Page 8 of Bratva Sacrifice

The moment the toe of my boot touches the steps, half a dozen hands slide toward their weapons. It is not a subtle movement. “I would not advise this,” I say caustically, without pause to my stride. “Unless you want to be hunted down by your own famiglia. My second will retaliate.” The danger I pose to them is very real. This branch of the Russo family is minor; small players in a very large, very influential game. But there are other, more formidable branches. Distant relatives who will not be pleased to learn that one of their own stole from them, and another allowed it. Possibly even sanctioned it

One of the Russos smoothly slides his weapon from a holster at his hip. He holds it steady in his firm grip as he aims it straight between my eyes. It is not the first time a weapon has been pointed in my direction and unlikely to be the last. That threat has not landed in a decade or better. “Go ahead,” I invite, stepping closer. An easy target. Open, vulnerable. At this distance, even a member of this pathetic family could not possibly miss. “You might find it satisfying.” For a few minutes at most. Until they must pay the price for it.

“Lorenzo,” Giulio hisses. “Morozov came here unarmed.”

It sounds like a plea for mercy on the grounds of hospitality. It is not. Giulio is a stupid fuck, but he is not that stupid. He knows as well as I do that for all their posturing, they are no threat to me. Not while I have the means in my hands to ruin them. Arriving unarmed and unaccompanied is a power play; a statement of my position and theirs relative to it.

With a bitter hiss and a clench of his jaw, the one called Lorenzo lowers his weapon and tucks it back into its holster.

“Catalina,” I say. “Where is she?”

Giulio’s trembling fingers yank at the collar of his shirt. “We don’t know yet,” he whines, and I hope to fuck his daughter is not half as annoying as he is. “I thought she would be more like her mother. She is more willful than I had expected.”

For fuck’s sake. This stupid piece of shit doesn’t even know his own daughter.

“She was told what was expected of her,” Lorenzo says. “She was told what it means to be a member of the Russo family.”

I lift a single brow in silent inquiry.

“It appears she disagreed,” Lorenzo adds in a gritty growl. “She escaped through a bathroom window. She left her cell phone behind, or we would have tracked her by now.”

Not a mistake; a deliberate choice. And the flex in Lorenzo’s jaw tells me he knows it, too—Catalina is going to run. She is already running, in fact. “How long has she been missing?”

“Not long,” Giulio hastens to assure me. “Not long at all.”

“Our nearest guess is two hours,” Lorenzo says grimly.

She could have covered a lot of ground in two hours. And Giulio has men on the way to her apartment. Probably she has been there and gone already. Taken anything she needs. Abandoned anything she doesn’t. If she is wise.

They are not going to find her.

“Stupid,” I remark casually, “to let your only asset slip through your fingers. When I asked only one thing of you, Giulio, in exchange for my silence.”

A heavy silence descends like a curtain. All the power here is mine, and every person present knows it. No one breathes without my permission to do so. No one blinks.

My faith in this idiotic family is nonexistent. I would not trust them to find their asses with both hands. “Catalina is no longer your concern,” I say. “But, Russo—for the sake of your famiglia, you should hope I find her soon.”

That oppressive silence lingers as I head once more down the steps. And as I open the door of my car to slide inside, the only thing that breaks it is the faint beep of Nicola’s burner phone in my pocket.

Giulio might not be able to track his daughter.

But I can.

Chapter Four

Catalina

Minneapolis is nice. I’ve been here for two weeks, now, and it hasn’t taken long to get acclimated to it. It’s a pleasant mix of small town and big city, and the people are kind and friendly. I don’t think anyone will think to look for me here, and I was careful not to leave traces. The first thing I did while I was in the Uber I ordered to pick me up from near Papa’s house was to buy a plane ticket on the next available flight—to Florida.

I put it on Papa’s credit card. I don’t think he’ll be able to find out that I never actually got on it.

As soon as I got back to my apartment, I crammed everything I couldn’t leave behind into a suitcase, hit up an ATM for all the cash I could get, dropped my car off in airport parking, and caught a cab to the bus station. Nine hours later, I’d arrived in a new state, with only a suitcase to my name and a little under a thousand dollars—the maximum I was able to withdraw before I hit my daily limit, plus the emergency fund I kept stashed in my underwear drawer.

Only a week ago, I had my future planned out. A teaching job lined up, making use of my years of education. Now I know that it was all a waste. My future has already been decided for me. Bartered away by my family. My own feelings and opinions just as immaterial and unimportant as those silent Russo women who said nothing and stared blankly as their husbands ridiculed them.

I don’t intend to become one of them.

But there is a price for my freedom, my own sacrifices which have to be made. I don’t know how far the Russo family’s criminal reach extends, to what lengths they might go to recover me. It means I can’t use my identification or my degree. It means I had to cut up all my bank cards, and I can only rely on the meager supply of cash I managed to take with me.