Which means all I can do is wait as well.
I hate the tense silence almost as much as I hate the thin plastic digging into my wrists, ankles, and knees.
Finally, the door opens again. Dominik walks back in wearing a clean suit, only faint bruising on his nose hinting at what I did to him. Under the bright overhead lights, he looks even more dangerous—broad shoulders filling his jacket, a thin scar cutting along his jaw, pale bluish-gray eyes assessing me.
Going over to the chair, he drags it toward me, the loud, screeching sound of the legs on concrete no doubt repayment for my screams earlier.
Once he’s about five feet away, he sits down, legs spread, elbows on his knees. When he leans in, his suit jacket opens just enough to flash the black grip of the gun tucked at his front hip, a warning disguised as an accident. “You want to know why you’re here? We’re looking for your brother,” he says. “Archer stole from the wrong men.”
Ice floods my stomach. Archer frustrates me, scares me sometimes, but stealing from the Bratva? That’s suicide.
Maybe he’s just a suspect, one of many. My brother could be entirely innocent. Clearing the emotion from my throat, I ask, “What is it that Archer hasallegedlystolen from you?”
While I wouldn’t put theft past my brother, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, to assume he’s innocent until proven guilty.
Dominik’s expression gives nothing away before he says, “Archer stole two million in merchandise from us.”
“Two million dollars?” I whisper. “No. Archer can be reckless, but he wouldn’t—he couldn’t?—”
Dominik watches my face closely. “Are you sure he didn’t tell you where the money is? This can all be over if so…”
“I’m sure,” I snap. “If I’d seen two million dollars, I’d be on a beach somewhere pretending my life isn’t falling apart, not just coming off a twelve-hour shift catering to the whims of every damn guest.”
“Well, Archer is missing, and so is our money.”
“This has to be a mistake,” I say again, quieter this time. Archer raised me. Protected me. He wouldn’t vanish without a word.
But Dominik’s expression says he’s seen a hundred siblings make this same argument, and he’s unmoved.
“He hasn’t been to his apartment in over a week,” Dominik adds. “That’s why we tracked you down.”
Something inside me sinks. If Archer really is gone… he didn’t just screw up. He ran.
Is this why he hasn’t responded to any of my messages? Because he’s gone?
“Archer wouldn’t just disappear on me.”
Dominik frowns harder. “He’s gone, Alina. And we have video surveillance to prove his guilt.”
“Show me,” I demand. I need to see it.
“Archer was responsible for moving an important shipment for us,” Dominik says. “Instead, he sold it to a rival crew and vanished with the cash.”
My heart sinks. “Archer wouldn’t steal from people like you. He knows better.”
“Apparently he doesn’t,” Dominik replies.
“Then show it to me because I can’t believe it was Archer. I won’t deny that my brother makes mistakes,” I ramble. “He gambles, he talks big, but my brother?—”
“Has made his bed,” Dominik says, cutting me off with a sharpness that makes my stomach sink. “And unfortunately, nowyouare going to have to lie in it.”
“Me?” The word scrapes out of me before I can swallow it. “I don’t even have two thousand dollars, much less a million!”
“I know you don’t,” he says as he pulls out his phone from his inner pocket to look at the screen. “But when someone takes what’s ours, we take something even more valuable from them.”
Me. He means me.
“If your brother loves you, as I assume he does, then he isn’t going to want you to suffer for his crime,” Dominik remarks. He turns the phone around and plays a video of a warehouse. The footage isn’t great, but even I can recognize Archer wearing a hoodie, shaking hands with a group of men in leather vests. The way he moves in the video—quick and jittery—looks too much like the boy who used to steal food for us to deny it’s him.
