“Dobriy den,”I say, wishing him a good day with the only Russian greeting I know.
“Put hands over head,” he replies.
Well, at least he speaks English.
I do and he pats me down for weapons, which I’m not stupid enough to be carrying, and then rips my shirt open, sending the buttons pinging everywhere like tiny bullets. After he scans my chest, he pushes the shirt down over my shoulders, still scanning me.
“I’m not wearing a wire,” I tell him honestly.
The man narrows his eyes and I shrug my shirt back on. There’s no sense in trying to close it because all the buttons are gone, so I let it hang. Seeming satisfied, he takes my arm and marches me inside the warehouse. Daylight doesn’t reach in here and it’s devoid of any electric lighting. Apparently, the Russians are happy to skulk around in the dark.
“Bring him!” Orloff’s voice bellows from above.
Glancing up, I spy a catwalk that leads to an upper office. My captor violently drags me up some rickety steps and down a narrow walkway. Then we pass through a caged door. Inside, Orloff sits behind a battered metal desk with his hands folded in front of him.
“Armani Bellanti,” he announces jovially, a disturbingly charming grin on his face. “The next time I planned to see you was with my hands wrapped around your throat, yet here you are. Welcome. Apologies for the condition of the place—I haven’t had a chance to call a decorator.”
With that, he starts laughing. The sound makes my blood run cold. Then he seems to repeat his joke in Russian, because my captor begins laughing as well.
I wait until their chuckles taper off and then say, “Let’s get down to business, Orloff. We need to talk.”
Spreading his hands, Orloff says, “Or I could just kill you and save my ears from the sound of your voice. It would be much more efficient, no?”
The back of my neck tingles as I hear the footsteps of more Bratva soldiers filing into the room. Glancing over my shoulder, I find six more men lined up behind me. They’re almost as huge as my captor, bald or buzzcut, faces marred with tattoos. Dead eyes, every single one.
Turning back to Orloff, I say, “Here’s the deal. The woman you’re about to marry is my sister. My biological sister. She’s a Bellanti. I’m assuming Bruno didn’t tell you, but maybe you’re already in on it. Either way, my family just found out. Juliana didn’t know either. Bottom line is, this marriage is no longer the deal closer you were looking for.”
I wait for his reaction. Orloff’s face reveals nothing.
“What do you hope to gain with such a lie, Mr. Bellanti?”
“It’s not a lie. I have the DNA results right here.”
I slowly reach a hand into my shirt pocket, sliding the folded paper out. When I hand it over, Orloff takes it without looking at it.
“Your fiancée, Juliana Guerra? Her real name is Liliana Ariel Bellanti,” I tell him.
“And how did this convenient little mix up come to pass?” Orloff asks, clearly not believing a word I’m saying.
“We thought my sister was dead. She and my mother perished in a boating accident, decades ago. Or so we were told. A bomb destroyed the vessel. Both of them allegedly drowned. My sister’s body was never recovered, but it was chalked up to strong tides and how small she was. We never imagined she’d been taken, hidden from us all these years. But…she was.”
He motions impatiently for me to continue.
“As for the bombing, we had no idea who was behind it. The police were useless; they closed the case eventually. Nobody got caught. It was a thorn in my father’s side until the day he died. My brothers and I rarely spoke of it. But new information has just come into our hands.
“An associate of ours recently met with some of Bruno’s former operatives, and my family is now in possession of evidence that proves Sergio not only ordered the hit on my mother twenty years ago, but arranged the bombing in order to kidnap my sister. Those operatives are meeting with a lawyer right now. They plan to share this information with the authorities.”
Orloff’s jaw works to the side as he finally unfolds the paper and skims the DNA report, but his expression doesn’t change. Yet I catch the way his fingers subtly tighten on the paper, his fingernails going pale with the pressure. He’s angry, but he’s hiding it. Angry at Sergio for lying to him, or for what happened to Juliana, I don’t know. Maybe both.
“I’m not sure if the Bratva has a code,” I go on, “but among the Italian families, killing women and children constitutes an unforgivable crime, andstealing a childas Sergio did is the utmost sin. The alliance you’re hoping to make will crash and burn once the Italians learn of Bruno’s betrayal. He’ll be murdered by his former allies before he can even stand trial.”
Suddenly, Orloff gets up to lean over the desk and look me straight in the eye. He’s built like an MMA fighter, lean and strong, with the kind of carefully cultivated muscle that makes him quick and lethal. He radiates violence, but I can tell he’s also in complete control of himself. It gives me a flicker of hope that I just might be able to reason with him.
If a decade of interrogation hasn’t prepared me for this encounter, nothing has.
“Did you think revealing this information to me would save you?” he says. “This is why you’re here, yes? To beg me to spare your family?”
“I’m not here to beg for anything. I’m here to save your ass. A gesture as befits one honorable man to another.”
