Ivan was a smart man; he knew that giving up the location of Kavi would be his ending. If we didn’t kill him, the Bratva would for his betrayal. Loyalty wasn’t something that came free in the Bratva. It came with a fucking price, and if you broke that loyalty, your soul was payment.
Looking back on it, I still don’t know how I managed to get out of there. Those days were a bit hazy to me, and the only thing that wasn’t lost in the haze was the letter I’d written to Dominique. I couldn’t show up back in Detroit, not with the Bratva on my back. I didn’t want to put her in danger, but I would have done anything to see her. She was all I thought about; pushing her away was the worst mistake of my life, and years later, I was still paying for it.
She never answered the letter. Or maybe it never arrived.
By the time I’d sent the fucking thing, she was probably off somewhere else.
“Do you think Kavi could’ve fed to another country?” Jer asked, breaking my thoughts.
“No,” I told him. “Kavi has enemies all over the world. The safest place for him is either in Russia or the US.”
Jer grunted before he sighed. “This is all so fucked.”
“How’s the deal with the Langston brothers?” I asked. Denver Langston had agreed to hide Mafia and Oasis’ products during the winter, but spring was nearly here, and Hallow Ranch needed to be fully functioning. We were running out of time.
“Mason assured me things were okay, but Denver is getting impatient,” Jer answered. “I can’t blame the man. He has his own shit to deal with.”
I hummed in agreement. “I can work on finding another location but moving it again might draw attention.”
Jeremy was silent for a moment. “Maybe that will bring Kavi out of hiding.”
“But he doesn’t know what we have,” I countered.
“No, he does. My brother-in-law assured me of that while you were away.”
“Fuck,” I bit off, dropping my head back against the headrest. A second later, an idea popped into my head, and my stomach tightened. My eyes fell to the dot on the screen as I thought of her green eyes and shining hair.
There was only one thing left—one more option.
Kavi was a patient man, and when he was being hunted, he knew exactly where and how long to hide. He was stubborn bastard and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind he knew that we killed Victor and now had Ivan. Ivan was always in the know of Kavi’s whereabouts; that was something that never changed—even years after me getting out of the hellhole.
I bit down, grinding my teeth as hard as I could as the answer shot to the tip of my tongue.
For Nik.
Do it for her.
“I have a theory,” I admitted, breaking the silence.
“I’m all fucking ears.”
“We’ve had Ivan for over sixteen hours, and you would have to be a fucking idiot to think Kavi doesn’t know by now.”
“Right…”
“We have his second in command—someone who knows where all his hideouts are. Kavi doesn’t want to be found, and he’s going to run to the one place we don’t want to go. I could—”
“—out of the fucking question,” the Oasis leader growled, cutting me off.
“Jer.”
“No, Cain. You just got back from Russia. There’s no fucking way I’m sending you into Devils Den.”
The word hung in the air, filled with horrors and darkness. Devils Den was a place shrouded in darkness, a place where pain was born.
I’d only been in there twice.
Once for the Bratva, on the hunt for someone Kavi needed to make an example of. The second time I was there, I was looking for my brother— and the last thing I expected to find was his boss—waiting for me. This place was also connected to the sex trafficking rings the FBI was working on shutting down—with the help of Collin Stevens. They’d struck a deal when Collin took over the Mafia to keep him out of prison.