Page 100 of Brutal Vows

Masha gets out. She’s put Annushka’s mittens and cap back on, and my darling is getting unhappier by the second, but Masha ignores her and greets the men in Russian. “Where’s my purchase?”

“Here.” A man pops open the trunk, and Masha leans in to look.

All I can see from where I’m standing is some sort of cooler box. She lifts the lid to stare at the content, touching it tentatively before she retracts her hand. She convulses. Swallows. Shuts it firmly. She cradles little Annushka’s head as she tries to soothe her, then closes her eyes for a few seconds, seeming to pray.

“Thank you. The money is in the back seat,” she whispers as she steps away.

“Five hundred thousand?”

“Crisp fresh dollars, straight from the States.”

Gazes dart around the dark as one man rounds the car with a money counter to verify that the money is all there. Luca cocks his brow at me. This wasn’t our plan. The money was meant for Masha, to get her out of Russia. To get us out of Russia.

Masha is swaying rhythmically to try and calm Annushka. At this rate, anybody with an open window will hear her, and in this location, it’s a bad idea to attract attention. I want to wrestle her away and whisper to her that she’s safe, to be calm, but it’s all lies and I don’t dare step a toe out of line.

“Good. It’s all there,” the man says as he closes the car door. He has the cabin bag with the cash in his hand. There goes the original suitcase our magic 3D plastic gun got hidden in, broken up into different parts.

I shoot Luca a look. He bites his jaw. It’s a goner. We won’t be able to travel with the gun unseen now.

We’re fucked, aren’t we? At least I have the gun and we can toss it even if we don’t get to use it.

“Nice doing business with you. We’re off,” the one man says, taking the lead and indicating for his partner to get into our car as he heads toward one of the other cars they came in. “We’ll park the rental on the other side of this warehouse tomorrow and you can pick it up then. We’ll leave the key under the driver’s seat. Nobody would look for it there.”

We watch as they drive off with our car, leaving us in the middle of nowhere with a baby, snow dusting our coats. Our only option is to take the car they left us. The car with Masha’s black-market purchase in the trunk.

Luca drops his hands. “Well, this took an unexpected turn. I suppose it’s par for the course now.”

Masha’s still holding her gun, now aimed at Luca’s temple. I might not know this Masha in front of me, but I know she’s always been a good shot. All that fucking clay pigeon shooting in England.

“All is going as planned,” she says with a shrug. “We take their car now. The black van won’t know it’s us.”

“Do you even trust those fuckers?” Luca asks, seeming to relax in his role as puppet to its master.

“More than I trust any man in the Bratva.”

I slump against the car, inhaling a ragged breath. I no longer want to know what she’s up to, what she’s planned. I only have one question. “What’s in the cooler box, Masha?”

47

LUCA

Everything so far has been the exact opposite of what we expected. Our kidnapping plan has inverted, and now we’re the victims, at Masha’s mercy. She’s not unhinged, but seems to gather strength from every twist to our plan she’s instigated that goes exactly as she envisioned. In her books, everything is going swimmingly.

For now. I’m not sure if Masha has realized yet how this type of thing usually works. It dominoes into chaos, which doesn’t bode well for any of us. I’m used to cleaning up fuckups, but being in the center of one makes me nervous for whatever comes next.

There are risks she won’t have considered, and something or someone is going to come and tsunami her carefully laid plans. Things never go as you’ve imagined they will. Look at us Scalera boys, losing Alex, almost losing Matteo during a standard harbor delivery that ended in a police shootout, changing our lives forever.

She doesn’t answer Milana’s question about the cooler box in the trunk, but seeing her reaction to its contents earlier, I prefer not to know. Working on a need-to-know basis has its perks. You only get to see the dark depravity of someone’s hardened, blistered soul at the exact moment you need to. And I bet, at that point, everything is going to make perfect sense.

“We should get going.” Masha indicates with her gun for me to get in behind the wheel of our new car. “It’s getting late, and we need to set the stage at the hunting lodge.”

Fuck this hunting lodge. I’m not here for side quests. I could easily overwhelm her, and she knows it. If it weren’t for Zoe strapped to her chest, a little human shield, and the gun she holds with an expert grip, I would have tried already. Zoe is her trump card, but there’s more going on backstage than I anticipated. This woman is the x in our equation. I need to solve her as quickly as possible so we can grab Zoe and get the fuck out of here.

I slide into the driver’s seat and find the key fob in the compartment by the gear shift. No guns now. Only the one Masha is wielding. The Chertnikov gun is gone too, and with it the cabin bag it came in. Not to mention the satellite phone linking us with Benedict. Fucked is a euphemism for our situation. All I can do right now is keep going and wait for the right moment. Pray that Masha isn’t going to do something crazy. While she’s got Zoe strapped to her chest and wielding the only gun, I have to play by her rules.

“Doesn’t she need a diaper change?” Milana asks as she gets into the car.

Masha waits for us both to be strapped in before she slides into the back seat, gun trained on my head. Nice. I joked with Matteo weeks ago about putting me out of my misery with a bullet to the head. Be careful what you wish for.