was with my father, they’d have tea and talk for hours. They were close, and when my mother and
sister died out of illness, he came to the funeral. I remember my father wasn’t crying, but he was. It was strange because he is as ruthless as Nikolai Romanov was. He wouldn’t be a Mob boss in Russia
if he wasn’t.”
“Holy fuck.”
“What?”
He wiped his mouth with his palm, smoothing his beard. “How did your sister look like, sugar
beau? Blonde with blue eyes like you?”
“No. A brunette like my mother. She looked a lot like her while I looked like my father. My sister’s
eyes were amber like…my uncle.” A gasp ripped from my throat, and my heart squeezed. “Are you
saying what I think you’re saying?”
*****
Savage
She was sad all the way to the diner where she was supposed to meet the Bellomo run boy. The possibility that her mother had slept with her uncle and her sister was his seemed to bug her a lot.
It bugged me, too. For a different reason. A crazy idea that hit me.
What if it was Sia’s grandma that set the bounty to find her but her uncle was the motherfucker that
set the one on her head? To have the daughter of the brother he must have hated, the real heiress to the Romanovs’ empire, killed without being tied to it?
Suddenly, the idea of her away from me without my knowing where she was, not being by her side
to protect her, didn’t sound right at all. The Mob in Europe—which was where she was going for sure
—was a whole different story. The Wicked Warriors didn’t have any power there, and if my theory
was right, Rasputin could find and kill her there easily.
“It’s better if I go in alone. Don’t want to spook him or look suspicious,” she said as I pulled over a block from the diner.
“No. I’ll go in first, make sure everything looks okay, and then I’ll sit and order like anybody else.
When I text you, you come in and do your thing.”
“Jesse, I’ve done this by myself many times before.”
“Not when you had a bounty on your head.” I held her hand. “Listen, Bellomo and Romanov are
Mafia, and they both hated your father. For all I know, they could be working together. Helped you
before or not, Bellomo will always put business first. What if he’d give you to your family in
exchange for a favor in return?”
She blinked, twisting her lips. Then she frowned. “Nothing is impossible. Okay. I’ll wait here.”
“You have your piece?”
