I twist away, his fist cutting through air. “Watch your fucking mouth when you talk about my sister. And for the record, we’d kill you before letting you marry Katya.”
“Touchy.” He ducks under my next swing and comes up with a hook grazing my jaw. “You think I want to marry a virginal bratva princess?”
I feint left, go right, drive a fist into his kidney. He grunts, but doesn’t go down. “You’d be lucky if Katya even looked at you.”
“Yeah, lucky.” He fists my jacket, uses my momentum to slam me into the brick wall. Stars burst across my vision. “Being chained to your psychotic family. Real fucking lucky.”
I bring my knee up hard. He doubles over enough for me to break free, shove him back.
“You’re not welcome in my psychotic family.”
He circles me, hands up, trying to read my next move. He won’t be able to. We’re both trained in Krav Maga and Sambo, courtesy of Saint Augustine’s mandatory combat training. We’re equally matched, which means this is going to get bloody.
“Funny, because your father seems to think otherwise.”
Matvey leans against the car with his arms crossed, watching like he’s waiting on his order at a drive-through. Dem’s smoking. Neither of them looks remotely concerned.
“I’d sooner bleed out in this alley than let a piece of shit like you anywhere near my sister.” I throw a combination but he’s fast, blocking most of it and absorbing the rest on his shoulder instead of his face. “A man who killed his pregnant girlfriend.”
He doesn’t like that. Elio moves so fast Dem and Matvey’s shouts of warning come a beat too late.
The hit catches me full in the chest, drives me back into the dumpster with a crash. My head bounces off metal and everything whites out for a second.
“Say that again,” he snarls. “I fucking dare you.”
I don’t give him the satisfaction. I slam my forehead into his nose. Cartilage crunches and blood pours down his face.
We go down together, rolling in garbage and filth, trading vicious hits. He gets his hands around my throat. I drive my elbow into his temple until his grip breaks.
I reach for my blade but Elio’s already moving, going for his ankle. When his hand comes up, he’s pressing a Glock against my temple.
We freeze. My knife’s at his throat. His gun’s at my head. Neither of us moves.
“Well,” Elio says, breathing hard. “This is cozy.”
“You going to pull that trigger?”
“You going to use that blade?”
We both know the answer. Our families have a truce, however tenuous. Killing each other would start a war neither side can afford right now.
I lower the knife. He lowers the gun.
“Don’t believe everything you fucking hear, asshole.” His voice roughens, and for a second something raw flashes across his features. “I didn’t kill Mara.”
His words give me pause.
I spit blood onto the pavement. “I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. You say you don’t want to marry my sister, then help us take down the Ghost.”
Elio’s chest heaves, sweat cutting through the blood on his jaw. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I made a deal with my father. If I kill the Ghost in twenty days, he’ll call off the engagement.”
Elio laughs. “And how the fuck do we do that?”
I push upright, wincing at the pain in my ribs. “We combine our men, share what we know, set a trap. Between us, we can gut this motherfucker.”
“Right. The Russians and Italians join hands and sing Kumbaya? Our families have been at each other’s throats for years.”
