Milana
Luca never showed me the gun he wants me to use when we’re in Russia.
He probably thought it best to call the idea off after my outburst at the shooting range.
He took me back up to our apartment, told me to go to bed and try get a good night’s rest, then left me to stew—alone.
Nobody can sleep when their lives are heading for a hairpin bend in the road, cliffs on either side, at break-neck speed.
I managed to finish packing for our trip.
I have two suitcases, a bigger one and a cabin bag he gave me that looks like it’s been used before.
Something about it made me pause. The interior wasn’t exactly like a normal suitcase’s, the side walls being thicker than normal with weird shapes to them.
I ignored it and shoved what I could inside.
I’m traveling light, knowing I might need to run and leave everything behind.
Now it’s early evening and we’re finally heading to the airport, without a big send-off from anybody. As far as the rest of the Scalera clan is concerned, we’re heading to Italy to visit Luca’s twin brother Stephano for two weeks at Lake Como while things cool off on this side.
Nothing strange. Everything totally normal...on the surface.
Ivan also knows about this trip and hasn’t vetoed it, so technically, we’re good.
He thinks I’m going from one Mafia fort to the next, and now I’m relieved Luca insisted I also travel on a fake passport.
For all I know, Ivan has connections that would let him know I’ve entered Russia.
It is, after all, a country where you can buy anything on the black market, even your sister’s whereabouts.
It’s quiet in the car, one last journey with a driver.
The story we told the others is we’ll head straight to the Trapanis’ house, but from Milan, we are flying to Istanbul and then to Saint Petersburg where we’re picking up a rental car at the airport.
Apparently, Stephano is keeping up pretenses at Lake Como for the time it should take to complete our mission to Saint Petersburg.
And our mission is really in and out. It’s basically a kidnapping.
Luca is busy on his phone, whereas I’m quietly clenching my hands, weirdly stiff in my right one from shooting a gun for the first time. I’m staring out of the window to freedom that holds no appeal for me beyond fetching Zoe.
Zoe. Zoe. Zoe.
Masha isn’t in on the name change, and I can’t help thinking she’s withholding things from me too. It’s been such a strange time warp we’ve been living in, and although I trust her with every last fiber in my body, my head tells me something is off. My heart doesn’t want to admit that it agrees.
But it isn’t about Annushka. Zoe. It’s something else. Her quest to end this once and for all.
Worst of all, I haven’t told Luca the crux of her tale, the point where everything intersects.
I’m sure they’ve gathered intel on her, whatever they could learn on the dark net.
But it won’t be much; she is, after all, Bratva like me, even if she’s an orphaned outcast with tragedy stamped on her with an iron brand.
At last, Luca looks up from his phone and reaches for my hand. “You’re good?”
I nod. I want my baby, and I want to be back in the safety of my Rapunzel tower.
He heaves a sigh and drops his head back, eyes closed. “When we’re on the plane, we’ll do another round of gun handling. We can’t do any actual shooting, but we’ll practice enough for basic self-defense, so even if your aim is off, you can inflict enough damage to get away.”
“Is there even a gun?” Thinking that I might have to shoot someone for real freaks me out.
I could barely handle the gun last night.
I’d be more of a liability than an asset.
“You need to rest,” I say, steering away from this gun discussion.
It doesn’t help if we both go into this like zombies, jet lagged and overtired.
We’re going to need to have our wits about us.
“Yes, there is a gun, princess,” he says, undeterred. “And the beauty of it? Chertnikov sent it to us himself.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but as soon as we’re up in the air, and after a drink and a solid meal for both of us, he leads me to the separate bedroom on the private jet.
I’m used to luxury, but lately, I’m blind to it in a different way.
I don’t care about money, luxury, status.
My whole life has curled in on itself, my body around Annushka, getting back to her and protecting her. Nothing else matters.
He pulls my cabin bag from where it was safely stowed for take-off and unzips it. “This was Mara’s bag. She used it for her tattoo gun and other materials, but that was a cover for what it was really built to carry. Do you mind?” he asks as he touches my things.
“Go for it.” Now I’m nosey. If this is something Chertnikov’s team created, it will give me an insight into how he operates nowadays.
Luca empties the contents onto the bed and then points at the inside of the suitcase. “See here and here? In the structure? You can pull all these parts out and make a gun.”
He demonstrates how to assemble the small handgun in mere seconds, and my jaw drops.
“This is what she shot Gabi with?”
“Yes. She hid her bullets in fake ink bottles, but I just carried a bag of them on the plane.”
He pulls them from his jacket’s inner pocket in a ziplock bag.
I stare at the round metal balls. Everything is so well disguised, nobody would have guessed it, but— “Those would never work as bullets.”
“They do, at a short distance. They’re as deadly as any gun when shot into the forehead or temple. And feel how light it is.”
He hands me the gun, and my stiff hand takes it. The feel is similar to the one I practiced with yesterday, but the weight change makes it less unwieldy.
For the next half an hour, all he does is teach me how to build the gun, load the bullets, break it down, repeat, repeat, repeat.
“We’re not going to have time to practice.”
“It’s okay.” I sink onto the bed, exhausted. “It won’t come to this. I trust Masha. And she needs the money we’re bringing. She wouldn’t jeopardize her chance to finally be free of all of this.”
“You really trust her?” he asks as our eyes lock.
“Yes. But I get why you don’t. You don’t know her like I do.”
“No.”
He stifles a yawn and takes the gun from me, breaks it into components, and places them back in their slots. Then he takes the bullets and puts them in his suitcase he’ll check on our commercial flights.
“Are you going to have a real gun?” I ask. “This seems too much like a toy to me.”
“Still deadly,” he warns me. “Yes. Ben has arranged something for me. We’ll get it at a location just outside the airport in Saint Petersburg.”
It grows quiet between us. This room, the hum of the jet engines, the enclosed space. We haven’t slowed down like this in days.
Luca has packed my things again and now my cabin bag is on the floor. He still has his back to me, but I watch him peel off his shirt.
“I’m going to shower,” he states.
“Okay.”
I bite my lip. I showered just before we left for the airport, not knowing we were going to have these facilities on the plane.
Now he’s walking to the en suite, his naked chest a temptation, his unblemished skin almost too pure for a man with his background.
I want to touch it, caress the muscles on his arms, his shoulders, run my fingers down the valley of his spine.
He doesn’t look back and disappears into the bathroom.
There’s another washroom outside the bedroom for other passengers, so I go and brush my teeth there.
I haven’t bothered to put on make-up in ages, so there’s not much else to do.
The shower is still running when I return, and I put on my nightgown in privacy I don’t want.
I get into bed and am staring at the ceiling when Luca walks back in.
We haven’t talked about sharing a bed, but we’re married and this is the only bed. I don’t want him to sleep on a seat in the cabin. There’s space and this is so comfortable.
Where would we be now if it weren’t for Zoe? If things just kept going that night when he lifted me onto the piano in frustration? But then, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all if it weren’t for Zoe. We wouldn’t even be married. I hatched these plans and look where they got me.
Luca comes to stand on his side of the bed in briefs, still towel-drying his hair. I seem to sink into the mattress with desire at the way he’s staring at me, his gaze soft, tired.
“You mind?” he asks, indicating the bed.
“No, of course not,” I whisper back.
He switches the light off and the towel drops to the floor, then the sheets rustle as he gets in. The intoxicating scent from his shower drifts over, and I turn to face him as my hand inches toward him of its own accord, but not touching him.
My eyes adjust to the dark, and there’s still enough light to study his profile.
Then I feel it, the soft caress of his hand as it reaches for mine.
He runs his thumb over my knuckles, so in tune with me somehow, despite everything.
And perhaps because of this, I’ve never felt closer to a man in my life.
“Luca,” I whisper, my voice catching. “I’m scared,” I confess. “I’m so scared I can hardly breathe.”
“I know. Come here.”
He shifts across to me and gathers me into the safety of his arms, where I settle, warm against his chest, still damp from his shower.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “We’ve done everything we could to make this go smoothly.”
And yet, it may not be enough.