38. Milana
MILANA
Ever since Luca guessed my secret and I finally opened up to him about Annushka—now Zoe Scalera—there have been several changes in him, and between us. I trust him with everything, and he seems to be one step ahead with all the arrangements.
It’s been days of to-do lists, things that need to line up like the stars for us to successfully pull this off.
The first was registering her birth on this side via dubious channels. I don’t mind the name change, and looking at it, it’s a must. I just have to get used to it. The further away we get from my own heritage, the better.
It’s a beautiful name, meaning life, and I wonder if Luca picked it because he is giving me my life back, and he is giving Annushka a chance at a life she’ll never have if she’s identified as Chertnikov’s grandchild.
Maybe it’s a name he always loved and would have used for his own daughter, if he ever had one.
I don’t even know if he wants children, and now, he’s saddled with mine.
I refuse to feel guilty about it as he seems to be taking the whole situation in stride.
Luca spends most of his time down in the basement offices with Benedict, but I haven’t been trusted into that sacred space yet.
Instead, the men come up for dinner and a debrief every night, keeping me abreast of everything they’re putting in place to make sure we return home with Annushka—Zoe—in one piece.
We all know getting into Russia isn’t going to be the problem. It’s getting out, with a baby we’re basically snatching away from whoever is surveilling Masha, that’s going to be our biggest headache.
Masha is in on our plans, but Luca insisted we keep her on a need-to-know basis.
He doesn’t trust her like I do, because he doesn’t know her like I do.
All our communication is still in code, because we’re not giving the game away.
We’re now in a ‘theatre production,’ for which there are several acts.
We’re in act one: auditions. Hopefully, whoever is listening in will think Masha is rehearsing her lines.
She sent us a photo of Zoe for fake passports.
Luca gave it one look and joked when she’s older, he’s going to sit on his porch with a shotgun to ward off the boys, because she’s promising to be prettier than her mamma.
I wanted to roll my eyes, but a sweet blush pushed to my cheeks at the same time.
He can be borderline cute sometimes, and it’s a tonic against this stress ball we’re living in.
The whole scenario makes my gut twist tight with worry. I have no idea whether it’ll be easy or difficult to travel on fake passports, never mind with a baby. The last thing I want is to be detained for human trafficking, even if she’s my own child and I can prove it with DNA tests.
Luca has given me free rein to prepare the nursery.
I’ve gone overboard, but it’s been keeping me busy and focused.
Everything I couldn’t have ready for her with her birth, I’ve splurged on.
The last few days have been a constant influx of my online orders, brought up by security once they’ve been through various checks.
It breaks me to think that things could go so wrong that Ann—no, Zoe—might never get to wear these cute clothes, or sleep in her crib, or stare at the mobile I assembled earlier.
Now Luca walks into the apartment with Benedict, and I stop cutting price tags off the newest sets of baby onesies piling up on the kitchen counter.
Our gazes lock, and a small smile plays on his lips as he takes in the tiny pink tutu I couldn’t resist.
“Cute,” he murmurs, but his voice is so tired.
My husband hasn’t slept properly for days. He’s never here when I go to bed, and we both seem to drift in and out of sleep at night, meeting up in the kitchen at three in the morning, both woken by nightmares, past and future.
He hasn’t come to my room again, and there’s a yearning for him that’s caught me off guard.
I want him to hold me. To touch me. To chase away my morbid thoughts and anxiety with gentle kisses all over my body, making me surrender to him in both body and mind.
It was so easy with him, and just as I succumbed to him, I want him to succumb to me, to every pleasure I want to give.
This dangerous thing we’re heading straight into put a new strain between us, and we’re both holding our breaths, our arranged marriage on hold.
“Any idea why Masha is asking us to bring half a million dollars in cash?” he asks without preamble.
This. This crazy amount of money, which I was hoping to lay hands on myself just a few weeks ago, now seems suspicious even to me.
“I don’t know. She said it’s for a prop she needs for the third act of our theater production. I have no clue what it is, but she’s up to something.”
We’ll end this once and for all. I shudder because I’m not a mind reader and Masha hasn’t told me anything.
They say ignorance is bliss, but not when it comes to living in the Bratva.
In my absence, things have changed with Masha.
Something is brewing and I can’t put my finger on it.
I can’t ask her directly, and the coded messages I have to dissect are not always clear.
We dare not even speak over the phone, because somewhere, someone could be listening in.
“Okay. The cash isn’t the problem. It’s traveling with it that could raise red flags if something goes wrong. Also, do I understand right that there are two vans parked in Masha’s street now?” Luca asks. “More surveillance?”
“Yes.” Her messages came through earlier today. “Something’s changed.” And I can’t stomach it.
“There’s been no more news of Varya,” Benedict says. “I’ve been trying to find leads, but there’s nothing.”
“Nobody has seen her for days.” A spider seems to crawl down my back. “We should assume the worst.”
Another person dead, because of me, and who knows how she died, because I can’t even fathom what they would have done to Varya before finally giving up…or before she finally gave my secret away.
“It could be because Masha has been back to the hunting lodge? It’s suspicious?” Luca asks.
“Not if she’s planning to renovate it,” Benedicts says. “What is she doing there in any case? The place looks derelict at best.”
It’s the story she’s been selling to us, but I don’t buy it. Going to the lodge takes Annushka away from the safety of the apartment, giving others opportunity to take photos and sending them to Ivan, upping the pressure on me.
“She was only there for two days,” Luca says as he pulls a gun from the back of his jeans.
I rear back at the sight of it.
“It’s okay, Milana,” he says, a hand on my arm to quieten me as he puts it on the counter.
My stomach turns. This is our reality. The cold metal lies there between us and a pile of baby clothes, still yet deadly. This is so fucked up.
“The question is really why they don’t just barge into Masha’s apartment and take both Masha and the baby,” Benedict says. “It’s the logical—well, Mafia—thing to do.”
His question hangs in the silence as he leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded.
Luca lets go of me, hands now on his hips. They are both waiting for me to do something with the gun, or to tell them something I don’t fully understand myself.
“They’re superstitious,” I say softly. “All Russians are.” And this gun is giving me black omens—piles of them.
“Superstitious how?” Luca asks.
I close my eyes, blocking the weapon from sight.
“Masha survived a Bratva retribution. First, they killed her parents. Then they came for her. She wasn’t supposed to live, and now they probably think she’s a witch or something ridiculous like that.
Or they think she’s tricked death once, she could trick it again and haunt them, like someone on death row who survived the electric chair. ”
“Jesus.”
I look up, catching Luca and Benedict exchanging glances.
“What did she do?” Benedict asks.
I clench my hands into fists. This was the first time I failed Masha. I wasn’t there for her when all this went down.
“There was a powershift between two Bratva factions. Her parents were the peacekeepers, but once they were dead, she became ‘property’.” I make quotation marks and take a deep breath.
“She refused to marry someone in the Bratva. An arranged marriage. She wanted to get out, like all of us do. And then she aborted the child she conceived after the groom …” I bite my lip, stopping it from quivering.
“After he forced himself on her in an attempt to ‘change her mind.’ When she finally escaped—”
“Jesus,” Luca cuts in, raising a hand in signal for me to stop. “We get the picture. I can see now why you said I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, because I—” He swipes his hand between him and Benedict. “Because we don’t have the stomach for this type of thing.”
“Yet you bring a gun in here and put it casually on the counter as if it’s takeout,” I mutter back. Luca cut me off, but I haven’t told him the worst of it yet. There will be time for all of that, later.
For years, Masha has been in this no-man’s land, expelled by the Bratva, but unable to leave. Alive but dead. With looking after Zoe, she really did claim her life back in a way, but it could prove to be deadly for her too. Maybe this is what she wants.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know much of the Scaleras, but from what I’ve gleaned through Gabi and the weeks I’ve been here with Luca, their parents’ marriage was no bed of roses. Plus, I’ve married into the Mafia—nothing should surprise me. “Why is there a gun?”
“Because you’ve never handled one, have you?” my husband says.
“No.”
“We don’t have much time left before we leave, but I need you to get comfortable with one.”
“How much time do we have?” I ask, my heart flipping.
“We’re leaving tomorrow, once a few last things are in place.”
“Tomorrow?” Tears push up as my throat closes with triumphant dread. This is what I wanted, but— “So soon?”
Luca pulls me into his arms. “Yes, princess. Waiting just gives them time on the other side, a luxury we can’t afford for them to have.”
Who knows how this is going to end? Over Luca’s shoulder, I meet Benedict’s gaze. The way he’s standing, stooped, arms folded, mouth pulled into a grim line, accentuates the concern in his eyes for his brother, and for us. It’s shredding me, because he is rightly worried.
My gaze drops to the gun on the kitchen counter.
Weeks ago, I would have given anything to have this know-how, to have access to a gun so I could blaze my way out of Ivan’s compound and out of his life.
But now, after being in that wreck of a house, seeing the damage it did to our home and to Ivan, after Gabi, and Chertnikov seeming to have infiltrated the inner circle, I’m scared.
I can’t confess it to Luca yet, but I’m petrified of going to Russia.
I know what we’re heading into, my husband less so.
I was so dumb to have ever left Russia in the first place, thinking my way of life would go on as normal after the coup.
Now so much time has passed, moves have been made on the chessboard I’m unaware of, exposing me.
Exposing my husband and his family to danger.
If we get outsmarted, it’s checkmate.