Page 82 of Brutal Vows

“She was only there for two days,” Luca says as he pulls a gun from the back of his jeans.

I rear back at the sight of it.

“It’s okay, Milana,” he says, a hand on my arm to quieten me as he puts it on the counter.

My stomach turns. This is our reality. The cold metal lies there between us and a pile of baby clothes, still yet deadly. This is so fucked up.

“The question is really why they don’t just barge into Masha’s apartment and take both Masha and the baby,” Benedict says. “It’s the logical—well, Mafia—thing to do.”

His question hangs in the silence as he leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded.

Luca lets go of me, hands now on his hips. They are both waiting for me to do something with the gun, or to tell them something I don’t fully understand myself.

“They’re superstitious,” I say softly. “All Russians are.” And this gun is giving me black omens—piles of them.

“Superstitious how?” Luca asks.

I close my eyes, blocking the weapon from sight. “Masha survived a Bratva retribution. First, they killed her parents. Then they came for her. She wasn’t supposed to live, and now they probably think she’s a witch or something ridiculous like that. Or they think she’s tricked death once, she could trick it again and haunt them, like someone on death row who survived the electric chair.”

“Jesus.”

I look up, catching Luca and Benedict exchanging glances.

“What did she do?” Benedict asks.

I clench my hands into fists. This was the first time I failed Masha. I wasn’t there for her when all this went down.

“There was a powershift between two Bratva factions. Her parents were the peacekeepers, but once they were dead, she became ‘property’.” I make quotation marks and take a deep breath. “She refused to marry someone in the Bratva. An arranged marriage. She wanted to get out, like all of us do. And then she aborted the child she conceived after the groom …” I bite my lip, stopping it from quivering. “After he forced himself on her in an attempt to ‘change her mind.’ When she finally escaped⁠—”

“Jesus,” Luca cuts in, raising a hand in signal for me to stop. “We get the picture. I can see now why you said I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, because I—” He swipes his hand between him and Benedict. “Because we don’t have the stomach for this type of thing.”

“Yet you bring a gun in here and put it casually on the counter as if it’s takeout,” I mutter back. Luca cut me off, but I haven’t told him the worst of it yet. There will be time for all of that, later.

For years, Masha has been in this no-man’s land, expelled by the Bratva, but unable to leave. Alive but dead. With looking after Zoe, she really did claim her life back in a way, but it could prove to be deadly for her too. Maybe this is what she wants.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know much of the Scaleras, but from what I’ve gleaned through Gabi and the weeks I’ve been here with Luca, their parents’ marriage was no bed of roses. Plus, I’ve married into the Mafia—nothing should surprise me. “Why is there a gun?”

“Because you’ve never handled one, have you?” my husband says.

“No.”

“We don’t have much time left before we leave, but I need you to get comfortable with one.”

“How much time do we have?” I ask, my heart flipping.

“We’re leaving tomorrow, once a few last things are in place.”

“Tomorrow?” Tears push up as my throat closes with triumphant dread. This is what I wanted, but— “So soon?”

Luca pulls me into his arms. “Yes, princess. Waiting just gives them time on the other side, a luxury we can’t afford for them to have.”

Who knows how this is going to end? Over Luca’s shoulder, I meet Benedict’s gaze. The way he’s standing, stooped, arms folded, mouth pulled into a grim line, accentuates the concern in his eyes for his brother, and for us. It’s shredding me, because he is rightly worried.

My gaze drops to the gun on the kitchen counter. Weeks ago, I would have given anything to have this know-how, to have access to a gun so I could blaze my way out of Ivan’s compound and out of his life. But now, after being in that wreck of a house, seeing the damage it did to our home and to Ivan, after Gabi, and Chertnikov seeming to have infiltrated the inner circle, I’m scared.

I can’t confess it to Luca yet, but I’m petrified of going to Russia. I know what we’re heading into, my husband less so. I was so dumb to have ever left Russia in the first place, thinking my way of life would go on as normal after the coup. Now so much time has passed, moves have been made on the chessboard I’m unaware of, exposing me.

Exposing my husband and his family to danger.