Page 29 of Brutal Vows

My stomach turns. Gabi.

No.

No-no-no.

“What’s going on?” I ask, my pulse immediately stuck in my throat. If that fucker Petrov hurt her— “Is she okay?”

“For now. I don’t know what went down last night, but Petrov called me to tell me all the signs are there that Gabriella is being hunted.”

Hunted. I push my laptop to the side and drop my head in my palm. Fucking knew it. Would have called it too, if I’d had more information. “What signs? Who? What for?”

“We’re not sure. Petrov rambled something about Mom’s childhood Bible, code words hidden in it. Benedict is going to look at it⁠—”

As he breaks off, in my mind’s eye, I see the exhaustion on his face. Nothing’s been easy since he became the Don, and I called it days ago, telling him things weren’t under control.

“This has to do with Mother Lucia’s murder? Someone else was looking for Gabi?”

“Yes. Now we know it was Russians.”

“Russians? How? No fucking way.”

“Yeah. I don’t have the exact details, but Petrov hinted that Gabriella is physically marked in some way. A way known amongst the Bratva⁠—”

“What the actual fuck, bro?” I bark as I shoot out of my seat, fisting my hair, tugging at the strands. I’ve seen some dark shit in my life, and my mind doesn’t need to wander far to know all the ways in which Gabriella could have been mutilated. “Is she okay?”

He audibly swallows and sighs. “I’m not sure, but Randazzo had the same⁠—”

“Fuck Randazzo. He only stuck to tattoos. Franco Fiore sliced Gigi up⁠—”

“You don’t know⁠—”

“I know.” I haven’t seen Gigi’s scars, but I know Stephano like I know myself. His words that day in the warehouse to Franco still haunt me. You cut into her flesh, leaving a mark I’ll still erase. There’s no way to erase scarification. You can’t laser that shit away.

“Which fucking Russians have been messing with our little sister?” I hiss, dread cascading through me.

“We don’t know. Gabi doesn’t recall, either. She was out of it and—” He breaks off to drag in a strangled breath. “Only thirteen.”

“What the fuck? Jesus.” I sink back in a chair, my blood seeming to expand in my veins, nowhere to go, making me claustrophobic with shock. “Who else knows? Who the fuck else was there?”

Matteo sighs, and the weight of it all seems to circle like fog all around me.

“Randazzo was involved. Promised her to this Russian as his bride when she was older.”

Fucking Randazzo.

“I’m surprised this Russian bothered to wait,” I choke out. A man marking a thirteen-year-old as his future bride has no scruples. And this is what I meant about us skirting around what really happened to Gabriella in the twenty-two years we didn’t have her under our wing. Of course Randazzo was there. Everything circles back to him. “Is she safe with Petrov? Beyond me having Milana?”

“Yes. Ivan sounded genuinely concerned, protective and fucking pissed off, wanting to get to the bottom of this too.”

I saw the look in Petrov’s eyes when he and Gabriella tied the knot: he cares for her. I bet he is as fucked off by this as we are. I rub with a knuckle at my forehead, trying to digest this mind fuck. “What are your plans?”

“We plan to bring Randazzo’s tattoo artist over. She might know something. That’s what we can do from our side.”

He grows quiet, and the tension stretches as all the questions he wants to ask hover between us.

Milana.

She could have the same marking. She’s a born and bred Bratva princess, after all. She might even have an idea who is behind this. But how did Il Consiglio’s world get woven into that of the fucking Bratva? So subtly, thread by thread, row by row, knot by knot, until the only way to get out is to destroy the whole.