Page 40 of Ruthless Sinner

Slowly I lowered my head and my gaze. My head felt annoyingly heavy. The room swam into focus in front of me and I blinked a few times to clear my vision.

I was in the back room of… something. Somewhere. I wasn’t sure. It was a bit cold, the kind that settled into the air and was so still that it somehow made it all worse. Everything was bare, but the kind of bare like recently it had been full of something and someone had just taken everything out of it to make it empty.

My feet shifted as I tested the ropes that bound me to this chair, and I felt the smooth thin plastic of tarp beneath my soles.

Shit.

It was basic practice to lay down tarp underneath your prisoner so that when you killed them, you could wrap up their body to dispose of it—and avoid leaving incriminating stains on the floor. Blood was notoriously difficult to get out of, well, just about any surface, which was why there were special companies who cleaned up crime scenes.

I looked around. There wasn’t anyone in the room with me. I couldn’t see any cameras, either, or listening devices, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in here.

Deep breaths, Kennedy, deep breaths.

I had to keep myself calm, at least on the inside. If I had to play the scared victim I would, but I couldn’tactuallybe scared. I had to keep my wits about me and be ready for anything.

What if what you need to be ready for is death?

If this was Vincent’s doing, or his father’s, I really didn’t have a hope of getting out of here alive. They would’ve figured out who I was and if there was one thing that the mafia didn’t tolerate, it was cops sneaking into their midst.

My pleas that I loved Marco, that I didn’t want to betray him, wouldn’t do me any good. First of all, why the hell would they believe me? Second of all, not wanting to do something didn’t equal not doing that thing. And third of all, if Marco himself found out, he wouldn’t want me anymore anyway so it was all a moot point. Of course Vincent would tell him. Vincent Russo would never keep such a secret from his brother, would he?

Maybe—maybe Vincent would kill me and blame it on someone else. The Petrovs, the Carusos, the Triad. It would make sense as a way to protect his brother’s heart while also providing a neat excuse to further his own plans. I almost preferred that option. Better that Marco think I was loyal to him, and that he’d lost me, than for him to know that I was betraying him from the moment we met.

A door behind me opened, and I didn’t bother twisting my head around to see who it was. I wasn’t going to give them a performance of panic, or any other emotion, until I understood the situation better.

“Ah, good, she’s awake.” The voice wasn’t Vincent’s or that of his father. I didn’t recognize the voice at all, in fact—except that there was a trace of a Russian accent.

Footsteps sounded as three men walked around to stand in front of me. Two of them I didn’t recognize, but the one who’d spoken—I had seen him in various files at the bureau. He was Misha. Just full stop. Misha. No last name.

The Petrovs were so powerful partially because this was just the American branch. The real seat of power was still back in Russia, and while the old men in charge there tended to let their second sons here in the New World have a long leash, that didn’t mean they weren’t watched. Misha was one of the lieutenants sent over from Russia when one of the Petrov sons had proven himself a bit… queasy over doing what needed to be done in a mafia family.

Misha now handled most of the ‘cleaning’ jobs for the Petrovs. When Dmitri Preston had been murdered, we’d assumed Misha had been the one to take care of it, until we’d heard about how messy the murder was. The disappearance of Dmitri’s brother, Alexander Preston, soon after? That was much more Misha’s work. We had no idea what the Preston brothers had done to piss off the Petrovs, but clearly Vincent’s working to undermine their relationship with the Chinese was now an act of retaliation. Even if he hadn’t been marrying their sister, the Preston brothers were under the Russo family jurisdiction. To have dealt with them… that was a huge insult and violation of the many polite, unspoken mafia rules.

Now Misha had me. He couldn’t touch Marla, obviously. The bride would be too heavily guarded. But Marco’s new girl? The one girl he’d ever liked enough to keep around?

I made a prime kidnapping target.

Misha stared at me. I stared back, keeping my face blank. I didn’t want to use up all my defiance at once, and Misha was not a man moved by tears or panic. And dammit, I had my pride. I was perfectly willing to play the part to some extent but not for a damn Russian mobster. I’d die with my pride and dignity as intact as possible.

Finally he looked at one of the other men. “All right, let’s take the before pictures.”

The before pictures. Jesus Christ.

“I’m ready for my close-up,” I purred.

Misha chuckled. “I can see why the asshole likes you.”

One of the goons came to stand behind me, either to help drive the point home in the pictures or just to manhandle me towards the camera if I got difficult. The other pulled out a camera and began taking pictures—with quite a lot of care, mumbling about lighting and everything.

Guess even mafia goons had hobbies.

“Tell me, Miss…” Misha snapped his fingers a few times, then waved his hand as if trying to recall my name.

“Kennedy.”

“Ah, thank you. Very unusual and annoying name.”

“My dad thought it was dignified.”

---