Chapter 47 Gabi
GABI
When I wake up, the bed is empty. From the thin streaks of light coming from the shutters, it’s already late. I hardly slept. I cup my hands to my face to breathe, warding off the panic attack that threatened to engulf me the whole night. I have no clue how I managed to drift off.
I’m not sure I was even on the bed when I fell asleep. The last time I was fully aware, I was still on my knees, praying.
I struggle upright, light-headed with exhaustion. It’s nine-thirty in the morning.
My wedding day.
I strangle a sob.
And all I can see in my mind’s eyes are the old Pakhan’s hands, the tattoos on his fingers. The same ones that are shadows on Yuri’s fingers now, only visible if you really look for them. All I hear is the slurred Russian he spoke. His blue eye and drooping lid that wouldn’t open. His mouth.
That mouth.
It isn’t him, but the connection is there. The tattoos are a carbon copy.
Some things are just branded on your mind, a timeline of focus points you can never wipe away. Images that will flash by in your mind’s eye just before you die.
The old Pakhan, Yuri, and my Russian. All interconnected
And then there’s Chiara. The worry over her is cement constantly churning in my stomach.
My phone blinks with a new message and I reach for it.
Good luck for today. Will still fetch you at a minute’s notice if you don’t want to go through with the wedding, Dominic writes, and he is still typing.
I try not to hold my breath.
Nothing new on Chiara, but we have intel that she’s been missing for days. I’ve sent a team to check her apartment. There’s been no movement there ever since we’ve been monitoring it. They didn’t find a body or signs of a struggle. These signs are all positive.
No news. No body. Chiara missing. How could any of this be good news?
I don’t respond. He’ll see that I read his messages. I stand on shaky legs and close my robe again. I never took it off, but it came loose during the night.
The girls.
Ivan.
I have to find them. I have to talk, but it’s as if my lips got sewn together overnight. I won’t talk. It’s too late. I have no choice but to put Milana first. The priority is to get her out of here and on her way to Russia—a problem she will have to sort out herself once outside this cage.
As for me, I will let this river run its course. Ivan is either part of the same clan or he isn’t.
He probably is.
Then he’s going to be in for a surprise.
Time will tell.
There’s a soft knock on my door then it opens and Milana pears in. “Gabi?”
“Hey,” I say, dragging my hands down my face.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I just overslept. I—”
“It’s fine,” she says with a soft smile as she opens the door wider. “Ivan is downstairs with the girls. They’re on a second breakfast already. He’s making pancakes. Come.”
She shoots me a curious look, but I’m not sure how much she can read of my restless night in the ill-lit room.
“I need to shower,” I say softly. To cleanse every touch, every memory from my body, my skin, scrub at the sins sticking to my flesh as if I inflicted them myself.
“Sure. We need to get going, though.”
Lamb to the slaughter. Here I go… “I know.”
She leaves me, and I head to my own room’s bathroom, stepping into the cold shower and letting my tears run their course until I’m shivering.
My skin is marbled, my lips blue by the time I get out and dry with a towel.
Once I’m dressed in jeans and a button-down, I give myself a swift glance in the full-length mirror.
I look haggard. The perfect Mafia princess and Bratva bride-to-be.
Funny that I’m marrying another Russian—a Russian I want to be with—but I look exactly like I would have looked if I’d been about to marry him.
With a shrug, I head down the stairs and to the kitchen.
Ivan glances up from where he is hovering at the table, making sure the girls are eating.
He meets my gaze, then drops his eyes in a full inspection.
He says nothing but comes up to me, cups my face with his hands, softly caresses my cheeks with his thumbs, his touch telling me he knows I’ve spent too much time in the shower, crying.
Then he presses the softest, sweetest kiss to my forehead, to my hairline, to my temple… almost with too much reverence.
“It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs as he reaches for my hand. “I’ve made pancakes. It’s out of the box and not up to your standards, but desperate times.”
Desperate times, indeed. All I want is to collapse into his arms as I did that night when panic flooded through me.
Tell him every last thing. Share with him my worry about Chiara.
Be safe with him. Every gentle touch holds the promise: if I break, he will catch me.
Right now, that is true. Tonight? He’ll hang me.
“Papa makes good pancakes,” Irisha tells me around the bite in her mouth.
“With lots of syrup,” Katya adds, and I shoot them a wan smile.
“Is that so? Best I try them, don’t you think?”
For them, I will go through with this. I will protect them, with my life.
I sink into the chair as Milana breezes in, still dressed in a luxurious silk robe Kostya fetched with a pile of other bride essentials, paid for by Yuri, with some snark, with the company credit card. Well, since Ivan blocked all her funds, what else is a girl to do?
This one is going to give the game away by being too happy on her wedding day.
“I’ll do your makeup,” she says as she studies the full extent of my dark circles and other flaws a sleepless night only accentuated. “You’ll be as pretty as a picture.”
I don’t know how to return the favor. Makeup wasn’t really a thing in the convent. It doesn’t matter. I’m getting married whether I have a full face on or not.
“What time are we leaving?” I ask, still in the dark about the arrangements.
Ivan has held his cards close, and I get it. Bratva, Mafia, and weddings? Sounds like the perfect opportunity to have a fun shootout and kill all the little birds with one stone.
“Change of plans,” he says as he walks over with a cappuccino for me. “Your brothers are flying to Republic Airport. It’s a twenty-minute drive, and the officiant is coming here.” He puts the cup down and squeezes my shoulder. “It’ll be over by three this afternoon. Ceremony, coffee, cake, done.”
Wow. Not any woman’s idea of the perfect wedding, but I knew it.
This is just another transaction, and Ivan isn’t letting Milana go until she’s chained to my brother.
I bet he’s going to make sure they are heading straight to Luca’s apartment after the fact, neatly tucking her into another Scalera stronghold, similar to Matteo’s.
Yuri walks into the room with Kostya, their arms bursting with blooms. Yuri is holding two beautiful bridal bouquets, both exquisite with delicate orchids. Between everything else, tiny pink daisies pop like sprinkles on white cake.
“For Katya and Irisha,” he says as he walks over, distributing the bridal bouquets to me and Milana en route, then hands the girls small bouquets of pink daisies with baby’s breath.
Joyous shrieks erupt, and breakfast is officially over.
I bite my lip. My own bouquet is beautiful with no expense spared.
Ivan is by my side as he takes the flowers from me, his fingers warm against my cold ones. “You need to eat, moya ptichka, and then you need to get ready.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Might as well be a polite lamb on my way to slaughter.
An hour later, I’m in Milana’s room, for once alone with her.
It’s quiet between us, a last stretch to freedom for her we need to navigate with care, in case Ivan or Yuri get a whiff of her real plans.
She’s busy with my makeup, giving me soft instructions to open my eyes, look up, close, turn that way, this way.
I’ve never been pampered like this before, with face masks and scrubs that seem to be endless, and pointless, what with everything else happening under the surface.
I’ve become a lifeless doll, merely following my owner’s prompts.
“I met your Papa last night.”
Milana leans back to look me in the eye. “You did? Good. He’s been watching you, getting to know you.”
Yes. And that has been creepy as fuck. “I’m sorry for his situation…the tragedy. The hardship on him…on you and Ivan.”
Milana says nothing, but she pauses, the eye shadow she gathered on the tip of a delicate brush drizzling down like fairy dust with her hand’s trembling. “It’s cruel. He wasn’t such a terrible man to deserve such—” She breaks off. “I don’t know. It’s just cruel.”
I steel myself, having to know what I can before marrying Ivan. I might not have a chance to talk to her again. “He has tattoos on his hands. His arms.” Every part of him that was exposed above the covers. “Do you know what they mean?”
Milana sighs and puts the eyeshadow and brush down to reach for a glass of water. “You need to be more specific than that,” she says between sips. “There’s folklore, there’s fancy, and then there’s fact when it comes to tattoos in the Bratva.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, some tattoos are old traditions in our lineage, folklore basically, markings that identify people as thieves, rapists, gulag survivors, whatever. Then there are the ones people like and just get for the fancy, and then there’s fact.
The tattoos you’re forced to get, identifying you as a member of an organization. It’s common in the Bratva.”
“I see. The ones on his fingers, on the middle knuckles?” Folklore, fact, or fancy?
“Good fucking Lord, he hated those. Walked around with gloves to hide them. Loved winter for it.”
“But what does it mean?” I push, running out of time for her to get to the point.
“He belonged to a crime ring when he was younger, in Russia, before he made the move to the States. Yuri had the same, but lasered them away. It’s such a giveaway here, and he needed to be more…
anonymous. It’s old history, and I don’t know Papa’s whole story, and now, we’ll never know. Some secrets, you take to the grave.”
“Do they mark women, like they mark men? These crime rings?”
She stills completely. “Similar, but not the same. Is it a thing in the Mafia?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t—” I break off. “Convent girl,” I say with a shrug, my ready explanation for everything. I haven’t lived in a Mafia circle before, and my stint in Italy with the Trapanis was short and never drilled down to this level of intimacy.
“Yeah. I see. Well, it depends on the ring, the men, how they want to mark…ownership.” She drops her gaze. “A lot of these things are dated now. They’ve learned not to walk with their secrets on their sleeves, so to say.”
“But Ivan has tattoos?” Which he hides. For my eyes only.
“Uh huh. You saw them? He’s hot, isn’t he?” she says, cheeky tease in her tone, without a doubt trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“But they don’t mean the same, do they? Because they’re not the same as the finger ones?”
She hitches a brow with a small smile. “You should ask him. It would be a great way to break the ice tonight.” Concern floods her eyes as she reaches for my hand.
“You’re not scared, are you? You’re a virgin, no?
Oh, God, I’m not thinking. It’s going to be your first time… or? No wonder you’re a wreck.”
I bark a nervous chuckle. Let her think that’s my biggest worry right now, but it’s been the last thing on my mind. I’m sitting on a giant hurdle I have to cross before it comes to that. “I’m not scared.”
“Good. Good. Ivan will take care of you, or I’ll skin him alive.”
“Big words from a woman who is marrying a man she’s never seen or spoken to before.”
“I can handle your brother,” she says with a smirk as she picks up the eyeshadow again, bringing me back to the business of getting married in a couple of hours. “He isn’t touching me with a ten-foot pole. Unless I want him to. In any case, nothing a man can do can surprise me anymore.”
Her trauma and my trauma seem to slowly weave together, but a pile of secrets stops us from really getting close. What’s it going to take for us to really open up to each other?