Page 13 of Devil's Vows

“He’s at the barracks?”

“Yep. We hauled him in.”

Flick in. I pocket the knife. All I need is a blade and time. Sergei will talk, just because he knows I’ll keep him alive and in excruciating pain for months. Denying someone the pleasure of death is as much torture as any other archaic method.

I toggle the tabs on my computer screen to the security footage from the treasure chest. Both girls are asleep. I click to the next screen. The security gate is locked. I stand slowly, steeling myself. “Get Kostya to guard the gate.”

Yuri nods. He reaches for his phone and makes a quick call, before saying, “I have more news.”

“What?”

He slides his phone back into his pocket. “You might want to sit down for this.”

Blyad’. What the fuck now?

“News on the street is Boryslav got taken byIl Consiglioand hasn’t been seen since.”

The fuck? Il Consiglio?I fall back into my chair.The fuckingMafia? “Is he dead?”

“It’s been long enough,” Yuri says as he sits. “Apparently, there was an altercation of sorts involving a woman from Italy. Astolenbride.”

I hitch my brows, ignoring the disgust crawling over my skin. Human fucking trafficking.

Yuri nods, reading my mind. “By the sound of it, just the usual. Rival mafiosi going at each other, except this is our local Boston friends getting tangled with a contingent from Italy.”

Fuck. If they are fighting across continents, it’s going to getmessy. It echoes my own damn situation. “This has to do with Don Scalera’s death?”

Yuri hitches his shoulders. “Probably. The old Don might have died naturally, had a massive funeral withomertaswearing to the new Don and all that fanfare, but you know how it is. Power shifts are destabilizing.”

Indeed. There’s one universal truth for you: time stands still for nobody, and succession is a bitch. Women come into the mix and business gets real dirty real quick.

I pluck my blade out again. Flick out. Flick in. Flick out. Yuri looks on, unfazed.

“Still don’t see how this led to Boryslav going MIA.”

“Along with five of our other men, as if we could spare them.” Yuri sighs. “Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t have enough intel yet to sketch out the whole picture, but clearly things went sour. Local mobster steals bride from mobster in Italy, Italian mobster comes to America to fuck him over and take his lady back, except she’s already married the local mobster, and the private jet the Italian mobster came into the country with returned without any human cargo.”

No human cargo? That’s a lot of bodies piling up. Thank God that’s not my fucking problem. I’ve had my fill.

But trust fucking Boryslav to engage in human trafficking and get in the crossfire. It’s peak stupidity on his part. Somehow,Il Consigliodragged the Petrov Bratva into a human trafficking cockup, and I don’t touch that shit with a ten-foot pole. We have our vices, but our businesses are spread across a variety of imports, legal and illegal, from luxury goods to cars, to art and weapons. A lot of weapons. Aircrafts. Yachts. Anything that needs to get around sanctions. But we don’t deal in humans.

We definitely don’t mop up mobster messes. Where did all those bodies go? Six of our men plus, by the sounds of it, an Italian delegation who never went home.

“Who’s the fucker from Italy?” I ask, not really wanting to know, but I sense trouble on the horizon that’s going to spread like spilled milk.

“A certain Franco Fiore. Not the type you want to meet in a dark alley alone at night, but I could say the same of you, so.”

We both smirk, but mine fades pretty quickly. This is about to get messy. “Sounds likeIl Consigliobroke the rules first.”

“Yep.”

For a long moment, it’s quiet as we both digest this information. Our territories share a border withIl Consiglioandthou shall not trespass. We have agreements in place, peace treaties of sorts, negotiated by Don Scalera and the Pakhan decades ago to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and the smooth running of our respective operations, and to ensure we don’t have overlapping interests that could cause conflict.

But this? They’ve crossed the line. Killed my men. My cousin and Milana’s fiancé—and my last option for a Russian alliance—is missing, presumed dead.

Flick in. Flick out. “Retaliation is in order. No mobster gets to abuse Petrov Bratva resources without consequences.” I stab the knife back into its slot on my desk, meeting Yuri’s gaze. “And you know I don’t tolerate trafficking.”

“Agreed. But brute force isn’t an option right now. I’d be careful how you retaliate.”