Page 123 of Brutal Vows

A pickup truck is outside, waiting for you. Looks like a local bakery delivery van. Use code name Saint Benedict. They will get you to the airport. You can trust them. Get the fuck out of there.

Fuck. He’s on it already. Of course he is. He’s been tracking us, watched us go to the cabin, against the plan we set out. He was coming for us, sensing shit would go down.

Fuck I love my brother. Never underestimate a Scalera.

I type back. On it. Give us ten minutes. Milana and Zoe asleep.

It’s going to be cruel to wake Milana up, but there will be time enough to sleep once we’re safe. As it stands, this whole area is going to be under Bratva surveillance as soon as someone learns shit went down at the cabin.

Benedict is right. We can’t linger.

I take the fresh clothes I stole from the Russian and get dressed, now certain that my wounds won’t bleed into the fabric. Once I’ve shoved everything into the backpack, cleaned the bathroom to the extent that nobody would think it got used, I put on the baby carrier.

“Milana,” I whisper, shaking her shoulder gently.

She moans and blinks into the sharp light neither of us has switched off.

“The rescue crew is here. They’re waiting outside. We need to go.”

“What?” She sits up, in a haze. “Already?”

“Already.” And thank God for that. This has been so cutthroat, I might turn into a devout Catholic after this.

“Okay…okay-okay.” She turns to look at Zoe and rest a hand on her small body. “Got to go, baby girl, your daddy’s team is making sure we’re getting out tonight. Hold on tight, he’s got you.” She gathers Zoe in her arms and settles her against my chest. “We have everything?”

“Yes. Just pull the bed straight, plump the pillows.”

“There’s nothing to plump.”

We share a chuckle. “Just make it look like nobody was here. It’ll confuse them and that boy at the reception might think he imagined us all.”

We’re still smiling as we head out of the room, which now looks pristine, and slip down the stairs and out of the hotel, into the night. A bakery truck is parked on the street, just as Benedict said it would be. I give the driver the code name and he lets us clamber in. We don’t talk; the driver just starts the truck and heads down the street, back to Saint Petersburg.

The snow keeps on falling. And we’re gone, not leaving a trace.

We were never here.

58

LUCA

I only breathe easy once the taxi is heading up the winding driveway to the Trapanis’ gated estate two days later, and I spot Steph. He is waiting for us at the villa’s entrance, seeming to have paced a path into the gravel covering the driveway.

My twin. My heart pounds with relief. We’ve made it. We’ve actually fucking made it. And then my body floods with intense love. We’ve always been the ballast in the Scalera ship, keeping each other steady in rocky waters, going through storm after storm. We’ve braved another, with me in the leading role for the first time, and have come out on the other side.

The taxi pulls up and I clamber out of the car, leg angry, my whole body a bruise, but alive. To think being battered like this was Steph’s way of dealing with shit—I finally get it. I also suspect he’s stopped fighting like he used to, now he has Gigi in his life.

“Jesus,” Stephano croaks as he scans me with one glance, taking in my wounds as if they echo in his body. “You’ll never be me again.”

“Nope.” I limp forward, and we’re clutching each other in a bear hug.

“Fuck, Luca,” he grunts, his chest heaving with pent-up emotion against mine.

It’s more than a brotherly hug—it’s an embrace between twins who carried each other through many years of manipulation, having survived our father and the shit he put us through. I might have been Stephano’s doppelgänger, but he suffered in his own way.

Despite all my reassurances, I get why he couldn’t rest easy until he’d seen me. I’m alive, by the skin of my teeth and thanks to piles of luck, but alive. It was a close call. He hasn’t even seen the worst of it, but he’s right: I’ll never be able to pose as him again. Never mind all the other scars I have on my body now, I’ve one knuckle less on my pinkie than before.

I let go of him to raise my hand and show off my bandaged digit in a little wave. Not sure why I’m so proud of this little fucker, but from now on, it will always give me away.