Page 9 of Bratva Sacrifice

It means I’m living in a roach-infested motel because it costs just forty-five dollars per night and the owner didn’t ask for my identification. It means I had to take the very first under-the-table job I could find, because what money I do have won’t last long.

Luckily for me, the job is a decent one. Darren—the owner of an independent coffee shop—took pity on me when I told him the stripped-down story of my life. I didn’t lie, exactly, but I also omitted enough information to keep myself anonymous. He thinks I’m on the run from my controlling family—which is true enough—though I’m fairly certain he left that conversation with more of a cult impression than I had intended.

I was a barista at the campus coffee shop in college for a few weeks, before Papa decided that he didn’t want me working the closing shift. I’m a bit rusty on the espresso machine and the milk frother, but on my hour-long trial shift, I do well enough that Darren is confident I can handle a full shift with minimum training, and just like that…I have a job.

The pay is just above minimum wage, but even that is enough that I can pay for my motel in three hours of work. The tips are split at the end of every shift, and the staff is allowed a free food item every shift, so I don’t even have to waste money on lunch. It’s not a lot, but it’s a small measure of stability that I desperately need.

I can’t do this forever, but if I can just stay hidden long enough for Papa’s family to give up on me, then maybe I can come out of hiding one day. If I can live frugally enough and save up some money, then maybe in a few months I can move somewhere even farther away. Get a new bank account. Update my resume. Finally put my master’s to use and get a job as a teacher.

Maybe one day, all of this will feel more like taking a gap year than running for my life. Until then, I’m scanning news sites every day for my name. For Papa’s. For the Russos in general. Searching for the faintest bit of hope that whatever crimes they committed, whatever debt I was meant to be payment for, is no longer a problem.

Maybe one day, Papa will forgive me for running. Maybe one day, I’ll forgive him for going along with his family’s plan. Maybe one day we’ll be on speaking terms again.

For now, I feel…not safe, exactly. Safer, though, than I was. The family might be looking for me, but if they were capable of tracking me, I’m sure they would have found me already. Leaving my car at the airport was probably enough to misdirect them for a little while. But I’m not stupid enough to log into any accounts that could be traced back to me.

My one indulgence is the occasional text to Nicky’s burner phone, which is probably at the bottom of the river or something. I know in my heart that it’s stupid. That he’s dead and he’s never going to answer. That even if he were alive, he wouldn’t.

But it makes me feel grounded. He can’t talk back, can’t reject me, can’t make me feel inferior with his dismissive bullshit. Now, Nicky is the custodian of my secrets. In death, he protects me in a way he never wanted to when he was alive. It makes me feel better, somehow, to have someone to confide in…even if it’s someone who never wanted to know me in the first place.

Nobody knew about his burner phone, so I know he’ll take my secrets to the grave. After all, he’s already in it.

Chapter Five

Alexei

Catalina stands behind the counter of a coffee shop called The Daily Grind, a violet apron tied about her waist and her messy blonde ponytail threaded through the back of a branded baseball cap. She is smaller than I had imagined. A little waif of a woman with thin shoulders and narrow hips.

There is no one at the counter presently, and I watch through the window as she takes a moment to slip her phone out of her pocket and scroll through a handful of news articles.

I know what she must be looking for. Any mention of herself, of her family. She has been missing—to them—just over two weeks, now. I have known where she was since she arrived. It was a simple matter for Anatoli to run a trace on her number; the one the Russos do not know of.

Within a day of her arrival, I knew where she was staying. Within two, I knew where she was working. I could have snatched her off the street on her walk to work from the metro station if I had wanted to. It would have been easy.

It would not have been fun.

In truth, I expected Catalina to be the sort of woman who does her father’s bidding. She had such a soft, innocent face in those pictures Anatoli gave me. She looked meek, biddable. Malleable, even. It never occurred to me that she would run. I am certain that it never occurred to her father, either.

But now I am fascinated by this woman who outsmarted both of us. Who decided for herself that the sacrifice of her comfortable life was worth her freedom. She torched everything in an instant, left behind everything she knew only to secure it, and that—that interests me. More even that that sweet, soft face did.

A willful woman with good survival instincts. I like that, I think.

Over these past days, I have begun to think of this as a game. One she does not know we are playing. Cat and mouse, with a woman who thinks herself safe. She has been careful—more careful than I would have expected of so sheltered a woman. She has not used her bank accounts, has not logged into her email. She bought a plane ticket, abandoned her car at the airport. All smart things which have prevented the Russos from being able to find her.

But not me—because I have something they do not.

The phone in my jacket pocket beeps, and I watch Catalina tuck hers away as some new patron comes striding up to the counter. She pastes on a sunny smile in welcome. Her cheeks look thinner than in her pictures. Probably she is not eating as well as she would have a week ago.

I pull Nicola’s phone from my pocket and unlock it.

I think about you a lot. Now that you’re gone, I wonder if you ever thought about me. If you would have sold me out like Papa did.

Catalina is a sentimental woman. I have learned that in the weeks since I acquired Nicola’s phone. Probably this is because she was close to her mother, and now all that love and affection has nowhere to go. The Russos have no use for such things as sentimentality.

I do. It is a weakness ripe for exploitation.

Unfortunately for sweet, sentimental Catalina, Nicola would have sold her out even faster than her father. He was every one of Giulio’s vices distilled into a weak, worthless man. If he could have found use for Catalina before the rest of the Russos had, he would have done.

I tuck the phone back into my pocket. I have waited long enough. Catalina has had two weeks to shed her jumpiness, the nerves which have lately afflicted her. She does not look over her shoulder quite so often anymore. Her boring little life here has already lulled her into a false sense of security.