Page 70 of Brutal Vows

“You’ve known Masha for a long time?” he asks as he strokes my back, probably trying to take my mind off Annushka so I can gather myself.

This shift of focus helps, but he needs to understand the bigger picture. I’m not done.

“Our moms were best friends.” Friendships get forged in the Bratva because wives need to stand together, otherwise they don’t survive. “We spent summers at their hunting lodge by a lake, some hours’ drive outside of Saint Petersburg. It’s so beautiful there, isolated, peaceful, free. We had the run of the place. Those summers are some of the best memories of my life.” A time when Russia still had a golden sheen. It rubbed off quickly once Mom died.

“So you’re best friends? Almost like sisters?”

“Yes. Like Ivan was with Dimitri.” A tremor runs through me as I recall Ivan and Dimitri together, like brothers. Same age, same interests, same sense of humor, and so close they could finish each other’s sentences. The boy from our childhood is so far removed though, from the Dimitri who spent six years planning this evil. As for Ivan— “I still don’t know how he did it, how he managed to kill him.”

Luca stills completely. “He was fighting for his family, for his daughters…for you. Against a man who would—” He breaks off. Breathes. “It’s easy. I wouldn’t hesitate.” He cups my face and makes sure I look him in the eye. “Do you trust Masha?”

“With my life.”

“Okay. And this orchestra business? Your messages are coded, aren’t they? The new instrument is Annushka?”

I give him a woebegone smile. “Not just a pretty face, are you?”

He smirks. “Hear, world! She called me pretty!” He leans in and presses the softest of kisses to my temple. “Not my first rodeo, princess, but we couldn’t crack the code. Thought something probably got lost in translation.”

“Lost in translation?” I chuckle, sinking back against him, into his safety, relieved that even now, Luca can try to crack a joke. “No, we’re just clever.”

And I’m beyond caring that he’s been reading my messages. It’s par for the course in our worlds. Add in an arranged marriage, and I would have done the same. I’d be disappointed if he didn’t.

“She does play though,” I say. “The piano and the violin. She’s very good. She also read English Lit at Oxford for two years. She’s kind of nerdy that way. Gets lost in books.”

I trail off. Masha’s life has become so isolated, and now the debt I owe her is endless. I have no idea how to thank her for everything she’s done for me, even if she keeps on saying I’ve given her a chance at the life she’d never have had. A child to love and care for, even if it’s only temporary. This is why her saying we’d end this once and for all worries me. What isn’t she telling me? What is she planning while I’m here, freaking out, burning to get back to them but thwarted at every turn?

It has to do with me, and I hate that I’ve somehow pulled the Bratva’s menacing gaze back to Masha and her isolated life. I have to tell Luca the last bit, the part that will finally put this whole mess into perspective. “The photos, Luca. They didn’t stop. They changed.”

“What do you mean? I’ll let you know I did a very thorough job.”

“I bet you did,” I whisper, turning my face to his chest and breathing in his scent, letting it calm me before I take the final plunge. “But someone is following Masha. It’s recent. Even worse, they took photos of her and Annushka, yet she hardly ever leaves her apartment.” The fear is nauseating. The dread so real. “They dropped the photos with Ivan like they did the others. A drone drop. Incognito. Ivan didn’t open the envelope, and I saw them first, and Gabi…she saw them too.” Sweet angel Gabi, who gave the photos one look and knew. Only a woman who has suffered and who has lived in fear would grasp a situation like that with one sweep of her gaze. “Gabi understood the baby in the photos was mine.”

He tenses up against me, registering what my words mean. “Photos of Masha and Annushka? Taken on the sly and drone-dropped into Ivan’s compound?”

“Yes.”

“Milana—” Dread seems to sink into his voice. “How? Why?”

“You have to understand, when the coup happened, she was only a few weeks old. Then once the coup was foiled, Ivan told me to come home, no longer trusting the situation in Russia. I held back for as long as I could, putting him off, but he was shot and badly hurt. And Papa—” I bury my face in my hands. Pressing into his shoulder. “I thought leaving without a baby, coming here, would put them off any scent my relationship with Dimitri could have left. I planned to come for only a few days, to say goodbye to Ivan. To his girls. To Papa. And then Ivan cut me off financially and I’ve been stranded ever since.”

His body has gone rigid, his breathing strained, even if his hold on me is still gentle. “Tell me why, Milana?”

“I thought we got away with it. I was desperate to get back to Russia, but as long as Annushka was with Masha, I knew she’d be safe and cared for. And then those photos dropped.” I sob, from deep within my chest against this freight train I can’t stop. “I know Chertnikov is behind it. I don’t know what he knows…what he could know. He has no proof, unless Varya talks.”

“Fuck. Varya would tell them it’s your baby? And not Masha’s?”

“Yes. God help me, I hope not. It depends on how far they push her.”

“But why would it even matter?”

“Because Dimitri—” I break off, swallowing at the heavy pebble in my throat. “And this is something we didn’t know, that Ivan, to this day, doesn’t know. The only reason I know is because I figured it out with Masha, putting together the puzzle pieces. Dimitri confirmed it for me too, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I always thought his dad was dead. He was an only child, school friends with Ivan for a few years when he was in Russia.”

I brace myself, because blood is thicker than water. Blood seeks its own, and in this game, family owns you—especially when you’re a woman. A girl. A thing to barter with.

Men don’t have it easier. I’d like to think they do, and they might not be mere objects, but they have duties, obligations and pressures within a crime ring they bow to. Add ambition, and it’s the most toxic, demonic mix out there. And I have, unwittingly, swallowed deep.

“Dimitri is—was—Chertnikov’s illegitimate son. The only surviving child he had left.”