Page 114 of Brutal Vows

Fuck my life.

I slap the lid closed, but don’t close the trunk. I step away and limp around in a circle for a minute, getting my head around this plan of hers.

Jesus. Her idea of revenge is next level. It will hit them where it hurts the most: the people they love. Two for one. Il Consiglio’s modus operandi for decades. You kill one of ours, we’ll come for two of yours.

Nobody here knows where Dimitri is, and the possibility that he could be alive, and maybe going through what Masha went through under Chertnikov’s command, could drive his father mad.

For all Chertnikov knows, the Petrov Bratva is holding Dimitri. Torturing him in true Bratva style, turning him into a shell of a man.

But Chertnikov knows nothing, unlike Il Consiglio. We’ve married into the Bratva, and we’re either going to get stronger because of it, or weaker.

I refuse to be weaker. Not after everything I survived tonight. Knowledge is power, and Dimitri is a gambit we’ll play when the time is right.

I turn back to the car and stare into the trunk. What a way to burn through five hundred thousand fucking dollars.

The thing with babies is, they are the universal symbol of a species’ hope.

With his only grandchild dead and Dimitri missing, it’s as close to our two-for-one retribution as Masha could get. Chertnikov knows his coup backfired, his only remaining son missing in action. But this baby, our little Zoe, he will hunt down to the point of madness. Knowledge is power, and we’re sitting on an explosive keg of it.

Tonight, Annushka dies.

But first, Masha has some fucking explaining to do.

53

LUCA

I open the door and catch both women in tears, clinging to each other. Masha is trying to soothe Milana. She’s calm, at complete peace. As they let go, Milana turns to me, a wreck.

“Masha, can I talk to you for a minute. Outside?” I ask, noticing she’s stripped off her coat and taken off the baby carrier. Her hand is bound and no longer dripping blood. Milana is clinging to the baby carrier as if it’s a lifeline.

“Sure. I’ll put my coat back on.”

I glance around the room, at the carnage we wreaked in just minutes. Blood and protruding bones are fucking everywhere. Hell. The one Masha went at hardly has a head left. The man I bashed with the chair looks like he’s been put through a meat tenderizer. I couldn’t stop, the sluices open to a side of me I knew existed but never allowed out. Just like Stephano, this violence is in my blood.

“Fuck,” I groan, turning my back on the scene to hold the door for her.

“You want to know,” she states, eyes lifeless, as soon as I’ve closed it behind us.

“Yes. Everything. How? And what the actual fuck?”

She shrugs. “It’s Russia. Here, you can buy anything for the right price.”

The price is beside the point. “Who got you the corpse? Whose baby was it? Where did they dig it up? And worst of all, where’s the mother?” This wasn’t a stillborn baby.

“Calm down. It’s nothing that would attract attention. They’re body snatchers and grave robbers. I found them on the dark web. They’re also half-Armenian and probably part of the criminal networks there.”

Fuck my life. “Do you know where the grave was?”

“No.”

“You need to give me their details. You understand we’ll need to keep an eye on them to make sure this doesn’t unravel in unexpected ways.”

“Yes.”

“Masha, we can’t leave tracks.”

“You won’t. Milana has access to all my online profiles. I just gave it to her. Once this is burned down, there will be nothing but ashes and a building so unsafe, nobody will dare come dig around in it. At best, all they’ll find are bones. Enough to give them pause. Chertnikov won’t really care what’s happened here, not while he’s still focused on finding Dimitri before it’s too late. You just have to keep him guessing until he’s killed too. I believe Ivan Petrov has his sights on him.”