32
COLLEEN FROST
Ihad to be at a stockholder meeting at two o’clock, but now we’d somehow gotten involved with a Russian bratvaagain.
It was almost enough to make me want to go back to sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor of a studio apartment in Arizona.
When I’d come out of my office and these Russian guys had hustled me into a waiting limousine, I set off my panic app Twist had rigged on my smartwatch that linked to my phone. I wasn’t sure if the police or my private security would get here in time to save us, but at least they were tracking us. There was a fighting chance thatsomeonewas going to show up at some point.
Being the CEO of a Fortune 100 company has its perks, especially one that you founded and took to the stratosphere in under six months.
The Russian mercenaries—for I’d figured out that’s who they were, Koch Group hired muscle—tied my hands loosely behind my back, not realizing Twist’s particular tastes had left me with uncanny skills to escape any binding I wanted to.
Even when they were dragging us toward the elevators behind Bell’s desk, which ultimately weren’t functional, I had one hand out of the zip ties and was ready to take advantage of any situation that presented itself.
After the Russian Lug Nut couldn’t get the elevator call button to work, which I assume was my husband’s work, Mary Varvara Bell herded us down the long trail from her desk to the office entry at the other end.
It was only a matter of time, and with one hand free, I had to find an opening to save us.
33
MICAH SHINE
The bitter feeling that I’d picked the wrong side when the families went to the mattresses crawled up my neck as those fucking mercenaries prodded us through Mary Varvara Bell’s office toward the building elevators to the lobby.
The problem with power is that it doesn’t just corrupt people. It also causes arrogance.
I’d been careful of that, making sure I was scrupulously polite to everyone as befits a mafia boss when I was in New York and Philadelphia, constantly thanking people with a humble nod and placement of my hand over my heart, just like my father always did when he ruled the New York underworld.
It’s important to remember that when you come from the streets, the streets can take you back.
Mary Varvara Bell had lost that insight. With her fancy Le Rosey Swiss boarding school education and Black Sea dacha summers, she’d forgotten that the bratva are criminal enterprises, and the title for the chief of the bratva is Vor, which meansthief.
Blaze was right, calling her out for Evil Overlord mistakes.
But she was making so many more.
That’s why I made sure that my people were always stationed in the parking garageandthe building lobby, waiting for just such a mistake and opportunity as this.
She didn’t deserve to be the head of White Russian Holdings anymore.
It was time to burn it all down.
34
KYLIE MILLER
When you marry the mafia boss, this isn’t supposed to happen.
And so I was pissed off.
Yes, I absolutely knew Micah Shine was Marcu Argento and the head of the New York and Philadelphia mafia families when I married him because I put him there. Being paraded past Mary Varvara Bell’s secretary and the other workers in her office with my hands tied behind my back was a kick in the teeth, but it wasn’t going to be the last word.
We finally reached the building elevator core that ran down to the lobby, and then the problem started, a debate about the ratio of how many of Dr. Bell’s goons were to ride down with how many prisoners per elevator.
They hadn’t thought this through. That’s where bratva operations always go wrong, not thinking it through and not knowing who your friendsreallywere.
It was like that time Shorty Pagano was summoned to a meeting by the guy who was the big boss at the time, and he went prancing into the meeting, thinking that he was going to be a made man. Instead, the room was draped in tarps, and he knew then that he was about to get whacked.
