Page 25 of Twisted Prince

“Now I just need Mel to stop being so damn argumentative,” I state flatly.

Pyotr snorts. “Good luck with that.” Then, after a moment’s pause, he chuckles.

“What?”

“Just thinking about that first day when I came to see the girls—when they were fresh off the truck. I thought she might actually slap me when I offered to let her stay at my house.”

A dark chuckle rises in my throat as I shake my head. “I’ve suspected she’s wanted to slap me on more than one occasion at this point.”

“Really? I’ve always thought she looks to you a bit like… I don’t know, a lost puppy might.”

I shake my head. “Sometimes, I think she likes to argue with me just to wind me up.” She sure knows how to use that tongue of hers as a weapon. “If I recall correctly, when you offered her a roof over her head, she told you in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t a prostitute.”

Pyotr’s lips twist into a crooked grin. “Something like that. Good thing I have a wife and daughter I’m crazy about. That saved my neck right then. Mel’s tough as nails, man. But who can blame her?”

I nod. She’s survived a lot. From what little she’s told me about her past, it was her own uncle who sold her to the Zhivoder clan after she came to live with him in Colorado. Fucking monster. He’s lucky I haven’t had the time to hunt him down.

I’m not sure why she left Hawaii in the first place. That’s where she was living with her dad, but it couldn’t have been a good situation if the uncle was a better option.

I respect the hell out of her for standing up for herself. But at times like this, her hard-headedness can be infuriating. I keep debating how far I’m willing to take our argument to keep her safe. Should I force her to comply or give her the freedom she so clearly craves?

As much as I would like to support Mel’s hopes and dreams, I just don’t have the men to ensure her safety right now. Not to that degree. Because while Pyotr and I were in Upstate New York, getting ambushed and slaughtered, Mikhail’s forces in the City have been busy tearing apart the Veles operation.

We’re hemorrhaging, and if Pyotr and I can’t stop it soon, we might not survive this time. We need to salvage what little of our Bratva we have left. And I’ve already spent too many precious resources to protect the girls. But they’ve already endured too much brutality as it is. I couldn’t live with myself if they got taken again.

“Mel’s smart,” I state, as if to reassure myself. “She’ll come around.”

Pyotr nods. Then his eyes flick toward the door I closed securely behind me. “I called you in early to talk about the leak we seem to have sprung,” he says, dropping his voice to a low register that only I would hear.

I nod. “It’s at the top of my list.”

“Do you have a plan for how you’re going to smoke him out?”

“Well, I would have picked up the trail with the last bit of bad information we were given—about Mikhail leaving town with just a few men?—”

“But that was Maks who told us.”

I nod. “And he didn’t make it out of that bloody fucking massacre.”

“Sooo…?”

“So it’s unlikely he was the rat—unless he stayed behind intentionally. But I doubt Mikhail would want to lose such a valuable resource until he’s put you six feet underground. So I think it’s safe to assume it wasn’t Maks.”

“That means someone fed him bad information,” my pakhan observes.

Pyotr’s quick. It doesn’t take much for him to catch on. It’s one of the things I respect and appreciate most about him. I might have been trained to think strategically since I learned to talk, but he’s a natural.

“And we won’t know who that someone is because the one man who could tell us is likely feeding the crows on Mikhail’s estate,” I say darkly.

“You think the rat was there with us? Maybe he made sure Maks didn’t come home?”

“Could be, but I’ve already jumped on the wrong bandwagon once, so I’m keeping my mind open until I find solid proof.” That’s as close as I’ll get to apologizing for misjudging Efrem. Because the man I owe that apology to will never get to hear it.

And now that I have no fucking clue who the rat is in our clan, I’m back to considering anyone and everyone a suspect. Even Val, though it’s hard not to trust the older bodyguard when he’s about as reliable as it gets. In his early forties, he’s been with the Veles clan for years and has never questioned an order. Dependable, even when it means taking a bullet in the thigh to protect his pakhan’s wife.

“So, where will you start?”

“Hopefully, Maks’s men will know something. Maybe Maks told one of them where he got the information. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

---