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We had been working with Alexander for years before he decided to get his stupid ass killed. Morozov had been partnered with this exact Corsican faction, working to rot the Sokolov organization from the inside.

It was fucking working, too, until Morozov fucked up and Maksim Sokolov’s wife—of all fucking people—took him down.

The Bratva took care of him and that was the end of Alexander Morozov.

But the faction didn’t stop. They just pivoted. To fucking Russo.

Goddammit.

Because losing Morozov wasn’t the end of the plan.

It was just a bad investment. They wrote him off, learned from it, and moved on to phase two.

The plan is the same one it’s always been, just aimed from a new angle. Fracture the alliance.

Get the Bratva and the Irish and the Santoros to look at each other and see enemies.

Let them tear each other apart.

Then move in and clean up what’s left when they’ve done the work for you.

Seraphina was going to be the fracture point.

If she’d died—and Russo’s plan was for her to die in a way that let each family point at the others—the alliance would have shattered inside a week.

Leo Santoro would have come out of that grief looking for someone to kill, and he would have immediately blamed the Sokolovs for the breach on Maksim’s estate.

Cillian Brennan, under the direction of Connor Brennan, who would have been distraught at the loss of his granddaughter, would have declared war on the Sokolovs, and the three families would have spent the next year at each other’s throats while the Corsicans moved in behind the smoke.

That was the plan Russo was supposed to execute himself.

And instead, someone—see also: me—else got to Seraphina first, and pulled her out before Russo did.

Now the bastard is trying to figure out who did it.

I sit back in my chair and rub a hand down my face. My name has not come up in his intercepts yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Russo is patient but he is not slow, and I know he will figure it out who took Seraphina Santoro.

I did what I did quickly, because I had to. If I’d waited any longer that little girl would already be dead and I was not letting Seraphina Santoro die.

The phone on my desk buzzes and my eyes cut to it. Luca’s name flashes on the screen. I seize it and answer on the first ring.

“Luca?”

“Nico.”

He doesn’t say anything else for a second, and that alone tells me it’s bad. Dread curls into my gut.

Luca doesn’t stall.

Whatever’s coming, he’s trying to figure out how to say it, and my stomach is already sinking before he opens his mouth again.

“Just tell me,” I order him, heart thumping wildly.

Luca sighs heavily. “It’s Dino. He’s dead.”

I close my eyes. “Fuck.”