Page 112 of Devil's Vows

I still, my heart thumping in my chest. Darya had one, too? Good grief…no wonder Ivan is losing his shit.MyRussian is connected to his ex-wife.

Ivan hands the piercing to Yuri, and my eyes follow it, hungry for details of this thing that has plagued me for nine long years. I’ve never seen it up close. Never even looked in amirror. I just couldn’t. As long as I ignored it, it was as if I didn’t go through that trauma.

To be a good Catholic girl, never touching myself came easy to me, something Chiara couldn’t understand. I never told her about the piercing, because I hate it for reminding me of Randazzo, that decrepit Russian, and the promise they made. I hate how they’ve been manipulating me through it for years. It’s a symbol of the mere object I am, as if there isn’t a human carrying its weight.

But it looks so light. It’s small, yet distinct engravings on it make it haunting. Skulls…a tiny little skull at the end of each tip. I shudder, because it’s as if I’ve carried death on me all these years.

Yuri studies it for a tense half-minute, then shoots me a glance. “She has the same?”

“The exact same,” Ivan says.

Yuri’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline, and he drags in a deep breath. “Well, fuck me.”

“More like fuck us.” Ivan tosses another mouthful down his throat. “You’ve seen it before?”

“It’s Bratva, for sure. The engraving, the words, too small to read, but detailed enough to find the source. Russian, definitely. Which Bratva…I can’t say. The Pakhan might know.”

“The Pakhan doesn’t need to know.”

The men share a glance, a silent communication spelling outthis stays here.

Then both men’s gazes home in on me, and Yuri cocks a brow, silently asking the question on everybody’s lips.

“I was thirteen,” I choke out as I hold out my hand, not wanting to touch the piercing but needing to see it up close. Yuri drops it in my palm. I stare at it through tears that fall onto my palm, making little crying skulls of each barbell tip. “And the whole time, I was waiting for them to rape me. To do to me as I witnessed when I was seven… I can’t recall, I?—”

I drop the piercing back to the desk, my palm burning where it rested.Darya—she suffered the same fate, and now she’s dead.

A hand caresses my head, a soft stroke on my shoulder as Ivan goes down on his haunches in front of me, his hand running down my arm all the way until he reaches my thigh and pauses.

“You were only thirteen?” he murmurs, chilled shock in his tone.

“Yes! What did you think?” I want to shove him away, feeling so dirty, not wanting him to touch me. “That I got this last week? It’s ingrown, for heaven’s sake. I was told not to touch it to prevent infection, that it’s a little reminder for me to stay pure for the man I got engaged to that day.”

“Fuck.”

He wipes at my tears, cursing in such a low voice, I can’t decipher the words.

His touch is so gentle, it makes me want to weep, but I can’t do that now. I’m here to save my skin, but more importantly, I’m here to ask for help, to find and save Chiara. And every other girl still caught in the human trafficking mill I was fed through.

Running was always my solution. Ivan might have been murderous earlier, but I can’t run if I’m dead. If I’m dead, what will I have achieved?Nothing. Running and hiding all my life has stopped none of the shit that happened to me from happening to others. But it happened to Darya, too. I can’t protect Irisha and Katya when I’m dead.

This isn’t about me. Maybe it’s never been about me. I see the flow of my life, a river snaking through the valleys of God’s path, no idea where it’s heading, but picking souls up along the way. The clarity I have in this moment is almost blinding. I’m here for Milana, and Chiara—who I sense in my gut is still alive—and for all the women caught up in a trafficking network thatprobably existed before I was even born, but which I now feel destined to destroy.

“Who did this to you, Gabriella? And why?” Ivan asks, pulling me back to the now.

I should push his hand away, but I can’t. He doesn’t move and rests it possessively with the other one on my thigh.

“The why is obvious: to mark me as property, as being sold. Bottom line: you’ve married a woman promised to someone else. If you want the contract’s fine print, I can’t help you.”

I let that sink in, and Ivan just stares at me, his jaw ticking.

“Who else was there,moya ptichka?”

“Randazzo—my ‘dad’,” I say, making quotation marks with my fingers. “He was there, but he’s dead. That’s recent, if you don’t know. That fucking priest, who I recognized from the time in Mancuso’s cellar—I knew when he came for me—”That it was going to be bad.

I break off, needing to regain control over my quivering voice. I swallow and bite my lip as Ivan’s hands stiffen on my thighs, cold rage flashing in his gaze at the mention of Mancuso.

“Tell me,” he urges. “Tell me so I can kill him.”