Page 105 of Devil's Vows

Fuck.

What a fucking joke. I took every feasible precaution with the wedding, keeping them guessing and making sure there was no way anybody could take me out…while I opened the door wide and let her walk straight into my most vulnerable position. It’s like a stab to the fucking heart.

I drag my hands down my face, tallying up the proof. A piercing tying her to Chertnikov’s Bratva, because Darya had the exact same one. A burner phone with secret phone calls. A fucking fake period to cover up the phone call. And Yuri let meknow she’s been unusually occupied with her Petrov-issued phone these past few days.

And then there’s the Bible, highlighted with weird random words. Code. Fucking code words to be used when she finally sells me out.

Fuck.

She didn’t come with much, barely a full suitcase of clothes and personal things that got checked by security, and yet here we are.

My hands are trembling, and the adrenaline of the past hour is poison in my blood. I’m not ready to face her. In fact, I don’t know how to face her.

We’re married, even if I can walk out now and annul our marriage because we haven’t consummated it. I had such high hopes for this one. Idiot, freaking besotted idiot, thinking it could be different with a young virgin in my bed.

With Darya, the slippery slope to rock-bottom was slow. I was thirty-two, and she was older than Gabriella, twenty-six when we got married, sexually experienced, and her piercing didn’t surprise me. Fuck, it turned me on. She had tattoos, too, other secret markings I expected because she was a real Bratva bride.

For all that she wore the evidence on her body, Darya was a closed book. We never talked. She never had a breakdown like Gabriella had that night, opening up on how she got trafficked and what she’d witnessed in Mancuso’s cellar. No, Darya drugged her trauma, keeping it at bay. Keeping her past a secret.

I was too blind to see it, too inexperienced and a fucking arrogant idiot. If Darya were still alive, I could have confirmed where she got her piercing, but she’s dead, indirectly by my hand. It’s a guessing game now, but whichever Bratva did this to Gabriella will be hunted down.

I save the salient clip to a separate file and send it to myphone and to Yuri, not having it in me right now to march upstairs, fling open the door, find the phone and see whose number she called, who she’s been texting. I shut down my computer, my whole body poised for a fight it can’t have.

There’s only one option here: the gym and the punching bag I can beat to shreds. It’s the only place I can let off steam without killing someone.

54

GABI

I lie still for a long time, shaken, digesting.

Who the fuck are you?Ivan’s question keeps ringing in my head.

I’m Gabriella Scalera, but honestly, I’ve had many names, and even today, it changed again to Gabriella Petrova. I have no clue who I am.

At some point, my tears dry up, but I’m shivering, from deep inside me, with a cold I got to know for the first time in that cellar—one that’s hard to shake off. It’s eerily quiet in the room, and then Yuri passes my door with the girls, dragging me back to the now.

Bath and bedtime.

It’s dark out. Yuri talks to someone, and he answers back in Russian.

Why are you at the door?

The Pakhan walked out over an hour ago. She’s not to leave the room. Not to talk to anybody.

Well, shit. I have no choice but to talk. There’s no other way I get out of this situation alive, if at all. I can lie here all night and wait, or I can act and force Ivan to listen to me. I need helpfinding Chiara. Prayer is all good and well, but action is what it takes to get things done.

When he asked me who did the piercing, I went blank, because I don’t have a name for the Russian who was behind it all. But there were others there, and I’ll tell Ivan everything I know, every last secret I have. Maybe once I’ve opened up, he’ll let me go.

Maybe he’ll help me disappear.

Maybe he’ll kill me.

I can’t die; I have too much shit to clean up in Europe.

I stand and reach for my robe draped over the chair by the dressing table, pull it on, and tie the thin belt around my waist. In the harsh light, I stare at myself, the mascara that’s run with my tears, my hair that’s a mess of trampled pink daisies. I pluck them out, then reach for the packet of makeup wipes in the drawer. I want to be in my bare, naked skin when I speak to him. I want to feel like myself and not the mock-up bride who got sold and married to the wrong Russian.

When I open the bedroom door minutes later, I stun Igor who is standing outside. He clearly didn’t expect me to come out, probably thinking Ivan gave the same orders to me—don’t leave your room, talk to nobody—and that I’d blindly obey my husband.