Chapter 14 - Ivan
IVAN
We’re in the car, heading home. There were no tears when Gabi separated from her brothers—thank fuck because I wouldn’t know what to do with them.
This isn’t exactly an abduction, but somehow, it feels like one.
The way I rattled both Dominic and Matteo by throwing them a few salient facts they thought were secrets, forcing them in a way to let her go with me. Idiots.
Just goes to show—we might be physically weak, but mentally, we can still mess with them. We have presence still, if not actual clout. I had the smallest window to get the hell out of there, their sister in tow, but a fine line has always been my favorite to walk, and I walk it well.
Now she’s sitting in the passenger seat next to me, hands clenched together, thumbnails eating into her palms where she thinks I won’t notice. She’s tense, and I don’t blame her. It won’t take anything to overpower her, and being the petite thing she is, she probably weighs half of what I do.
Fuck, she’s young. Her skin as smooth and pure as the day she was born. Her lashes thick, and that mouth, those lips…fuck. Hearing Yes, sir slipping from her tongue made my cock twitch, and it was a short stretch to visualizing her lips closing over my cock and taking me deep.
With an inward groan, I force my focus away from the woman next to me and glance at Irisha in the rear-view mirror.
Strapped in her car seat, she seems happy enough, holding onto the pink balloon dog and staring out of the window.
Katya will fall asleep in minutes. She always does in the car.
That’s going to mess with the rest of the day’s schedule and my attempt at a routine for them.
At least I now have a nanny who will help, if a bit under duress.
“I want nuggets, Papa,” Irisha says as we drive by the same McDonald’s we passed earlier.
This morning, I sidestepped the automatic question, but now, it isn’t going to be so easy.
“Let’s cross the bridge, malyshka, and we’ll get some drive thru.
It’s easier.” With the convoy we’re driving in, I can’t just pull in anywhere.
My SUV is sandwiched between two of our other SUVs, and we have civilian-looking vehicles closing up the sides.
This is me, trying to live life as normally for my daughters for as long as I can.
“I want, too,” Katya says, going over into a yawn.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, glancing at Gabriella.
“No…thank you.”
The answer is small, somewhat forced, as she stares straight ahead.
It could mean anything. Maybe she’s shy and wonders who’s going to pay.
Maybe she had a fry-up for breakfast and is really not hungry.
Maybe she dislikes fast food, which wouldn’t be surprising, given the junk it is.
She might have grown up in a convent, but I bet every tastebud in her mouth is an Italian connoisseur.
“I’ve got you covered,” I say. “From now on, I provide and care for everything you need, understand? Everything and anything, okay?”
She shifts in her seat, rubbing her palms over her thighs. “I—I… We don’t have a contract?”
Because I backed your brothers into a deal. Forced their hand. You had no say. “Do you need one?”
“No.”
Barely even a chirp.
“What’s the problem, then?” I ask, glancing at her.
“It’s just… I’m not sure how long I will stay because…because of the situation…” She trails off, unsure.
Fuck me, her brothers haven’t told her anything. She’s coming here with totally different expectations—that this is only temporary—not a trial run for an arranged marriage.
Don’t fuck this up, Petrov.
Clearly, she has no clue about my end goal, and Milana would joke that I’m dragging a poor little lamb to slaughter.
With a sigh, I flex my hands and squeeze the steering wheel, then flex again as I turn at the traffic light using only one hand.
I feel her gaze on me, and as I glance at her, her eyes slide along my arm, homing in on my hand, then follow the veins on the back as they slope down my arm.
She shoots me a supposedly surreptitious glance, but I catch her in the act, and a rosy blush blooms on her cheeks.
Her inspection was borderline sexual, but for all I know, she’s imagining how easily I could strangle her with my bare hands.
“My younger sister, Milana, is at home,” I say, for what it’s worth. Maybe this will put her at ease, even though Milana is as solid as smoke right now.
“Your sister? She isn’t in Russia?”
The Scaleras did some of their homework, but this morning showed me they don’t have the extensive spy network the Petrovs have.
Italians never learned to look behind and beyond their backs like us Russians did.
It was kill or be killed; maybe you’re unlucky and end up in a Gulag forced-labor camp or prison.
Knowledge is power—as I proved again today—and it got ingrained in us through a century of political upheaval, where not knowing could land you in the Gulag. Or dead.
“She came back some weeks ago.”
“Oh.”
Another chirp. Just like a little bird. My moya ptichka. A small smile plays in one corner of my mouth. It suits her perfectly.
It turns quiet in the car, the girls tired out from the out-of-the-ordinary trip to the park. I’m fighting to turn our home back into the sanctuary it once was, and my daughters don’t need to go off the property for anything.
I never make the trek with them to Manhattan and could have scheduled the meeting closer to home, but I wanted a very public, touristy place to meet with the Scaleras.
They’re tracking Gabi as we speak, seeing where we’re heading, and that’s fine.
I’d do the same—I’ve done the same—and I don’t mind them following along as we head toward Long Island.
Little Odessa might be where it all started decades ago, but the old Pakhan bought, as soon as he could afford it, an estate in an exclusive neighborhood where forests and fields create distance between us and our neighbors who don’t tolerate trespassers, either.
It’s been great for security and privacy, and it’s paid off, never mind the strong divide between work and life—the Petrov estate’s value has multiplied a hundred-fold.
For a while, it’s silent in the car, and with both girls now asleep in the back, holding onto their balloons like teddy bears, I skip the drive thru.
Gabriella glances toward them and smiles at me. “They’re very sweet. What’s their routine like?’
“Well, that part is a bit haywire at the moment.” I run her through their day.
There isn’t much to a child’s routine, except combining it with my schedule has proven difficult.
I’ve tried to schedule my work around their needs, but it isn’t always possible.
Things give and take and get thrown out the whole time.
I’m still struggling to find a system that works.
“We’re low on staff, too, which complicates things. ”
“I can help out.”
“Yeah?” She clearly isn’t from the local nanny stock where they won’t touch a household chore beyond cleaning up after the kids.
Darya never lifted a perfectly manicured nail.
Milana is blind to the dust and dirt, and with half the house still locked up, it is what it is.
“We’ll see. I’ll show you the house first and go through the rules.
We have some home renovations going on, so parts of the house are closed up and off-limits. ”
The SUV in front opens the gate, and I follow it in, shadowed by the other security vehicle. The civilian cars continue to a side road that gains entry to another side of the property, a good few hundred yards from the main house.
“This is it?” Gabi asks, shifting in her seat and reaching for her satchel where she placed it on the floor.
“Yep.”
“It’s…it’s massive.”
Sounds like she hasn’t seen the Scalera fort in Massachusetts yet, because it’s similar to this one.
Safe, secure, impenetrable, inescapable, which is hell if your house is burning down from the inside out.
It takes a good thirty-second drive to get to the front of the house, where I park beside the massive circular fountain.
“I’ll take Irisha, if you can manage Katya,” I say as I pop open my door.
I’m stepping out of the vehicle when the front door flies open. Milana rushes down the stairs, still in her satin nightgown with a robe flung open, barefoot, hair an uncombed nest.
“You fucking asshole!” she yells, finger pointing at me. “You fucking piece of shit! You blocked my credit cards—ALL OF THEM! You took away all my cash! You—you—” Her chest heaves, and she grabs her hair and pulls.
Irisha wakes up with a whimper, just as Katya starts to cry. Gabriella, wide-eyed and pale, scrambles out of the car.
“Milana, stop,” I say, my voice calm, but deadly.
“Fuck you!” she screams, not sparing a glance for either Gabriella or my girls.
I meet Gabriella’s stricken gaze briefly, and there’s no instruction needed.
“I have them,” she says, already busy unbuckling Katya from her seat.
“Go with Gabriella,” I say to Irisha as I help her out. “Go show her your room.”
“Papa—”
“Just go, malyshka. It’s going to be fine. Milana’s just upset. I’ll be right there.”
“My balloon!” Katya cries, but Gabriella manages to get it for her.
I watch Gabriella take the few stairs to the front door, leading Irisha in by the hand, Katya clinging to her where she’s perched on her hip, quiet but with tear-stained cheeks.
Not the welcome I’ve envisioned for my little bird to her gilded cage, but it doesn’t get more real than this.
I face Milana where she’s circling on the spot, hands strangling her hair, sobbing uncontrollably, cursing in Russian.
The tension between us has twisted ever tighter over these past few weeks, and this isn’t going to help matters.
She was a flight risk, and there’s no way in hell I’ll let her go back to Russia, not now she’s safely back in the States.
Not with what Sergei revealed last night. Chertnikov.
She doesn’t know half the shit that went down while she was away.
I managed to keep Nikolai Chertnikov’s greedy paws off the Petrov Bratva’s businesses, even though he tried to steal it via proxy, planning the move for six years.
His mole kept him abreast of our old Pakhan’s health issues, and they started planning for the perfect moment to strike.
His informant might be dead, but Chertnikov is very much alive, cozy in Russia where he is basically untouchable. I don’t know what his next move is going to be. The Fourth of July was one battle—ironically for our independence—but this is war.
I sensed Milana would make a run for it as soon as I was out of the house with the girls, but I needed to keep her here no matter what it takes. I can’t risk her leaving and walking into a trap.
She closes the distance between us and hits outs with her fists, beating at my chest as only a woman does, and yet I hug her close, gently gripping her fists and gathering them in one hand.
“Shhh, shhh,” I try to soothe her. “You’ll only hurt your hands, and then you can’t play.”
She’s always so precious about her fingers as playing piano is her whole life. Chertnikov would chop them off one by one if it got him what he wanted: the Petrov Bratva on a platter, our operations under his control.
I try to calm her, her body stiff in my arms, unwilling to yield or acknowledge what I’ve said many times: there’s no going back.
“It isn’t safe in Russia, Milana,” I say as I cup her head to my shoulder. “You know that. I need you here otherwise I won’t sleep, I won’t breathe for fear of what he’d do to you if he finds out you’re there. Please. I have Irisha and Katya and I—we—need to think about them, too.”
The mere thought stalls my breathing. Chertnikov will use Milana as a negotiating tool, as bait, and kill her if I don’t cave in. My closest family is all here, safe. I’d do anything to keep it that way. Even lock up my sister.
She sobs into my chest, seeming to collapse against me as
“I hate you. So. Much,” Milana whispers, her face pressed to my chest, her hands still fisted, but the fight is out of her.
We stand like this for a long time, me holding her safe to ground her, eventually collapsing my grip to a tender hug.
It breaks me that my choices led us here, but I’ve got nobody to rely on when it comes to my sister, and putting her life in danger is a risk I’ll never take. If jailing her here makes me a hardened fucker, then so be it. It’s what this Pakhan needs to do.
It took us months after the attack to sort through the men in my organization, to figure out who were the moles, who were the double—triple—agents, and even now, a pile of bodies later, I’m still hesitant to trust anybody.
“I know, malyshka.” I’d rather live with her hating me than with her being dead. “Let me take you to your room. Take a shower, and if you feel like it, come meet Gabriella. She’s the nanny, for now.”
Maybe Gabriella and Milana can form some connection, and my sister won’t feel so isolated.
“I’m fine. If she’s the official nanny, she’ll still be here tomorrow.”
She pulls away from me, and as much as I don’t want to let her go, I have to.
“Okay. Have you checked in with Papa today?”
“What do you think?” she throws back at me, not sparing me even a glance.
I watch her rush up the stairs, her robe flirting with the breeze. She bangs the front door closed so hard, it’s a miracle the jamb doesn’t splinter.
I grind my teeth. It isn’t just Russia. It’s this whole situation with Papa and the guilt we’ll never shake. I suffer the same. It’s the knowledge that there’s nothing we can do for him.
For the first time in my life, I’m powerless.