Page 95 of Brutal Vows

Offer his life on a platter.

“Milana.” His urgent tone slices through my jumbled thoughts. “If we’re walking into a trap⁠—”

“No. It’s just Masha. The Baykovs were against everything Chertnikov did. Her parents tried to dismantle his power and were killed for it. Chertnikov took over their operations, forcing Masha into his fold.”

And now, her plans are to end things once and for all. It’s time to tell him everything, so he finally knows what we are really stepping into. How close to the bone we are cutting this operation with Chertnikov and his henchmen.

“Forcing her? How?”

I suppress a sigh. Luca comes from a family with only sons, and it shows. The Scaleras are only now catching on to what it means to have women around. “There’s a ninety-nine-percent chance Chertnikov thinks Dimitri fathered this child with Masha. Dimitri was here in Russia for a few weeks nine months before her birth. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chertnikov told him to find her and make her submit to a Chertnikov again.”

“Make her submit to a Chertnikov? Again? What the fuck? Why?”

“As a test. For one, it’s the way of their world. Control. Submission. Making examples of people. Dimitri had to prove himself worthy, as a son. Worthy of inheriting the Chertnikov legacy. I mean, if you think about it, as an illegitimate child, you’d be obsessed with proving you were worthy.”

“I get that,” Luca says. “The coup⁠—"

“Yes. In business, he’d prove himself by arranging a coup to take over the Petrov Bratva.” I swallow, the next part a stone in my stomach. “As for the family honor…what better way to restore it than to father a child with the woman who shunned the family? A child fathered by a Chertnikov would cement their hold on everything Baykov. It’s a tale as old as time.”

He leans back, and his cold fingers slip from my wrist. “What aren’t you telling me? What do you mean by shunned the family?” he bites out.

My hands slide down the steering wheel, where I’ve been gripping it to death. My fingers are stiff with cold, but it isn’t from the outside. It’s from this horror I have to share.

With a last deep inhale, I brace myself. “The one she refused? The one who said he’d change her mind for her? It was Pyotr Chertnikov. His eldest son. When she refused him, even worse, got an abortion when she got pregnant by rape, everything went into this tailspin.” I check my tears, my teeth cutting into my bottom lip. “The writing was on the wall for her. She was hiding, but they found her, beat her up to the point where they knew she would just survive. As a final blessing, they doused her with acid.”

Luca sinks into his seat, cupping his hands to his mouth. He murmurs something, the words making no sense, until he turns to me. “And these are the people we’re dealing with?”

“I know I should have told you before, but you wouldn’t let me go, you wouldn’t let me come to Russia alone⁠—”

“Damn fucking right,” he says, anger tightening his jaw, and I want to shrink away, knowing he deserves to be angry. “You don’t go into war without knowing everything you can about the enemy.”

“I know.” I take a shaky breath, shoot him a glance. “But I was so scared you might call the whole thing off if you knew exactly what sort of people we’re dealing with.”

His eyes soften then, and he blows out a breath. “Princess, if you’d told me, I would have been even more determined that Chertnikov needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.” His expression darkens again. “If that happened to you⁠—"

“I was so lucky. I’m the one who got away,” I whisper, the ache in my heart ripping up my throat. There’s no sugarcoating this now. “Once upon a time, we were just two girls, best friends, swimming in a lake in the summer. Looking back, my future could have been a carbon copy of Masha’s if it weren’t for Papa’s obsession with getting us out of Russia, away from this world where obsession over power leads to this…this mess.”

“Fuck. If I’d known…” He shakes his head, but this isn’t real for him yet. Only once he’s seen Masha, will he truly understand the danger and depravity we’re facing.

“If you’d known, then what? You’d bomb the vans? Shoot everything to bits? You can’t, Luca. Annush—Zoe, Masha, they will be caught in the crossfire.”

I lean back, suddenly exhausted. I wish we had a night at a hotel to rest, but I don’t dare lose any more time here in grabbing my daughter and getting the hell out of Russia.

The satellite phone blinks with a message. Luca picks it up and reads the small screen. “She’s ready.”

“Are you ready?” I ask, reaching for the ignition button again, knowing I’ve put all my faith in a woman Luca still doesn’t trust. I’ve given him no choice.

“Yes. I’m ready to kill some Russians.”

“Don’t be so eager. If everything goes right, we’ll walk out of here without a hair out of place.”

“Ah, princess. We’re here to ruffle some feathers, and you know it. With what I know now, I don’t care if I watch them boil alive.” He sends a message on his phone. “The party’s starting, and this time around, there are going to be fireworks.”

45

LUCA

This three-way communication is annoying the living fuck out of me, and we could probably have done something else to get around the phone situation, but I’m not exactly sure what tech these Russians have, plus we decided to travel light. We came with as little as possible—nothing that can be traced back to Il Consiglio. Fuck, I don’t even have a laptop with me. I’m relying on a phone and my wits, two semi-automatic Makarov pistols, and a locally approved satellite phone.