Page 3 of Bratva Sacrifice

But she hasn’t. She is only a student, recently graduated. She wants to be a teacher, like her mama. Fucking aspires to a life of bland servitude, raising other people’s children.

Her brother’s phone beeps. I retrieve it from beneath my pillow. I keep it near me always, just in case. It is only Catalina who texts him now; as soon as word of Nicola’s death spread—and it spread rapidly—every other lowlife who might have been working with him vanished into the fucking wind. You do not text a phone when it is impossible to know whose possession it might be in.

But Catalina does not know better. So she uses these texts as a form of catharsis, I think. I am fascinated by it. By her.

Catarina tells her dead half-brother all her secrets. The dead do not share these things.

It also means that dear Papa does not know about Nicola’s burner phone—or Catalina’s. No doubt her other forms of communication are monitored. But in this—her words here are open, honest. She would not write them if she had even the slightest suspicion that they might be seen by someone else. I can use this information, too. Sometimes she tempts me to text back, but that would defeat the purpose. I want this communication between us that she does not know of. I want all of her secrets to belong to me.

Papa came to see me today, she writes. He says you were murdered. I should have felt something. You were my brother, kind of. I wish you had wanted to be.

I think Catalina is more attached to the idea of a brother than the reality. With one hand I flip through her file, sorting out a handful of vital documents. She is an only child—on her mama’s side at least. Her mother was orphaned young. She has no one else, then. I wonder if she envied Nicola his family. If she ever wanted a place among them.

Beep.

I didn’t want you to die. But I wish we could have been close. I wish we could have been family.

I scoff. She does not know what it means to be a Russo in more than name. She has been spared these expectations by the secrecy in which she is shrouded.

But they will fall upon her anyway, now that Giulio has no other children.

I rifle through the pictures for the one that strikes me the most. That soft face, with such an earnest smile. There is no hint of guile or cunning. She is as alien to my world as I would be to hers. I am accustomed to women with sharp smiles, practiced and contrived. I am accustomed to smiles that never mean happiness. They are as false as the women who wear them.

But this one—this one is real.

I have her address. The temptation to see her in person increases by the day. By the hour. With every text she sends. I want her, this soft American woman who is the bastard daughter of a man I have made into my enemy. I want to keep her, to own her. I can feel my focus shifting. Soon, Giulio’s humiliation will become little more than an ancillary benefit. I don’t want to grind him beneath my boot half so much as I want his daughter in my possession.

So I keep myself from paying little Catalina a visit. Giulio cannot know how deep my obsession runs, or my position will be compromised.

I wait. I plan. And I savor her text messages as if she has meant them for me.

∞∞∞

At last, Giulio can no longer avoid the meeting I have pressed him for. With all of his Italian hospitality, he has invited me to dinner at a restaurant that his family owns. It is nothing fancy; he does not want to impress me.

He is relying upon my mercy. A foolish endeavor, since I have none.

And when I arrive alone—absent my enforcers, without even Anatoli at my side—this is an insult, and I can see that he understands it. It means I do not consider him a threat, even with his own foot soldiers nearby. It means he is not worthy of precautions.

I am gratified to see he looks like what he is. An aging man, desperately trying to hold onto his power. He is nearly fifty years old, but he looks older. Perhaps this is what grief does to a man. There is a woman seated beside him; she is thin, with a sharp and angular face. The weight of grief hangs heavily upon her shoulders. A handkerchief is clutched in her slender fingers, and Giulio speaks sharply to her in Italian as I approach.

Giulio is a bigger fool even than I imagined. He has brought his wife to a business meeting. To meet her son’s killer. For just an instant her reddened eyes go narrow with loathing—this I do not mind. It is her right as a mother.

She married a fool, but probably it wasn’t her doing. The Italians, they trade women between families to secure alliances. So maybe it is not her fault her husband is a fool, but her presence will not soften me.

“Morozov,” Giulio says, and for a moment he makes an attempt at a hearty Italian hospitality. If he could shove his way out from between the foot soldiers who flank him and his wife, probably he would have tried to kiss my cheeks. “Come, sit. Sit! Try the carbonara. It’s not so good as my nonna’s—or my darling Francesca’s,” he says, as he clasps his wife’s elbow. “But still it is very good. You will like.”

“Of course.” The wife stares at me as I take a seat. “Signora,” I tell her. “My condolences on the loss of your son.”

She goes stiff with rage, and so does Giulio—for only a few seconds. There is a shuffle behind him, his foot soldiers easing closer. I can taste the tension in the air, and I ignore it, serving myself a portion of carbonara. It is good. Probably my cook could make better, but Italian is not usually to my taste.

I wait out the silence, and I can see the moment that Giulio realizes the cascade of mistakes that have led him to this point. Like the threads of his power have snapped off in his hands. He has embarrassed himself by showing such weakness before me—to his men, to his wife. It is no secret at whose hands Nicola met his end.

To show your throat like this—for men like us, it is a death sentence. And I will weaken him further. Until his own dogs snap at his heels.

He croaks, uncomfortably, “Yes. Such a shame, our boy. To lose a child so young…”

Francesca makes a choked sound in her throat. Her fingers wring her handkerchief as if she is imagining it is my neck. “A good boy, my Nicky,” she says, reproachfully. “A good boy. He did not deserve—”