Page 94 of Devil's Vows

I try not to hold my breath.

Nothing new on Chiara, but we have intel that she’s been missing for days. I’ve sent a team to check her apartment. There’s been no movement there ever since we’ve been monitoring it. They didn’t find a body or signs of a struggle. These signs are all positive.

No news. No body. Chiara missing. How could any of this be good news?

I don’t respond. He’ll see that I read his messages. I stand on shaky legs and close my robe again. I never took it off, but it came loose during the night.

The girls.

Ivan.

I have to find them. I have to talk, but it’s as if my lips got sewn together overnight. I won’t talk. It’s too late. I have no choice but to put Milana first. The priority is to get her out of here and on her way to Russia—a problem she will have to sort out herself once outside this cage.

As for me, I will let this river run its course. Ivan is either part of the same clan or he isn’t.

He probably is.

Then he’s going to be in for a surprise.

Time will tell.

There’s a soft knock on my door then it opens and Milana pears in. “Gabi?”

“Hey,” I say, dragging my hands down my face.

“You okay?”

“Yes. I just overslept. I?—”

“It’s fine,” she says with a soft smile as she opens the door wider. “Ivan is downstairs with the girls. They’re on a second breakfast already. He’s making pancakes. Come.”

She shoots me a curious look, but I’m not sure how much she can read of my restless night in the ill-lit room.

“I need to shower,” I say softly. To cleanse every touch, every memory from my body, my skin, scrub at the sins sticking to my flesh as if I inflicted them myself.

“Sure. We need to get going, though.”

Lamb to the slaughter. Here I go… “I know.”

She leaves me, and I head to my own room’s bathroom, stepping into the cold shower and letting my tears run their course until I’m shivering. My skin is marbled, my lips blue by the time I get out and dry with a towel. Once I’m dressed in jeans and a button-down, I give myself a swift glance in the full-length mirror. I look haggard. The perfect Mafia princess and Bratva bride-to-be. Funny that I’m marrying another Russian—a Russian I want to be with—but I look exactly like I would have looked if I’d been about to marryhim.

With a shrug, I head down the stairs and to the kitchen. Ivan glances up from where he is hovering at the table, making sure the girls are eating. He meets my gaze, then drops his eyes in a full inspection. He says nothing but comes up to me, cups my face with his hands, softly caresses my cheeks with his thumbs, his touch telling me he knows I’ve spent too much time in the shower, crying. Then he presses the softest, sweetest kiss to my forehead, to my hairline, to my temple…almost with too much reverence.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs as he reaches for my hand. “I’ve made pancakes. It’s out of the box and not up to your standards, but desperate times.”

Desperate times, indeed.All I want is to collapse into his armsas I did that night when panic flooded through me. Tell him every last thing. Share with him my worry about Chiara. Be safe with him. Every gentle touch holds the promise: if I break, he will catch me. Right now, that is true. Tonight? He’ll hang me.

“Papa makes good pancakes,” Irisha tells me around the bite in her mouth.

“With lots of syrup,” Katya adds, and I shoot them a wan smile.

“Is that so? Best I try them, don’t you think?”

For them, I will go through with this. I will protect them, with my life.

I sink into the chair as Milana breezes in, still dressed in a luxurious silk robe Kostya fetched with a pile of other brideessentials, paid for by Yuri, with some snark, with thecompany credit card. Well, since Ivan blocked all her funds, what else is a girl to do?

This one is going to give the game away by being too happy on her wedding day.