Chapter 59 Ivan
IVAN
Igor knocks on the door, and I nod at him. “Escort Mrs. Petrova to her room, and this time, for fuck’s sakes, make sure she doesn’t leave.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
Gabriella shoots me a last glance, looking exhausted, and half of me wants to take her in my arms, carry her to bed, and hold her until she falls asleep—safe, with me.
The logical half tells me to watch my back.
Yuri and I wait until we can’t hear footsteps anymore, then he gets up and closes the door for good measure.
“What do you make of all that?” I reach for the vodka and pour us each another double shot. “To me, the way she talked…it all seems true.”
“Yes, she wasn’t lying. And if Milana guessed she speaks Russian, she isn’t made of spy material.” Yuri drags a hand over his face and shakes his head. “Which makes it a fucking fever dream, to be honest, what with clit piercings and all.”
Can’t surprise this old fucker. I bet he’s seen it all, too.
“You’re telling me. Imagine having one wife with a piercing and then the second one, from a different world, has the exact same…
it’s a mind fuck. With Darya, I didn’t know…
I thought it was just fun and games for her.
” I was such a fucking idiot. “You have any idea which Bratva has this tradition?”
“Given that Darya had the same, and the tattoos” —he raises his glass to her discarded jewels, and in the light, the traces of his own removed tattoos almost glow— “it points in only one direction.”
“Chertnikov.”
The one man who was part of the same crime ring my father and Yuri belonged to in their youth. And my nemesis. Greedy for our network, our shipping operations, most probably plotting to kickstart and expand his fucking sex trafficking business on American soil.
Over my dead body. It’s a devil’s vow, because in many respects, I’m not a better man than him, but my vices have their limits. Clearly, Chertnikov has none, starting when his victims are young. Too fucking young.
I reach for the box with Darya’s things and stare at them, feeling in every part of me how I failed her.
My whole being floods with regret. Darya never talked to me; she never opened up.
Not like Gabriella had that night when she thought the girls had been kidnapped.
Not like Gabriella did earlier when she spoke the truth about how she got pierced, or how she opened up to me while I was in the shower, giving herself pleasure, but baring her soul to me.
No, Darya kept her trauma locked up, a monster inside scraping nails against the walls, driving her mad, silenced only by drugs.
I count the piercings in the box, and the total sends a chill down my spine.
How many were her choice? How many were forced on her?
I’ll never know. I’m only now seeing the bigger picture, thanks to Gabriella.
Darya needed help, much more than I ever gave her, or had the simple human grace to try and understand.
She never learned English, and we aren’t therapy people, but what if it would have helped her?
“I failed my wife. I failed Darya.” I close the lid, unable to look at the contents anymore. Each piece screams how weak I was, limited in myself by what I’ve been brought up to believe. “I didn’t help her, and the way I tried to help her get clean… Fuck. I should have done so much better.”
“Ivan. Don’t. It’s very hard to keep a person alive who only wants to die.
” Yuri stands, comes around the desk, takes the box from me, and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“We argued about this at length before you finally agreed Darya had to go. You did what you had to do to protect the girls. One of her pills would have killed little Katya. Damaged Irisha for life. Don’t regret you chose your girls’ safety over Darya’s inevitable death.
And who knows what would have happened if Dimitri succeeded with the coup.
For all we know, the instructions were for him to kill her, too. ”
Fuck. Yuri is right. I wipe at my brow, the day suddenly too long.
My first wife is dead, by my hand, but I have a new wife.
For all I know, Gabriella is truly a lost innocent who has stumbled onto this battlefield, simply trying to find a way out of the madness.
But this is war, and it only ends one way. Death.
But not ours…
I can’t lose Gabriella. If everything she told us is true, she’s suffered enough already.
No woman—no girl—should go through any of that.
I bite down on my jaw as images of Irisha and Katya flit through my mind.
I’m struck again by Gabriella’s words, spoken with more passion than she probably registered: I’ve seen you with your girls and that’s why I stepped into this horrid bombed-out mausoleum, knowing you wouldn’t—you wouldn’t…
She never completed her sentence, but I know what she wanted to say. I will never hurt her.
I might have failed Darya, but I won’t fail again.
My young wife will not be hunted down by some Russian fucker, who is, by the description of the tattoos on his hands, from the same stock as my father.
Papa left Russia for many reasons, one of them being that none of his daughters would be subjected to such torture.
No, she will be safe with me—another vow I make silently, to myself.
“This thing with her friend, Chiara Bellini. If there is any truth in it…”
“I’ll look into it and find out what I can.”
“Yes. Call Dominic Scalera in the morning. If he’s already working on it, joining forces would speed up the process.” I pick up her Bible again. “If this Russian is still hunting Gabriella down, something else is at play, and I suspect the answer lies here.”
“I’m not betting against you. My money is on the same.”
I page through the Bible. Someone with the technology and the know-how needs to run this through some algorithms and figure out what it means.
I don’t have the manpower or the skills, but I’ve married into a family who does.
And this needs to be an in-house job. I’m not risking anything leaking on the dark web.
I need to protect my wife. “This is a job for Benedict Scalera.”
“The man who doesn’t exist?” Yuri says. “Bez lica?”
Faceless. “Yes, that one. And the sooner he gets going with it, the better.” A new urgency is cramping my stomach.
“As for Gabriella’s Russian huntsman, of the four people there that day of her piercing, two are confirmed dead.
We need to find the woman who did the piercing.
If she’s still alive, she might know who the Russian was.
” And she could lead us to this Chiara woman, something I’ll look into just to…
just to what? Give my wife some peace. She’s suffered too much.
“We might have already found her. If she was Randazzo’s tool, The Mole has her in his keep.”
Mara.
“What’s it going to take to bring them over for a ‘meeting?’ To verify?”
“Fucked if I know. The Mole is the mole for a reason. Hidden identity. Sounds to me like you already need to call in a favor with Don Scalera. It might be too soon for them.”
“No, it’s their sister. It’s not a favor, it’s protecting her.” And the perfect test for our newfound business relationship. “I’ll call Matteo in the morning.”
Yuri opens the safe again, and puts away Darya’s things, along with the other random stuff I have in there for light safe-keeping. This safe is nothing compared to the one we have in the basement.
“What is your long-term plan here, Pakhan?”
“For one, we’re going to keep an eye on her, as well as on our backs. We have our gut instincts, but I’m not taking chances.”
“Agreed. And beyond that?”
“What do you mean?”
He rounds the desk, picks up his glass, and finishes his drink. “Have you consummated the marriage?”
Everything we have done flashes in my mind’s eye.
Gabriella, initially soft and wanting in my arms, how she tensed up with every inch I closed in on her sex until I touched her piercing, how she curled up to protect herself.
And everything that followed. We might not have consummated the marriage, but my wife is breaking out of her little convent girl mold and realizing she’s needy. “No.”
“It’s reason for divorce—”
“Nobody is getting a divorce.”
“No?”
“Not until I’m done.” I pause, take a deep breath. “We both know I didn’t marry her for love, but for business. For the Petrov Bratva. This marriage is just another transaction. I need two sons, and once I have them, I’ll cut her loose.”
“Best you get busy, then.”
I smirk. I have time. My bride is young, beautiful, and at the best age to have children. She’s also in danger. I have failed my first wife; I won’t fail Gabriella. I will avenge them both. “Best we confirm who moya ptichka’s Russian is, so I can hunt him down.”
And fucking kill him.