Chapter 8

Nicolai

Three months later

The key to not rousing suspicion when you have a cover you have to keep is to walk in like you own the place. Like you belong there. And not betray the fact that if your cover is blown you’d be brutally tortured as punishment for being a traitor and murdered before the sun sets.

It would be worth it.

It would be fucking worth it.

And I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

But there are no trials in Bratva life. Guilty until proven innocent. And rarely, fucking rarely, proven innocent.

I would do it all over again.

Kidnapped by the men hired by Myron, I was beaten and thrown into the James River. Left for dead.

But they underestimated what I would do for Marissa. They woefully, woefully underestimated. They have yet to see how far I’ll go. The risks I’ll take. The vengeance I’ll seek.

My bonds came loose on impact. The fucking pussies didn’t even know how to tie a fucking rope. Though submerged in the depths, and thrown from the bridge above the river, I fought my way back to the surface, removed the sodden black hood that covered my face, and crawled in darkness to a secluded area off the river’s edge.

I don’t know how long I laid on the ground, my lungs constricted and vision blurred, the world distant and hazy as I fought my way back from the dead, breath by brutal, agonizing breath. When I made it to the bridge, they were gone. I knew they would be. But I wasn’t dead, and that was a start.

At first, I assumed the men who took me weren’t properly trained. A bullet to the temple and proof of my death would’ve been a much more efficient way to kill me.

But the loyalty of the brotherhood runs deep, and one does not kill fellow Bratva easily, even for a payout. The men who took me knew who I was.

It’s been three months. Three fucking months. Ninety-one days, to be precise. I’ve counted every one of them in my relentless pursuit to find her, and I will find her.

I gave up nearly everyone who meant anything to me. I had to. A connection to me would jeopardize too much. I let them all believe I was dead—my sister, my brothers. Hell, my entire brotherhood, even Rafe and Laina.

There was only one I trusted—one I risked, and even now, I wonder if I made a mistake.

I bought a burner phone and called my father. And I told him everything.

How Marissa Rykov was sold for auction by her traitorous motherfucking father, one of the most high-ranking members of our brotherhood. My father’s friend, now my lifelong enemy.

How I took her and ran, to save her.

How they found us.

How they tore her from me and left me for dead.

How I escaped.

The sounds of her screaming my name have haunted me since the day they pulled her out of my grasp. The sight of her terror-filled eyes—Khristos.

Sometimes I imagine seeing those eyes in the rows of women brought forward for auction. But none hold the brilliant light that only Marissa owns.

The irony burns. My one job for the past four years has been to protect her, to keep her safe, and now that I’ve done just that, I’m excommunicated from the brotherhood. We can’t even prove that Myron was the one that took her, though his story implicates him. He told my father she was killed in a car accident, and went as far as to fabricate details of the story. Technically, Myron did nothing worthy of punishment from the Bratva. We have no means of proving what he did.

Yet.

And we don’t know how deep his traitorous, despicable behavior runs. He sold her to pay off a debt, that much I know. Selling her meant he was in deep with the Thieves, our rival brotherhood. And if he owed a debt, there was a reason for that. Unraveling the lies that bind this story will be a complicated process.

Under my father’s instruction, I changed my identity. And with his blessing, I pursued Marissa.

I underwent the slow, arduous task of removing the tattoos that marked me as Bratva. The lasers hurt, but I’m used to pain. It was the physical reminder of my death to the brotherhood that ached, that tore the fibers of my heart into pieces, and drove a wedge between my soul and my body. A necessary evil. And I’ve spent these past months deep in the trenches of the human slave trade in America’s underground. Hoping. Searching. I will not give up.

I run a hand across my brow and pinch the bridge of my nose.

“May I get you a refill, sir?”

A pretty young woman on stilettos, wearing the customary tight black skirt and skin-tight white top holds a silver tray by my side.

I shake my head and hold the drink in my hand, dismissing her with a scowl. Kindness is a dead giveaway, but being an asshole makes me unremarkable.

Bowing her head, she walks to the next self-important bastard at the table to my left.

I sip the dregs of my drink, ice hitting my lips, and scan the crowd. I observe every detail. There are clues, but each trail I’ve followed has left me empty-handed. Tonight might be no different, but one day will be. I will not rest until I find her.

My father honored my request to treat me as if I were dead, and to my surprise, cut me the sum total of my buy-in with the American contingent. I took some of the money and used it to form a new identity. I invested, some of my investments far more ethical than others. I’ve purchased women—so many goddamn women—in the hopes of finding one who will give me a clue to her whereabouts, earning me a reputation as one of the underground elite, one of the buyers. But I’ve not found any information from the women I’ve taken. Some are tight-lipped, others beaten into submission, but the majority are ignorant of the inner-workings of their traders.

One day, I will find a clue that leads me to her. One day, I will end the lives of the men that took her. One day, she will be mine again, or I will die trying to find her. Whichever comes first.

And something tells me tonight is different.

After I’d gotten myself onto solid footing under my new alias, I hired a private investigator to look into the men I suspect are responsible for her abduction. He found nothing until this week, but what he discovered… there’s promise.

My phone rings and I answer before the first vibration stops. Eager to hear what he’s found.

“Yeah.” A casual word meant to deflect attention, when I want to say, “Tell me everything. What did you find? Where is she? How can I find her?” My pulse races, my body stilling with instinctive knowledge that this call is the one I’ve been waiting for.

“I have good news and bad news.” I grip the phone tighter. Jacobs is lucky he delivers news to me on the phone. If he were in front of me now I’m not sure I wouldn’t strangle him for drawing this out, for making me wait. I’d hold him by the throat and force the words out of his mouth.

“Spill.” My voice is tight, a string pulled taut, ready to snap with a wisp of air.

“The good news,” he begins, trying my patience once more because everyone fucking knows you don’t start with the good news. “She hasn’t been sold yet.” Relief floods through me so hard and fast, I’m dizzy and I need to close my eyes to steady the spinning room around me. If she hasn’t been sold, that means she’s still being groomed. There’s hope.

“She’s being sold at a virgin auction at the end of the month.”

A virgin auction. My skin crawls even while relief floods me.

I know how they test for virginity, and the thought of her undergoing the rigorous, invasive inspection makes me ready to kill.

“The bad news is, the auction is being run by a ring in Boston, exclusive buyers only. No outside buyers allowed.” I clench my teeth.

“How the fuck am I going to get into that?”

“I have a plan,” he says, with unmistakable glee. “And your father helped me, but we have to act immediately.”

I drop my head and hiss into the phone, “I told you to leave my father the fuck out of this.” So fucking lucky he isn’t in front of me.

“I had no choice,” he goes on, speaking so rapidly I can hardly decipher his words. “But no one is the wiser.” That’s what he thinks.

“What’s the plan?” I ask between clenched teeth.

“Your father knows of several new recruits. He made a deal with Boston that he’d vet them himself. And with my help, the third is a ghost profile. Yours.”

“What?” I don’t understand.

“Six months ago, the Boston group suffered a major loss. Three of their best leaders were incarcerated and four murdered. They’re slowly inducting new members into their brotherhood, and asked the pakhans of neutral groups for assistance. Your father vetted three new members. Two of them are legitimate, they’ve passed every test and he sanctioned their induction into the Bratva life. The third is you.”

This is nothing like what I’ve known, but each Bratva group has rules of their own. I spent time with my brothers in Moscow, each member hand-picked by the pakhan, and many were orphaned boys raised by the founder. In America, the rules are a bit more liberal.

“What tests?” I’ve asked. He goes down a litany of criteria new recruits have to pass. Fluency in Russian, written testimonials from current Bratva, a record of having served a minimum of three years in a Russian prison. A lump forms in my throat and my voice sounds husky when I speak.

“And my father did all that for me?”

He pauses.

“Almost all. He hasn’t paid the entire entry fee, because that’s something only you can do.”

I nod, but I’m curious. What type of fee can I only pay myself? This is a risk, one I wish he hadn’t taken. If the truth comes out, my father’s life is forfeit. I suspect Myron’s connections run deeper than we know. I scrub a hand across my brow as Jacobs tells me where to go, and who I now am.

“What’s the fee?”

“They’re changing things up this time.”

I draw in a deep breath and grip my phone, pretending it’s his neck. “How so?”

“This time, the entry fee will be a tribute, as it were. An offering.”

“A tribute?”

“Your new brotherhood demands you become party to their trade. In this case, the auction. They demand a virgin tribute.”

He goes on relaying the finer details of my quest. I listen, closing my eyes when I realize what this will mean when he goes through the new details of who I will become.

Aleks Ambramov.

Twenty-nine years old, former Russian military.

Served time in prison in Russia for larceny, extortion, and racketeering.

And as he talks, I absorb this. I welcome my new opportunity. It’s a dangerous line I walk, and if my true identity is discovered, my enemies will kill me. And Marissa will be gone forever.

But I can do this. I must do this.

It will mean compromising even more of who I am. Breaking even more of the rules that bind me to ethics and morality.

It will mean truly becoming one of them.

But everything comes at a price. Even one’s soul.

And I will sell my soul to the devil to find her.

I just hope that when I do, I haven’t become the very monster I need to protect her from.