Page 73 of Devil's Vows

“Your fiancé? Oh my…” She’s lost her fiancé; no wonder she’ssad. “I’m so sorry.”

She clambers off the bed and goes over to a console where she opens a drawer and pulls out several candles and matches. “It was an arrangement like everything else, there was no love, but I was too blind, too fucking naive about how far Ivan would go, to know he was my only hope.”

She’s been engaged in an arranged match before, no love lost between the parties. No wonder she’s prepared to grasp onto a marriage with a stranger as a solution—and be so flippant about marrying a random brother of mine. But I don’t like it, not one bit.

“You’ll do this swap just to get out? Marry a stranger to get away from your brother?”

Marry into another organized crime stronghold…to escape another. The solution surfaces in my mind as much as it turns the bile in my stomach.

“My groom wouldn’t be a total stranger. He’d be your brother. I don’t care which one. Trust me, men are all the same, and it hardly matters?—”

“Just listen to yourself for a second.” I’m not keen to serve one of my brothers to her with this praying-mantis attitude of hers. From what I’ve seen, my brothers might be Mafia, but they love their women deeply and would want the same for me, if I were ever to get married. But if they have promised me into an arranged marriage, without even consulting me…whatever Ivan has on them must be huge, and I might never know what it is.

“I can figure it out, trust me, once I’m on the other side of these walls. Just—” Milana shakes her head as she places thecandles in the sink, lights them, and in an almost sacred ritual, starts to burn one photo strip after the other.

“Switch on the vent.” She points to the switch on the wall, and it noisily starts sucking up the black ribbons of toxic smoke to release outside the house.

She’s destroying evidence of how she’s been played.She’s fully in control of herself again, even if her fingers are trembling. Ruthless, calculating, but not cruel. Not yet. I could learn a lot from her, from her quiet determination now she’s hatched a new plan, me still firmly on my leash, ready to be dragged along in whichever direction pleases her.

“How do you know Russian?” she asks shooting me a side-glance as she gets into a rhythm, burning strip after strip.

“I studied it.” Obviously.

“In an Italian convent?”

“I did go to school while in the convent, you know. I had access to language programs.”

“But why Russian?”

I don’t miss a beat. “To protect myself.”

I have a strategy, too. My learning curve has been steep, and I’m facing some unexpected twists and turns, but I’ll work with those as they come along.

I planned to protect myself from that man, who lurked in the shadows. We weren’t properly introduced, but I knew I was being sold to him. A man at least five times my age at the time. He had to take a call, and I listened to him speaking on his phone, his voice deep, guttural, dense with the harsh rolling r’s of the Russian language while Randazzo waited.

Then Randazzo got impatient. Told the woman toget on with itwhile they looked on. Randazzo, supposedly my father,looked on, helped restrain me.

At thirteen, my fate was negotiated, sold to the Russian who stood by as Randazzo held me, telling me that what was about to happen would be sealing a vow, serving as a reminder tonever be with another man, to not even touch myself. That woman strapped me down, forced open my legs?—

I swallow down the memory, of how everything went white for a long time, and when I came to, I was alone. Well, Randazzo was gone, the Russian was gone, but the woman was just sitting there, waiting for me to wake up from my drugged state, with some handy aftercare instructions.

It was the last time I saw Randazzo, but he left me Bianca’s Bible, the one he still had from when she was a child in his house. Sometimes, I wonder if he had done the same to her, but these are secrets we take to the grave.

“I learned Russian so I could play him,” I say softly, admitting to myself, maybe for the first time, I never planned to be cattle willingly led to the slaughter, but I always default to running.

“Him?” she asks, curious. “Surely not Ivan?”

“Nobody, just a phase.” I know her secret, and she might know mine, but I should watch my tongue in front of this woman. She’s already using me; she will play me, too.

Milana shoots me a weak smile, and her gaze catches mine. “I honestly don’t know what to make of you. Sometimes, you’re so startlingly naive, and then you pull shit like that and show me just how perfect you’d be as Ivan’s wife.”

Ivan’s wife.Mother to his girls. In his bed—more kisses. More. Just more.

“He joked about it this morning,” I say, wanting to choke on every sign that this is real. ThatIl Consigliosold me out. That Ivan has a hold on my brothers, that I’ve been negotiated into an arranged marriage to even the playing field.

“What do you mean?”

“Katya asked if I’m going to be their new mommy, and Ivan said, as a joke, that he wondered what my answer would be if he asked me.”