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My uncle stands above us, a snarl parting his lips. “Did you think you outsmarted us, Bianca, finding a man to take you away from me? If you weren’t such a worthless bitch, I’d commend you for leading us right into the pocket of those two-cent Russian gangsters. It’s been a fruitful working relationship wouldn’t you say?”
Jorge laughs. “I’d say it was nice while it lasted. But we have what we want now. You see, the Kozlovs have the best shipping routes locked down, and thanks to everything we learned working closely with the bratva, we plan to take over those routes very shortly.”
Dread snakes its way through me as everything comes into sharp focus. My uncle’s insistence on the wedding and having Daniil work closely with Jorge. They were playing the Kozlovs the entire time, and it was me who gave them access. I opened the door to Daniil’s ruin.
My heart snaps in my chest. That’s all the more reason to keep on fighting. If I can somehow find a way to take my uncle down now, he can’t go after the Kozlovs ever again. So I play the same twisted game Jorge is playing.
“Fine,” I gasp, pressing on Jorge’s shoulders, and wrapping a leg around his waist. “Daniil wasn’t half the lover I imagine you are,” I whisper into his ear. “You made me feel things he never did.”
Jorge pulls away from me, eyes alight with something like excitement. He’s smart enough to know I’m trying to butter him up, but dumb enough to want the sex anyhow. At least to hurt me.
He pulls my hair hard and bites my neck as my uncle watches. “I’m going to whip you for every time you let him put his hands on you. And then I’m going to make you my wife.”
What the fuck? This man is so deeply deranged there’s no sense in responding. But what he wants is my fear, he’s always thrived on other people’s pain. So I roll myself into a ball on the ground, and sob into my hands.
“Don’t worry, my sweet, I’ll make it good for you, too.” He laughs cruelly now.
And my uncle laughs right along with him before adding, “No one can find you here. Not your beloved Kozlovs, not your new friends at the FBI, no one. Daniil underestimated me. Your mother made the same mistake and look how it turned out for her.”
With that, he spits in my face and snaps at Jorge to lock me up. I can’t imagine what they have in store for me, but even as dread bleeds through my system, I know there is no margin of error. Every move I make from here on out has to be as cunning and calculated as my uncle’s. Even more so.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
DANIIL
Yulian hangs upthe phone and hits me with a grim look. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
I rake a hand through my already mussed hair. “Fuck, I don’t know. Just spit it out,” I demand. We’ve been holed up in Andrei’s office since discovering Bianca is missing. Leo and Yulian have been working their intelligence contacts to find out where she is and to try to make sense of everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours. At Andrei’s insistence, Georgia flew back from Greece in case this is part of something bigger.
“Good news,” Kira chimes in, giving me a sympathetic smile. “Always start with the good.”
Leo pulls up a satellite image on a big screen on the far wall. “We have confirmation that Jorge, Bianca, and senior Zega members arrived in Antioquia, a province in northwestern Colombia, via Morales’s private jet yesterday evening. It’s a relatively rural area, close to the border of Panama. Bianca appears to be unharmed. She wasn’t wearing any shackles upon arrival.”
My fingers drum on the desk in front of me, not feeling any relief that Bianca is alive. The truth is anything could have happened between then and now. Time is not on our side.
“The bad news is that they are not at the Morales estate. A team of three Land Rovers picked them up after landing and swept Bianca, Jorge, and his guards away, we just don’t know where yet.”
Kira sits beside me, a hand landing on my back. “I’m sorry, Daniil,” she says. “We’ll find her.”
I nod absently, filling up my whisky glass with another two fingers of the amber liquid. Something big is going on, I can feel it.
“Are the feds looking for her as well?” Georgia asks from where she is curled into Andrei on the settee.
I shake my head bitterly. “The feds aren’t doing shit. If they were better at their jobs, they would have protected their informant in the first place.” Andrei shoots me a sour look for snapping at his wife, but I’m not angry with her. I’m angry at the world. “Sorry, Georgia. I’m just frustrated. I failed her. I fucking failed her,” I say, the familiar bloom of self-hatred hitting me square in the chest.
Kira throws her arm around me. “We all failed her. We should have trusted her when she came clean, but what’s done is done so forgive yourself. And let’s figure shit out.”
Leo, who’s had his head down, typing away on his laptop for the last few hours, suddenly looks up. “I have something,” he announces. “My hackers pulled up satellite footage of the Land Rover caravan moving through the jungle towards a five-acre spread in the mountain village of Jardín, about three hours south of Medellín.”
“What’s there?” I ask, immediately sobering.
“Looks like a compound of some sort.” Leo hands me his phone, and I manipulate the satellite images he shows me to focus on an estate nestled in a mountainous region. There is no electrical fence, or guard towers like his main compound, but the remote location ensures its security. None of this bodes well for us.
“Why there?” Kira asks, peeking at the image over my shoulder.
“To throw us off their scent. Going to Emilio’s estate would be too obvious,” I say somberly. Then to my brother I say, “You promised your support in taking down Emilio. Well, the time has come. We need to go to Colombia. We need to handle this.”
The air in the room goes still. We’re used to fighting on our home turf, but to bring the fight to the mountains of Colombia, a place we’re not accustomed to or familiar with is dangerous. I know that, but it’s the only way. I also know my brothers would walk through fire for me. As I would for them.
