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Clear the scene.
Annoyance ripples through my body, reverberating in my bones with each step I take. I’ve been sent on a wild goose chase, and we’re being played as fools. There’s no other explanation.
Someone is keeping secrets, and they’re hiding them well.
I pull out my own cell phone and check for messages from Andrei. He’s busy today—something about dragging Valentina to the mayor’s birthday party—but he’ll want to know about this.
I just hate coming up empty when I was given one task.
My phone settles like dead weight in my pocket as I decide not to tell my boss anything just yet. I pick through the master bedroom, tearing its immaculacy apart as my frustration grows. Bedsheets torn from the mattress. Books ruffled and thrown to the floor. Furniture overturned. Silly knickknacks broken.
It’s a pointless endeavor, and I storm through the bathroom and closet like a whirlwind. Still, I find nothing.
It’s when I come to the next room that I move a little slower. This bedroom shows a different style, a flair for bohemian macrame and various shades of green in the upholstery and accent rugs. Still kept to perfection, with not a single thing out of place, but different than the rest of the house.
Art lines the walls, various hand-drawn sketches of dark ivy crawling up brick walls and muscled men with undrawn heads and hips. Numerous sketches of hands in all different poses, both masculine and feminine in shape and form, sometimes drawn apart, sometimes with fingers intertwined.
Valentina used to keep sketches on her bedroom wall at the estate.
I pick through what little pieces of personality exist within the room, not finding much of note. If Valentina lives here, she definitely doesn’t stay here often. Or it’s been made to look that way.
Mikhail looked up the property before I left, and the owner came back as a man who’s been dead ten years. No known family. No landlord keeping the place tenanted. It was purchased five years ago, a few months before Valentina and Andrei’s wedding.
Could be a coincidence . . . but most likely not.
One other person went missing the same day Valentina did—Katya Baranova, Valentina’s grandmother.
We’ve always suspected that she had something to do with Valentina’s sudden departure, if not everything to do with it. Kidnapping people is just another day in the life of the Russian mafia.
But if Valentina didn’t want to leave, she could have alerted me or Andrei or any one of our men that she was in danger, and we would have killed the threat instantly.
So, Valentina must have left willingly.
Her grandmother likely spirited her away in secret and kept her hidden from view, somewhere outside the Bratva’s reach.
There isn’t much we can’t find without enough leverage and money. Valentina’s disappearance, therefore, was infuriating for all parties involved.
There’s no way Valentina stayed hidden of her own accord. Her grandmother, however, has connections linking back to her old Bratva family, the Dolohovs. If she were desperate enough, she could have leaned on old ties to start a new life.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and screw my eyes shut. This is too much for five hours of sleep. I’ll leave the conjecture to Andrei and stick to my task, which, oh yeah, I’m failing miserably.
I have little hope that the rest of the house isn’t staged, so I drop this lead and pick up the next. There’s one more location of interest on Valentina’s phone. As I stare at the screen, one word screams up at me.
Liam.
If Valentina’s boyfriend is real, and he sounded real enough on the phone, he should have a well-lived-in place. Valentina’s personal effects should be there, too, if they’re close enough. And if not, I can always wait for him to come home and spring a little impromptu interrogation.
The address is real. The man exists, even if he’s not Valentina’s boyfriend. They know each other.
I think back to the phone conversation, my lips curving into a frown. It was one thing to watch her with Andrei, but to know she’s been with someone else?
A thread of jealousy curls in my chest like smoke, expanding in my lungs with each breath I take. She’s not mine, but that doesn’t mean she should be anyone else’s, either.
Andrei’s the exception, as she was always his. That hasn’t changed. I don’t expect it to.
But someone outside the Bratva claiming our woman?
My fists clench by my sides. Unacceptable.
