Chapter 63 Ivan
IVAN
When I sit down at my desk twenty minutes later, I stare at my black laptop screen for a long time, then gather my hands to my face and rake my fingers through my shower-wet hair.
Fuck it.
Somewhere along the line, I fucked up. Instead of going back to check in on Gabriella, I rushed past her closed bedroom door and came to do what I need to do: phone Matteo Scalera.
At some point, while we were consummating our marriage, it felt as if a bullet whizzed past my head, missing its target with less than half an inch to spare.
It’s the aftershocks of the coup that still haunt me, combined with the knowledge that some Russian crime lord is on her scent like a bloodhound.
I got triggered to make these urgent calls, but Gabriella deserved more.
More aftercare, more assurance, more cuddles. She was crying for fuck’s sake, you fucking idiot.
Darya wasn’t a virgin when we got married, and she couldn’t get away fast enough from me after sex.
That’s what I got used to in the marriage bed, never expecting more, but now I’ve doled out the same to Gabriella, if for a different reason.
She’s new to this, and whatever I teach her is what’s going to stick.
I’m going to wonder forever what trauma Darya suffered, trauma I never asked about and she never talked about, but leaving Gabriella like I did was harsh.
It wasn’t intentional. It was more like a knee-jerk reaction, because in my mind’s eye, I was having disturbing visions. A predator at our door. Nothing I could pinpoint, but they were born out of her biggest fear—now my biggest fear: of someone coming for her, hurting her…killing her.
All I know is if anybody touches my wife, even thinks of hurting her, I’ll murder them with my bare hands. Been there, done that, and adding to the tally won’t bother me in the least.
I sigh and shake off my anxiety. If I actually do something, it will help.
Fuck. Maybe, if I can deal with this call quickly, I’ll still find her in bed and can strip and this time really get her to gasp out ‘yellow’.
Something tells me that ship has sailed for today.
I turn to the safe and extract her Bible, mentally shoving this morning’s disaster away and getting in the right headspace for this call. I might have fucked up, but I have time to fix things.
I page through Gabriella’s Bible again, taking a few notes, then I dial Matteo Scalera’s number.
“Petrov,” he says in greeting. “To what do I owe the honor? It’s a bit early in the marriage—”
“Scalera,” I cut him off. “Gabriella is in danger. I’m not sure how bad it is or who is connected here, but she’s being hunted.”
Several beats of silence and I almost feel the tension twist in him over the line. “Fill me in.”
I don’t give details, just high-level pointers to her being marked, then sketch him a copy of the picture she drew us last night.
“I don’t doubt my wife,” I say, surprised how easily the word wife slips from my tongue, not with the snark I used last night, but with affection, “but I want to know if you see any connections here, can share any insights?”
“You’re sure it’s Bratva? Russian?” Matteo asks on a sigh, and in the background, his chair is creaking.
“Yep. Yuri agrees, it’s definitely Russian.”
“Then you should know better than us. We’re Mafia, not Bratva. Before our deal, we hadn’t had business connections with any Russians.”
“You maybe haven’t but given what Randazzo was involved with as her ‘father,’ she’s inherited business with Russian Bratva on that side.”
Matteo hisses in a breath and grunts. I just hit a nerve.
“Fuck. Never kill a man until he’s had his fill of talking.”
“What’s that?” I ask, sitting straighter.
“Just a little impulse I regret.”
I hitch my brows. Don Randazzo is dead at Matteo’s hand? That’s something we weren’t aware of. Just goes to show, our little mutual mole is selective with the information he shares.
“So you were there the day he died and his compound got torched?”
“Yep, got out well before the whole place was turned into a pile of ashes.”
Interesting. “Are you aware two other people survived that day?”
I can almost hear him grind his jaw.
“My inside man was responsible for the scorched earth side of the job. I didn’t know if there were any other survivors.”
I need to come clean. If I really want to look out for Gabriella’s safety, I’m going to have to trust her brothers.
“Your mole survived, but so did one of Randazzo’s people.
A woman by the name of Mara. I believe your mole is keeping her captive.
She used to do tattoos for him, to mark his prostitutes…
and probably other people he trafficked.
” I leave out the piercing part; let Matteo figure it out in his own time.
“If this woman was involved in marking your sister, then we need her to help us identify the Russian. Gabriella says she’ll probably recognize his voice, but not his face.
I know she’ll definitely recognize the tattoo artist.”
“Fuck me,” he says, and that follows several beats of silence. “You mean The Mole has Mara and you want them to come to the States? To Boston?”
The way he says Mara tells me she is no stranger to Matteo Scalera. “Yes, because I’m not taking Gabriella to Italy. The risk is too high.”
“Agreed.” He sighs into the phone. “Fuck knows how you have all this intel, Petrov, but I’m going to figure it out before we’re done.”
“We’re never going to be done.” We’re connected now, in for the long haul. I’m grateful, because this is what I was looking for.
“Yep. This is going to take a team effort,” he says. “And probably some time. I’m not sure how keen The Mole would be to travel.”
“We can’t waste time. I’ve found, with the right incentive, people will do almost anything.”
“Right. How much did you pay for all this intel?”
I chuckle into the phone. “Just look and learn. In some respects, we Russians are way ahead in the game.”
Matteo laughs drily. “Maybe. Just one thing…Why do you think Gabriella is being hunted? This thing with Mother Lucia hit her hard, but we didn’t make a connection at the time.”
“Apparently, there is more of the same going on, which confirms that someone is trying to track her down. Gabriella told me last night about a friend she’s worried about.
” And the distress in her voice was real, similar to the night with the girls.
Fuck knows what’s happening there. “Dominic is on the job, and I’ve asked Yuri to dial in.
Let’s see if we can combine resources and cut straight to the core. ”
“Hmm, he mentioned something to me but now it’s cast in a different light. Fucking dirty business if you ask me.”
He’s catching up. Il Consiglio’s business has become too clean in the last decade or so, since the brothers took over. They haven’t been subjected to real dirty play like I have these past ten years.
“The question is why.” he says on a sigh.
“The usual reason why people are hunted: they have something the other desperately wants.”
“And what does she have?”
I place my hand on Gabriella’s Bible, for the first time putting trust into people I don’t know enough about but listening to my gut instincts.
“The Bible Randazzo gave her that day has highlighted words that could be code, which is what they could be after, but I don’t have the manpower or the skill to figure this one out. ”
“Markings? Code? Like in a secret key?”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds like job for my brother Benedict—”
“The Bez lica. Thought so.”
“The Bez lica?”
“The faceless one,” I translate. “I haven’t met him. He is basically an enigma, and for all the world knows, doesn’t really exist.”
“He exists, all right,” Matteo says, “if in his own world. He’s a genius, annoyingly so, but handy. He’ll crack the code for you, and then we’ll know what the Russians are after. And then, maybe then, I can finally put this whole fucking shit show behind me.”
Good luck with that. This one will still learn the shit show never ends—it just morphs into something new that needs to be managed, dealt with, or annihilated.
“I’ll make copies and bring the real thing to you. It’s actually a relic. The Bible used to be your mother’s, Bianca Randazzo’s. From when she lived in Italy as a girl.”
“Trust those fuckers to take something holy and wipe their asses with it. Hope you’re not a religious man, Petrov. If so, there’s no hope for us.”
I smirk. “Not religious at all, although I love watching your sister on her knees, praying.”
“Fuck me. Make those dirty jokes about my sister to my face, asshole, and see how it ends,” Matteo says, but there is a hint of a smile in his voice.
We ring off, and with a shit-eating grin, I reach for the Bible. I feel it. There’s hope for this connection with the Scaleras. One brother at a time. I flip to the first page with a groan. This is going to be a fucking dull job, but I don’t trust anybody else to do it.
As I head over to my printer to start copying, there’s a knock on the office door. “Yes?”
Kostya peeks his head in. “I’ve put everything in the kitchen, Pakhan. Here’s the card you requested.”
“Good.” I reach for it. “Wait two minutes.”
It’s not the most romantic of gestures, and it’s one I planned before this morning’s cock-up, but it will appease my conscience and make my wife happy. Show her I see her beyond being a nanny to my kids, now turned into my semen’s fertile soil. Fuck. Would be handy if we both had a breeding kink.
I sign the card, seal it, and hand it back to Kostya. “Just leave it on the kitchen island. She’ll find it there.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
I position the Bible’s first page to copy it, then make a call to the maintenance team while the printer does its thing.
It’s time to move the gate.