Mischa’s worked hard to keep his family safe. In the process, he’s also kept them sheltered from the reality of their status. Willow never understood one truth. She isn’t a normal woman—she’s a pawn in a game of power.
“Fuck, I should have known better than to leave her alone,” Mischa snarls, curling his hands into fists. “Hell, I should have locked her in her room and thrown away the key. I knew she couldn’t leave him—” He breaks off, but I can suspect what he doesn’t say. Who.
So I voice it for him. “You mean Donatello Vanici.”
He says nothing, but the look he sends my way is a clear warning to tread carefully.
Well, I’m tired of tiptoeing. “If she went after him, I need to know why. What happened between them?”
Still nothing.
“Sir, it’s only a matter of time before he retaliates if he isn’t already planning an attack,” I point out. “We need to stay on guard. Track his allies. Maybe he’s contacted someone in the famiglia. We need to—”
“Enough.” Mischa swipes a hand through the blond stubble speckling his chin. From this position, I have a glimpse of paperwork stacked haphazardly before him. What could be so important he’d pick now of all times to read it? As if aware of my attention, he shoves the stack aside, further from view. “I will handle Vanici.”
“Alone?” I raise an eyebrow. “Sir, maybe if I didn’t let you go after Vanici alone, we might have been able to avoid—”
“Are you challenging me, Evgeni?” His eyes cut in my direction as his raised voice echoes throughout the room.
“I’m just asking a question, sir,” I say softly. Though I couldn’t disguise the annoyance from my tone if I tried. Mischa went and kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest, attacking Vanici’s nephew. And for what? All on shitty intel and a reckless whim.
But I know the man. In six years, I’ve never seen him act without an ironclad cause.
Unless it’s personal. Emotional. Only then can his instincts sometimes tend toward…irrational.
“Vanici’s left his villa,” I add, voicing what little intel I’ve managed to gather in the aftermath. “His associate, Fabio Botelli, has gone underground. There is no word on the status of his nephew, though we’ve assumed the worst. Finding Vanici should be our top priority.”
Not playing hide and seek with a girl we both know is long gone. And yet, Mischa inclines his head to glower at the grayish sky, stubbornly silent.
It’s been a game we’ve played since Mischa had the man removed from his daughter’s ball. A verbal round of tag in which I ask more potent questions about Vanici and his history with the Stepanovs, and Mischa avoids answering every single one.
I can’t fathom why. Mischa certainly isn’t known for being demure—neither am I—and now isn’t the time for coyness when Willow’s life may be on the line.
So damn tact. “Can I ask why, sir?” It’s a question loaded with a million others left unasked. “Why attack Vanici with little more than hearsay to go off of? Why was Willow found in his home after her first disappearance?”
The questions get more unsavory from there, but I’m not stupid enough to voice them now.
Why is she drawn to him?
Why has Mischa eschewed his usual tact and restraint where Vanici is concerned?
Why is he playing so coy with the answers?
And why is he hampering the efforts to find his own daughter by keeping me in the dark?
“I need you at the hospital,” he says tiredly. “I want you stationed near my wife. Only you.”
I nod, smothering my irritation. For now. The concern in his tone takes precedence, and I know he wouldn’t ask this lightly. “Any improvement in her condition?”
He winces. “Eli is stabilized enough to possibly come home tomorrow,” he says, referring to his son. “The baby could be released in a week.”
But as for his wife? His silence says for him what he can’t. Her condition is unknown, so tenuous the prognosis changes daily.
“Go,” he demands, turning his back to me. “Vanici could attack the hospital next.”
I nod, starting for the door. As I toe the threshold, however, I hesitate.
“What about Willow?” I ask. “I have my men searching Vanici’s known properties as we speak. But if I knew more of their history… Even more about what happened after the debutante ball—”
“I will handle Vanici,” Mischa growls.
But what could happen in the meantime?
Especially if the man has Willow. I have no delusions about what he might do to her. I’ve known men like him. Hell, I’ve worked for them. Be him a mercenary or a crime lord, the breed is the same. If he doesn’t kill her—or worse—then he’ll attempt to make contact soon, if only to sell her.
“Sir, time is of the essence,” I insist.
“Evgeni…” When I look over my shoulder, his gaze meets mine with an intensity that would make the rookie upstairs piss himself. “Are you refusing a direct order?”
“No,” I say—which should end the conversation. My feet twitch against the floor, but I don’t move.
Despite my better judgment, I can’t let this go. Sending me to the hospital now would be the equivalent of shoving me to the sidelines.
Why?
“I think I could be of more use to you here—”
“Ellen is the one who has use of you.” He whirls around, bringing both hands hard over the surface of his desk. The resulting thud resonates through the room like a gunshot. A warning.
“I meant no disrespect—”
“Go,” he commands, dismissing me with a wave of his hand. “That wasn’t a request.”
“Sir.” I nod, finally reentering the hall, clenching my jaw against another retort.
Or an accusation—is this really the time to withhold information? Especially whatever might prove vital to anticipating Vanici’s next move. Though a part of me sneers that the real question is a different one entirely.
How much is Mischa willing to pay for his daughter’s life?
I’m sure that will become clear soon enough.
4
Don
West Helm Lumber. An unimpressive facility with an even less impressive name—and by design. No one would ever suspect the seat of the famiglia’s power rested in this sprawling, nondescript complex in the hills surrounding Hell’s Gambit.
Which is the point.
Giovanni loved the juxtaposition of, instead of the casino or the restaurant, the true heart of his establishment residing someplace far different. In a Podunk hellhole, as he liked to joke. The man could be poetic when he felt like it.
It’s been seven years since I’ve made this drive, but it still looks the same. Sort of. Leading off the highway, the asphalt road switches to beaten dirt, as old and worn as the day I came here as an eighteen-year-old kid, over four years into my career.
I’d been blindfolded that very first time, herded into the back of a van by the men more senior to me. It was tradition to make a big fucking deal of it all, if only to drill in the importance of what coming here meant—you were trusted. In the fold.