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Katya nods her head and gives Alina another squeeze before pulling back and wiping her eyes. She looks at me and Alina, her cheeks heating up in a blush. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t about me. I don’t mean to make it seem like it is.”
Vitaly wraps an arm around her upper chest and pulls her against him. “No one thinks that,ptichka.”
“We haven’t gotten a chance to get to know one another,” Alina says, looking around to include Jolene and Simona, “but I’m looking forward to meeting all of you. These guys were all single when I last saw them, and now they’re smitten. That’s no easy feat.” She turns back to Vitaly and points a finger at him. “Especially you. I was afraid you’d never settle down. I’m happy you’ve proven me wrong.”
“I just hadn’t met the right woman,” Vitaly says. “Konstantinwanted to join our families, so technically I had no choice but to say yes because we needed the connection to find you, but she was so beautiful and so stubborn. I couldn’t resist falling for her. Now I’m completely whipped and loving it.”
“I wasn’t that stubborn,” Katya says, making Vitaly laugh.
“Don’t let her fool you. She was a massive handful. Still is. It’s a full-time job keeping her in line.”
“Keepingmein line?” Katya laughs, rolling her eyes at him.
Vitaly looks over at us. “Poor thing’s confused. It’s those pregnancy hormones. It muddles her thinking.”
Alina laughs, but I notice the way her smile doesn’t fully reach her eyes, and when she starts to scratch at her tattoo again, I gently grab her hand, cupping it in mine as I lead her back to the island.
“Please try and eat some more,” I whisper near her ear.
She nods and grabs the biscuit again, but instead of taking a bite, she looks up at all of us. “I want to know what the plan is.”
“Baby, you don’t need to worry about any of that,” I start to say, but she cuts me off.
“I have to know, and I want to know.”
All I want to do is wrap her up in a tight hug and keep her safe from every damn thing, but that’s not what she needs, and I know that. She’s already been exposed to the worst kinds of evil in this world, and I don’t have the right to try and shelter her from it now. She’s earned the fucking right to be involved in this in every damn way.
“Okay.” I kiss her forehead and tell her the truth. “No one knows we’ve wiped out the Lebedev Bratva. Danil’s been working with Casimir, the hacker on Konstantin’s payroll.”
Danil gives Alina a grin. “We convinced him last night that it was in his best interest to switch his loyalty to our Bratva. Between the two of us, we’ve managed to create the illusion that Konstantin and Osip are still running business as usual.”
“Why are you working so hard to make it seem like they’re still running things?” Alina looks at me and my brothers, trying to piece it all together. “Are you worried about retaliation?”
With her hand still in mine, I run my thumb over her skin. “No, we aren’t worried about that. As much as I’d like to say that our main goal in life is to take down sex traffickers, it’s just not true. We only went after them because we wanted to find you. When everyone realizes that the Lebedev Bratva is gone, they’re not going to retaliate. Someone else will just move in and take over the void their absence will create. We won’t ever allow that shit in our city, though.”
“If someone new will just take over and you aren’t worried about someone getting revenge, then why aren’t you letting the news leak out?”
“There’s an auction that’s planned for next month,” I tell her.
Danil cuts in and says, “The same kind of auction that I went to when I found Simona, except this one is getting even more attention. There’s going to be a lot of prominent men there, men in very high positions in governments from all over the world.”
Lev smiles and gives a soft laugh. “It’d be a real shame to miss killing all those bastards.”
“It really would,” Vitaly agrees. “They’ll all be together right here in our city, expecting to buy trafficked women, and we’re going to give them one hell of a surprise.”
“And the truly beautiful part is that we’ll be able to visit them one by one and shoot them in their private viewing booths,” Danil says. “We can have our men running the place, and these jackasses will just willingly walk into our trap.”
“And then we torch the place,” I tell her, watching her reaction.
Her blue-green eyes search my face, trying just as hard to read me. “And then you’re done with this shit?”
“Yes, and then we’re done with it.” I give her hand another squeeze. “After this, we focus on our area of the city. Maybe we’ll expand into the north and south. We’d also like to continue working with Dominic.”
“His dad will love that,” Vitaly says with a laugh. He looks at Alina. “Antonio did not warm up to us.”
“You found someone who’s immune to your charm?” She manages to keep a straight face when she adds, “I don’t believe it.”
“I know, right? I thought maybe he’d come around, but every time I see him, he just looks grumpier.”
