Page 64 of Bratva Sacrifice

There’s a moment of stunned silence. And then laughter. Loud, boisterous, mocking.

Matteo crouches beside me. “You think he cares for you?” he asks, his voice full of derision. “He thinks you ran from him.”

It’s a lie. He knows I wouldn’t. He has to know that!

Matteo’s hand strokes my tangled hair. “He curses your name to anyone who listens,” he says in a patronizing croon. “Even after so many days, his anger only grows. You think men like him excuse such things? You made him appear foolish. This is…unpardonable. Beyond forgiveness.”

No. Alexei knows better. He knows me better than that. “You’re lying.” It’s barely a whisper.

Matteo shrugs. “If this is what you think, then you are a greater fool than he is,” he says. He pats my cheek; a perversion of what might otherwise have been a comforting gesture. “It would have been better if you had listened,” he says. “But we still have use for you.” With one hand he fishes in his pocket and withdraws a white handkerchief. With the other, he pinches my cheeks in his fingers, forcing my mouth to open so he can stuff the handkerchief inside.

The linen sticks to the dry and tacky inside of my mouth. I choke around it, struggling to resist the urge to vomit. It’s only when I force myself to breathe through my nose that the feeling passes.

Papa whips out his phone and dials.

The phone rings—loudly. It’s on speakerphone.

On the third ring, Alexei answers. His voice is terse and grating. “What the fuck do you want, Russo?”

I struggle to make some sort of noise around the gag of the handkerchief. Until Lorenzo seizes my throat in a punishing grip and it’s a fight even to breathe through my nose.

“Today, my Catalina called me,” Papa says, his tone jovial. Placating. “She asked for my help.”

Alexei is silent for a long moment. And then, at last, “She called you.”

“Of course, she called me. I am her papa. Children call their papas when they are in trouble, no?” He issues a little laugh, like this goes without saying. “She told me she ran away, but now she has run out of money. Seven hundred dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, eh?”

It’s so obvious what Papa is doing, peppering in information that lends credibility to his words. The exact amount of money that Alexei shoved into my hand the day they took me from the bookstore. I want to beg Alexei not to believe it. To remember how devastated I was when I stole Nicky’s phone. To realize that I would never call Papa for any reason.

There’s an icy cold inflection in his voice when he says, “Where is she?”

Papa laughs again. “Not to worry,” he says. “I have her. Children, they don’t understand respect anymore, do they? They think they make their own rules. That family obligations mean nothing. But I am a man of my word, so of course I collected her for you.” Papa pauses for a moment. “But you are not so much a man of yours, are you, Morozov? The last time I gave Catalina to you—”

“You did nothing, Russo,” Alexei bites out. “I took her for myself.”

“Okay, okay, this is true,” Papa agrees amiably. “So this time, I give her to you. And you give me what you promised.”

They’re trading me. Trading me for what I refused to get for them.

“Agreed,” Alexei says shortly, and still his voice is frigid.

Papa’s eyes flick toward me. “She is a little…damaged,” he admits. “When she realized she would have to go back, it was necessary to subdue her.”

“I don’t give a fuck. She has earned this.”

A shiver slides down my spine, and I realize—I can still feel pain. It’s just internal. It’s the tortured beat of my heart as I hear the bitter sound of hatred in the voice of the man I love. The one who no longer gives a fuck about me.

“She is still my daughter, Morozov,” Papa says, and he manages to inflect his voice with just the right amount of fatherly concern.

“She is not your concern,” Alexei says. “When I kill her, Russo, this will also not concern you. I want her in one hour.” And the call disconnects abruptly.

When. My eyes squeeze shut against the tears I can’t cry. There’s a horrible dry sting, but I haven’t been hydrated enough even to cry in days.

They’re not going to kill me. They’re going to let Alexei do it for them.

My shoulders shake with the sobs that collect in my chest. Matteo yanks the handkerchief out of my mouth so hard I feel like it tears a chunk of my inner cheek out with it. “You see?” he says, and the patronizing tone of his voice tells me they made me listen to Alexei only to be cruel. “It will not matter what you say. The Russian has too much pride to listen. So we will have his evidence, and he will have you. Probably it will take only a few days for you to die, and when you do, you will be good for something at last.” Another pat to my cheek, as if in faint praise. “Your death will be the spark that ignites a war. The rest of the Russo famiglia will have no choice but to come together to make him answer for it—and we will be restored to our rightful place.”

Alexei is going to die, too. He doesn’t know, doesn’t even suspect this treachery. His hatred of me is so great that it clouds his judgment.