Page 78 of Deceptive Vows

When we ink ourselves in the Bratva, it’s meaningful and a sign to others of who we are. All my tattoos are meaningful. Some for honor, others are reminders so I’ll never forget.

Such is the case with my prison tattoos.

“I killed three men,” I say, cutting into the silence.

Adriana lifts her head and looks at me with her beautiful eyes.

“Why?” Her voice is barely audible.

“They tried to rape my sister. One of them was a motherfucking serial killer. It was his idea to drug her with a date rape drug after he met her at a club. He and his friends stalked her for weeks.” At the time, I thought that was the worst thing that was going to happen to Talia. “If she wasn’t who she was, she wouldn’t have had the street smarts to escape them when they took her. She managed to get away and get herself to a hospital. The drug was poison and would have killed her. Which was their intention. They were going to rape and kill her. When I got the call and learned what happened, I went ape shit and hunted them down. I didn’t care who saw me finish them. That’s exactly what happened. Someone saw me.”

“What happened after?”

“I went to prison. When the right people witness your actions, there’s little you can do to avoid going to the big house, but I didn’t care about that.” I smirk, then my smile falls. “To me, the men who tried to hurt my sister were dead.”

I got out early because my father pulled some strings when he offered up information on some names on the fed’s hitlist. I’ll keep that to myself, though.

“Now she’s gone and none of that matters. I slayed her demons after she died, but it won’t bring her back.”

We stare at each other for a few beats, then her eyes turn glassy.

“I’m sorry.”

I stare at her and remember how she watched me kill Raul and never begged for his life. Since then, little things have cropped up to make me think her life wasn’t as rosy as people said it was.

She’s different from what I expected, and no one has ever managed to stump me for as long as she has.

“He hurt you, too, didn’t he? Raul?” I gaze at her head on, and when she nods, some small part of the mystery that’s her falls into place. If he hurt her in the way I think he did, then it’s no wonder she never begged for his life. “The marks on your back… you didn’t fall, did you?”

“No,” she whispers.

“He whipped you?”

She stares at me for a long moment before she nods.

“Why?”

Why the fuck would Raul do that to her?

She shakes her head, and when a tear drifts down her cheek, I know whatever Raul did to her must have been bad.

“I can’t. I can’t talk about it.”

That’s the second thing she’s told me she couldn’t talk about. Both things had to do with her parents. Mother and father alike.

Any thought to prod or demand she tell me what happened to her is interrupted when my phone rings. We both look at it buzzing on the nightstand.

The message this morning was important enough. When my phone rings at minutes to midnight, I know I have to leave the house because this is the call I am waiting for.

I get up. Adriana sits up, too, pulling the sheet over her breasts.

It’s Sebastian calling, and I answer the phone.

“Yes,” I say.

“We got Tony, boss. I’m at the old meat locker near Main Street. José is with me, and so is Eric.”

Perfect.