Page 78 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

I’m sorry, Finn. I have to do this alone. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back.

I hit send, pocket the phone, and leave the apartment building via the rear exit.

I take a taxi to the address given to me by the skipper of the boat at the docks earlier today. I don’t know what I’ll find. I don’t even know if he was telling me the truth or if the Petrovs convinced him to give me this information with threats to end his life slowly and with an extreme amount of pain. But it’s the only lead I have, and I will never forgive myself if I don’t at least check it out.

Besides, I saw the way his eyes darkened when he talked about Ivana. Yelena as he knew her. Why else would he have gone to the trouble of tracking down the Russians when she boarded their boat and didn’t come back? Apparently, one of the men in black left carrying a briefcase and having changed into a smart silver suit shortly after my sister was taken below deck. The skipper, Matt, jumped on his motorcycle and trailed him to an aircraft boneyard thirty minutes north of Chicago, and watched him fly away on a light aircraft.

He spoke to the police, but without Ivana’s real name and a photograph of her, they filed his report and followed the usual process but didn’t hold out much hope of anyone coming forward with information.

Until I showed up, and he saw the resemblance.

I didn’t tell Finn. It wasn’t a conscious decision; I’d fully intended to get him and Aiden on board with visiting the disused hangar.

But then Aiden suggested that Ivana might’ve sold out to another Russian organization, a Bratva family who didn’t know about her injuries and saw her as a hook to reel in the Ivanovs. And I swallowed the information on the tip of my tongue, keeping it to myself.

I always knew I would be the one to find her.

And when I do, it will just be the two of us again, the way it has always been.

Ignoring the ache in my chest when I think about Finn, I ask the taxi driver to stop far enough away from the hangar that no one will see the lights or hear the engine.

Then I approach the building on foot, a gun in each pocket, blades on the inside of my jacket and tucked inside my boots, and the burner phone weighing me down with Finn’s green eyes and cute dimples.

I slide it out, remove the battery and SIM, and scatter the pieces across the overgrown land surrounding the hangar.

A sob sticks in my throat. I don’t want to hurt Finn. He is the only person I’ve ever known who loves me without wanting anything in return, but that will change when this baby is born. I will no longer be the sexy enforcer he fell in love with. I won’t be his butterfly. In all the time he has known me, I’ve been searching for my sister. I’ve no home to call my own. I don’t even possess a weapon that belongs to me.

Then the baby will arrive, and I’ll be a mom.

I’ll be dependent on him for a roof over our heads, money, food, all the things that he can give us, and would do so willingly because he loves me.

But what kind of mom would I be to this child if I couldn’t provide these things myself?

What kind of mom would I be if I didn’t do everything I could to find their auntie?

The building is in darkness when I circle it, sticking to the overgrown weeds, nettles, and vines clambering up the external walls and feasting on the roof. I didn’t expect my target to be here—if he were that easy to track, then Leonid would’ve found him first—but when I raise the shutters and let myself into the hangar, my heart tries to jump from my chest.

A light aircraft is sitting there, ready and waiting to be used.

Not the bones of an ancient airplane once used by the army. Not some rusty metal corpse, moldy from lack of use, covered in dust and mulch and stringy weeds.

No. This aircraft looks like a one-owner car that has been washed and polished once a week since it was built, standing proud in the middle of the hangar with the cockpit door open.

Sticking to the shadows, I close the shutters behind me, wander through to the small office attached to the building, and let myself in through a smashed window. The annex resembles a greenhouse rather than an office, taken over by plants allowed to scatter seeds and spread as nature intended.

If the man Matt saw was part of the Petrov organization, he has been using this place solely as a means of transport; it’s on no one’s radar, unless someone with a passion for disused hangars happens to drive past, his aircraft is hidden, and he can get away while the deal takes place at the port.

Is Leonid aware?

No. He would’ve rescued Ivana if he knew where she was being held. I have to believe that, or my whole life will have been a lie, a fantasy created by a powerful man who fed us hope and then used us anyway. Not in the same way as these perverted fuckers, but still with his own end game in mind.

Not ours.

Headlights slice through the vegetation growing wild around the hangar, and my heart leaps into my throat. Tonight, I’m the hunter, not the hunted. I refuse to bring my baby into a world where women and children get trafficked by scum like the Petrovs while the people in power turn the other way, and it starts right now.

I slip back inside the hangar, closing the door to the annex behind me, and climb inside the cockpit of the waiting aircraft.

It’s cramped. There’s barely enough room for the pilot and passenger seats. But a curtain separates the small cabin from the empty storage unit, and I fold myself onto a shelf with my knees touching my chin, slide my gun out of my pocket. And wait.