Chapter Three
Alexei
The Russo house is in an uproar. I narrowly avoid running down a member of the staff as I make my way up the driveway to the house. Beams of light flash wildly about, one briefly blinding me as I pull my car to a stop.
Giulio is on the front steps, alternating between wringing his hands and patting at his shiny forehead with a handkerchief. A half-dozen others are milling about to no true purpose while the staff scramble about the lawn, shining flashlights along hedgerows.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask as I climb out of the car, slamming the door behind me. “Where is Catalina?”
Giulio’s ruddy complexion pales considerably, and I know instantly the answer is—not here.
Not where she was supposed to be. Not where I was promised she would be, when I was promised she would be.
“We’ll find her,” he says, his voice tinged with desperation.
“We have men on the way to her apartment already. She’ll be back within the hour, I swear it. ”
“Blyad!” I rake my hands through my hair in aggravation. “How difficult is it to manage one fucking woman? I asked only one thing of you, Russo!”
“We’ll find her!” Giulio insists.
The moment the toe of my boot touches the steps, half a dozen hands slide toward their weapons.
It is not a subtle movement. “I would not advise this,” I say caustically, without pause to my stride.
“Unless you want to be hunted down by your own famiglia. My second will retaliate.” The danger I pose to them is very real.
This branch of the Russo family is minor; small players in a very large, very influential game.
But there are other, more formidable branches.
Distant relatives who will not be pleased to learn that one of their own stole from them, and another allowed it. Possibly even sanctioned it
One of the Russos smoothly slides his weapon from a holster at his hip.
He holds it steady in his firm grip as he aims it straight between my eyes.
It is not the first time a weapon has been pointed in my direction and unlikely to be the last. That threat has not landed in a decade or better.
“Go ahead,” I invite, stepping closer. An easy target.
Open, vulnerable. At this distance, even a member of this pathetic family could not possibly miss.
“You might find it satisfying.” For a few minutes at most. Until they must pay the price for it.
“Lorenzo,” Giulio hisses. “Morozov came here unarmed.”
It sounds like a plea for mercy on the grounds of hospitality.
It is not. Giulio is a stupid fuck, but he is not that stupid.
He knows as well as I do that for all their posturing, they are no threat to me.
Not while I have the means in my hands to ruin them.
Arriving unarmed and unaccompanied is a power play; a statement of my position and theirs relative to it.
With a bitter hiss and a clench of his jaw, the one called Lorenzo lowers his weapon and tucks it back into its holster.
“Catalina,” I say. “Where is she?”
Giulio’s trembling fingers yank at the collar of his shirt. “We don’t know yet,” he whines, and I hope to fuck his daughter is not half as annoying as he is. “I thought she would be more like her mother. She is more willful than I had expected.”
For fuck’s sake. This stupid piece of shit doesn’t even know his own daughter.
“She was told what was expected of her,” Lorenzo says. “She was told what it means to be a member of the Russo family.”
I lift a single brow in silent inquiry.
“It appears she disagreed,” Lorenzo adds in a gritty growl. “She escaped through a bathroom window. She left her cell phone behind, or we would have tracked her by now.”
Not a mistake; a deliberate choice. And the flex in Lorenzo’s jaw tells me he knows it, too—Catalina is going to run. She is already running, in fact. “How long has she been missing?”
“Not long,” Giulio hastens to assure me. “Not long at all.”
“Our nearest guess is two hours,” Lorenzo says grimly.
She could have covered a lot of ground in two hours. And Giulio has men on the way to her apartment. Probably she has been there and gone already. Taken anything she needs. Abandoned anything she doesn’t. If she is wise.
They are not going to find her.
“Stupid,” I remark casually, “to let your only asset slip through your fingers. When I asked only one thing of you, Giulio, in exchange for my silence.”
A heavy silence descends like a curtain. All the power here is mine, and every person present knows it. No one breathes without my permission to do so. No one blinks.
My faith in this idiotic family is nonexistent. I would not trust them to find their asses with both hands. “Catalina is no longer your concern,” I say. “But, Russo—for the sake of your famiglia, you should hope I find her soon.”
That oppressive silence lingers as I head once more down the steps. And as I open the door of my car to slide inside, the only thing that breaks it is the faint beep of Nicola’s burner phone in my pocket.
Giulio might not be able to track his daughter.
But I can.