Page 84 of Darkest Sin

“…yes,” she admits. “But he would have made sure to marry us to men who would not hurt us.”

“And you think I’d marry Sasha off to someone who would hurt her? You think that low of me?”

All the fight leaves her and she slumps into the chair across from my desk. “I’m sorry, Mikhail. I really am. You’re right. You promised me you’d save my sisters.”

“I did. Right now, I’m not sure I can get Sasha away from your uncle. But I can offer him a deal. I can suggest that we work together and choose someone we both agree on to marry her too. Someone that will benefit us both. It’s the best thing I can do right now.”

“What if he kills you? You dying is not the best thing right now.”

“I’ll bring multiple men with me. I’ll choose a location we can both agree on. Somewhere public. It will lower my chances of getting killed.” I sit back in my seat. “Come here.”

Obediently, she does as I say.

I pull her into my lap. “I will be careful. And I will try to save your sister. But I know I can’t just ask Denis to hand your sisters over. He wants to use them for his own gains. So let me try to make a deal with him that will help us all.”

“Would you try to backstab him then?”

“It did cross my mind. But for now, I have to be sincere in making a deal with Denis. Otherwise, the whole plan will fall through.”

“What if he doesn’t want to make a deal?”

“Then we’re back at square one. But I can try this and we’ll go from there.”

“You can’t tell him Sasha called me. I can’t get her in trouble,” she says.

I cup her face and she leans right into my touch. After what happened at the party the other night, I’m glad she’s still comfortable with my touch. I can’t bear the idea of my own wife being afraid of me.

“I understand,” I say. “I won’t mention Sasha. I’ll just tell Denis it’s been something I’ve been thinking of for a while.”

“Thank you.” She gives me a small kiss. It’s one I want to sink into more but I have work to do.

So with a heavy sigh, I pull away from her.

It takes some convincing but Denis finally agrees to meet at a public restaurant that neither of us owns and no one in the mafia owns either.

We both have two guards with us who wait in the table across from ours.

“So, you wanted to talk,” Denis says. “I should kill you for trying to take my girls from me.”

“They’re not your girls, Denis. They’re Lev’s daughters.”

Denis clenches his teeth together. It’s obvious from even across the table. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to offer you a deal. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Nico Bernardi and Cillian Kennedy are working together.”

He takes a sip of his water. “I may have heard that.”

“So, it only makes sense if we start working together. We’re both Bratva. If we combined our forces together, we could easily take both of them down and become richer for it, instead of fighting each other all the time.”

“Mmm. It’s not a bad proposal. Too bad I don’t like you. You worked with my brother and you know that my brother and I were never close.”

“Why did you hate each other? Lev never said.”

Denis scoffs. “He was the perfect son. Everyone loved him. He had the young, pretty wife. The young, pretty daughters. Why wasn’t I granted the same young, pretty wife? The same young, pretty daughters?”

“You could have met a woman and married her.”

“Not in the Bratva. You know that. My parents wanted me to marry some ugly bitch and I did marry her. Until she died a few years ago. Don’t look at me like that. She died of breast cancer. You can look it up.”