35. Sarah Bell

Maybe it was my father's bratva-stained blood that ran in my veins, and maybe it was the backward way he'd coached me my entire life to deal with his family in case I were ever confronted with them.

He told me stories about treachery and betrayal in the bratva.

He narrated our history and the arrogance that was every Vor's downfall.

My father told me why he'd walked away, because he didn't have the stomach for murder and the machinations it took to stay on top.

Maybe it was my mother's fundamentalist blood that ran in my arteries, the strident adherence to what is right, the hardened resolve to defeat evil in whatever form it takes, the hard-working ability to live my life on the one true path and not be swayed by the Devil.

Or maybe it was the farmer's ability to raise a baby chick from its fuzzy little birth, name it and cuddle it, and then chop off its head with an ax and eat it.

You might think, well, you eat chicken, but do you butcher her, drain her blood, and boil her up into Mavis Noodle Soup?

Because that's farm life.

My aunt Mary Varvara Bell thought she was different than her father, the bratva Vor whom Blaze called the Malefactor, but she wasn't.

She was just another easily manipulated thief because she had succumbed to the sin of pride.

And now as we walked through the lobby and the valley of the shadow of death, I feared no evil and kept my head high because I knew there would be an opportunity to escape or destroy her if I just kept my eyes open.

Mary Varvara Bell decided that we would take three separate elevator loads of people down to the lobby, one male and one female prisoner but not a couple in each descent, with guards.

I got shoved in an elevator with Micah Shine, three unnamed mercenary goons, and my brother.

Logan wouldn't look at me as we rode the elevator down, but I talked to him. "How could you do this, Logan? I'm your baby sister. You're the only person I have left in the world. You drew me into this crazy criminal world of yours, and now you're going to let them kill me."

Logan didn't turn around to look at me. He just kept staring at the seam in the silver doors that flashed light from each floor as we descended as he talked. "I had nowhere else to go. Grandfather and then Dr. Bell were the only ones who took me in. So yeah, I'm loyal to them because they were the only ones who gave a damn about me."

"Dad would've taken you back if you'd come home and apologized."

"Apologize for what, being myself? He had my whole damn life all planned out for me, to inherit his patch of dirt and live his life. When I didn't want to, when I wanted to go to college and leave Iowa, he threw me out into the night and didn't give a damn about what happened to me. I did the right thing by leaving."

"But the farm is important. The farm is all there is." My father's words came out of my own mouth.

"Growing corn shouldn't be forced on anyone. If he gave you the farm and you like it, great. But if he forced it on you, too, I'm sorry I didn't come back and get you earlier." That's when he turned around and looked at me, and his bright green eyes, so like my father's, shocked me. "You would've made one hell of a Vor."

A Vor? Me, Sarah Nevaeh Bell, the head of a criminal organization so vast that it had a shot at overthrowing the United States government?

That was crazy. I was nothing but a little farm girl from Iowa.

But that was the moment—when Logan saw that I could've been someone different, that I could have been the mastermind in the white pantsuit with upswept hair ordering mercenaries around—that something clicked for me.

I was the girl in the red corset staring down Russian mafia bosses in New York City.

Maybe I could be something . . . different.