, earning a kick from behind me that brought me to my knees. “You’re fuckin’ dead, Pyro. My brothers will annihilate you.”
Pyro sneered, hatred and resentment twisting his face, making him look even more like a rodent than usual.
“The Callahans have offered a huge payday for delivery of this little bitch.” Pyro kicked Indi where she lay, causing me to roar in fury as I tried to lunge for the piece of trash masquerading as a Crow. “Killing you will just be a fun bonus. As for your brothers ,” Pyro sniggered and spit in my face, “they can come at me. I have a much better crew at my back now, motherfucker.”
“Jesus, enough monologuing,” the man behind me drawled in a bored tone. The last thing I heard was his baton's whooshing sound as it cut through the air on its way to my head, and then, darkness.
Priest
“ Amigos , pleasure doing business with you,” Selina Alvarez purred as she strutted away. The weapons we’d be running were already loaded onto our truck, and money had exchanged hands. The only thing left for us to do was get our cargo to its destination. Some of the weapons would make their way into Los Cuervos’ armories. The rest would be sold, and the money funneled into our coffers. Bard had done an excellent job managing his first exchange with the Alvarez Cartel, and I could tell Sticks was pleased with the decision he’d made in naming Bard his successor. As I helped slide the last crate onto the truck, I stretched out my lower back with a groan. Twelve hours in the saddle followed by an arms deal left a man with some serious tension.
“I look forward to doing business with you in the future, senorita,” Bard drawled, snapping the tailgate of the covered truck into place. With a whistle, Selina Alvarez summoned the contingent of men she traveled with, and they silently slipped back over the border and into Mexico. She never acknowledged Bard’s words, but the sly smile on her face was almost feline.
“Flirt on your own time, motherfucker. Some of us want to get this shit show on the road,” Sticks barked. The roar of several motorcycles starting at the same time drowned out Bard’s retort. For the fiftieth time today, I checked my phone, hoping for a message from Clover at the least or a text from Indi at most. I was a fuckin’ simp checking my phone any time I had a spare moment. I’d been tense all day, and I couldn’t put a finger on why.
On Bard’s signal, we all pulled into formation and drove off, heading northeast toward our chapter house in Cedar City, Utah. The cool night air whipped around my head as I rode, thoughts of the future of our club and one psychotic blonde cavorting in my mind and filling the monotonous highway miles between here and there. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket sometime after midnight, and I flashed my bike’s headlight, signaling my need for a pit stop. At a random Love’s Travel Stop in Flagstaff, Arizona, our convoy stopped so I could check my messages and we could refuel.
As soon as we parked, I slid my phone out of my pocket and saw I had a text from Clover.
Clover : Did you know they made a Tiger King 2? AND a doc about Doc Antle? That guy gives major cult daddy vibes.
I ground my teeth together and hit “call.” I was exhausted and hardly in the mood to wade through any quirky banter to get to the information I had been waiting on.
“Clover’s Crematorium: You kill ’em, we grill ’em. How may I help you?” Jesus Christ, this woman was going to be the end of me, I swear to God.
“Clover, please tell me there was a reason completely unrelated to exotic animal exploitation for you to text me this late.”
A chuckle bubbled out of Clover. “You’re so old. My night is barely getting started. I mean, I know you’re almost thirty, but damn. You know, they make supplements to help with stamina if that’s a concern for you.”
“Clover, for the love of God, please get to the point.”
Clover sighed faintly, which was another red flag. Clover reminded me of Ellis in a way. She took a little sister’s delight in giving me irritating news. Only when a situation was truly messed up would she tap dance around the truth like this. Otherwise, she found sadistic glee in getting on my last damn nerve. If she was reluctant to share something, I knew it had to be significant.
“Look… okay. When I investigated the Petrovs, I didn’t find anything you wouldn’t expect to—basic mafia underground kind of bullshit. I dug deep, Priest. Initially, on paper, they’re like every other crime family within the Russian syndicate.”
“Okay,” I snapped, irritated. I pinched the bridge of my nose, a tension headache settling in.
“With one exception,” Clover murmured. My fingers fell away from my face, and I slowly rose to my full height. The same feeling had given me goose bumps at Clover’s words before slithering over me.
“What exception?” I asked, my voice deceptively calm.
“It would seem that in the last two decades, the Petrov bratva has—inconspicuously, mind you—singled themselves out within the Russian human trafficking network.”
My jaw ticked as I clenched my molars together and resisted the urge to grind my teeth in frustration. “How so?” I swear to God, if she told me they were somehow worse than the scum of the earth and had found a way to make the flesh trade even more monstrous than it already was, I’d lose my goddamned mind.
“They—” Clover was cut off by the hideous blaring of a truly obnoxious siren.
“Oh shit—” she muttered, the clicking of keys muted by the noise of the alarm.
“Clover, what the fuck is going on?” I yelled into my phone helplessly.
“I set up a perimeter alarm on your compound when you told me you’d be running the Alvarez job. It’s standard procedure to up security features on our system for compounds when there’s a sensitive job. My system immediately tried to patch into your network to check the cameras and see what set off the alarm.” Clover swallowed audibly. “The power at the compound has been cut, but whoever tampered with the system didn’t know I’d installed a failsafe in the security network. The cameras are still active. Priest…someone’s there.”
Riordan
My father’s face, adorned with a halo of cigar smoke, filled the screen of my phone.
“When I sent you to Nevada, it was with the understanding that you would be making my life easier, Riordan Mikhailovich. This is not fuckin’ that!”
“ Otets—”
“Don’t you otets me! Your mother has had one phone call since you moved! One! Do you know how many times I’ve been bitched at because you can’t take five minutes out of your goddamn schedule to make a fucking phone call?” My father, pakhan of the Petrov bratva , made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. In any context but this one, that sound would indicate an imminent display of gratuitous violence. In this instance, it spoke to his desperation to stay on the good side of his wife—my mother.
“I’m sorry, otets …I’ve been really busy getting The Goldfinch in hand and settling into the Nevada scene. I promise, I’ll call more often, and I’ll make it up to Mom.”
My dad huffed. “You better make this shit up to me. I had to take your mother salsa dancing to get her mind off the fact that her only son ghosted her. Salsa dancing , Ri. You. Owe. Me.”The love-drunk look in his eyes completely belied my father’s indignant tone. Mikhail and Cara Petrov might be opposites, but they’d been madly in love for well over twenty-five years.
A text notification from Ivan, my best friend and second-in-command, scrolled across my screen, but I swiped it away. My mother walked up behind my father, arms wrapping around his shoulders as she tipped his phone so the camera settled on her.
“Oh, Mikhail! Alert the press! Riordan Petrov is, in fact, among the living. How’s Nevada treating ya, boyo?” My mother tucked her sandy-brown hair behind her ear with one hand and shot me an indignant look.
“Mom—”
“No! The only excuse for neglecting to call is if you’re dead. Did you die?”
Another text notification from Ivan flashed across my screen, and I swiped it away in annoyance.
“Mom, I swear I’m not dead. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve just been so busy…”
I didn’t want to tell her what I’d been busy with. I was an excellent liar. Calculation flowed in my blood just as strongly as my love of good vodka and beautiful women. However, I never quite mastered the art of lying to my mother. I learned long ago to only answer her exact question and not volunteer any additional information. Ever. The woman was like a bloodhound.
A call from Ivan scrolled across my screen, and I declined it with a frown. Something must be happening for him to message and then call me in such rapid succession.
“Hey, Mom, I’m getting a call I need to take. I promise I’ll call on Sunday and arrange a visit soon, but I have to get this. I love you.”
My mother sighed, leaning farther into my father. She kissed his cheek and leaned back, wiping her lipstick print off his cheek with her thumb while he grinned up at her. For a moment, their eyes locked, and the look of pure adoration that passed between them was so intense I had to avert my eyes. I could only hope that one day I could share a look even half that profound with another human being.
“Stay safe, Son,” my father said before ending the call. I heaved a sigh before I found Ivan’s messages. Two texts to call him ASAP paired with the call I’d declined caused a sinking feeling to settle in my gut. I hit Ivan’s contact info and dialed his number. I held my breath as the phone rang, only releasing it when I could hear his voice on the other line.
“Ri, it’s him. He made contact again— ”
“You don’t mean…”
“Yeah, Nicodemus. He sent me a message through the Astraea platform.” Astraea was a platform on the dark web, one we utilized for a singular purpose, and if our mysterious contact there had sent us an SOS, shit had seriously hit the fan.
I swallowed. Fuck . “And?” I found myself crossing my fingers like a child.
“He said there’s been chatter. Someone found her…”
Someone found her . Fuck. I abruptly ended the call, scrolling through my contacts until I found Indigo’s name in my phone. My finger tapped the screen, and I listened while the phone rang and rang and rang. Come on, lisichka. Answer. I called three times, each call ringing through until her voicemail picked up. I called Ivan back, and the connection clicked instantly, like he had been staring at his phone, waiting for the call.
“Get a security detail together, Ivan,” I demanded gruffly. “I’m heading to the Crows’ compound now. We have to warn them.”
I could only pray for Los Cuervos’ sake that I got there before his men did. The Beast of Boston had found her. Dread crept into my heart. The inability to stop once the hunt was on was fundamentally coded into my DNA, and it was this trait that linked me to a man I wholly loathed—my uncle Roark Callahan. If he had Indigo in his sights, he wouldn’t stop until he had captured or killed her. I strode out of my private entrance to The Goldfinch and slid into the back of my armored Mercedes Maybach S580.
Ivan had briefed our security team of the situation as I’d exited the casino, and three armored Cadillac Escalades filled with our soldiers fell into V-formation behind my car as Ivan sped us out of Reno and toward Sagebrush, Nevada. I wasn’t a religious man per se, but for the second time tonight, I found myself pleading with a God I wasn’t sure existed. I had barely scratched the surface of who my cousin was. I hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell the rest of our family that she existed. I needed her to be okay because if she wasn’t, and my mother found out… well, there’d be hell to pay.
…To be continued in “Keeping Indigo, Damaged Goods Book 2” coming in 2025!