Page 43 of Ruthless Sinner

“Fuck you. Maybe that’s why you’re in charge and I’m not, but I can’t do that. I’d help you get Marla out even if it was stupid. Help me get Kennedy.”

Dad spat out something in Italian. Vincent sighed. “Marco, please go take a walk.”

“I—”

“Go. Take. A walk.”

I glared at Dad, who glared back at me, but I stormed out. Let them discuss pros and cons and crunch numbers like this was a fucking company merger. The temptation to get on my motorcycle and race recklessly through the streets was tempting. Dad had always been worried I’d end up wrapped around a pole just like his brother. What if I got in a bad accident and it was his own behavior that had pushed me into it?

You’re better than that. A voice in my head that sounded a lot like Kennedy spoke.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed that I could be better. I would’ve thought that fulfilling all the bad things my father thought about me was all that I could be. I would’ve pushed myself to annoy him and damn the consequences to myself.

But Kennedy believed in me. She stood up for me. When she looked at me… she didn’t see the stupid reckless middle child, the Russo boy that everyone wrote off. She saw someone worth caring about, someone worth respecting.

I wanted to be the person she saw in me.

So I didn’t get on my motorcycle. I took a walk.

I could feel someone—probably Toby—following me at a distance, but I didn’t acknowledge them. Made sense that Vincent would have someone on me to make sure I wasn’t attacked by a Petrov or that I didn’t actually go and do anything stupid.

I’d circled the block a couple times when my phone buzzed with a text from Vincent.Come back up.

For all my complaining, I was usually a goodsoldato. I followed orders to pick up, deliver, kill, disappear, organize, oversee, or whatever else I was asked. And that instinct was still there. I put my phone back into my pocket and I returned to my father’s office.

Dad was no longer there. Vincent stood in front of the desk, photographs of Kennedy in his hand as he examined them.

“Where’d the old man go?” I asked.

Vincent put the photographs down. “I sent him to lunch. It helps improve his mood. So. We have less than twenty-four hours to get this going before they start sending us pieces of her.”

I stared at him. “You’re… actually helping me?”

“As if you wouldn’t go and try to find her on your own and probably get yourself killed.” Vincent paused. “I explained to our father that if we just let the Petrovs kill her, we look like we don’t care about our own. They snatched her out from right under our noses, so it’s only fair that we show our own strength and snatch her right back from under theirs.”

My chest felt tight. “Thanks,” I said gruffly.

Vincent shrugged. “He just has to be spoken to in a language he understands. And you’re my brother. Now.” He tapped the desk. “Let’s remind these bastards who we are.”

A slow, vicious smile spread over my face.

CHAPTER18

Kennedy

You didn’t live and work as a woman in a man’s field without learning how to deal with the men.

I’d learned to ignore a lot. To put up with a lot. To work harder and faster and better, to be the top of my class, to prove that I belonged. Even now, in the twenty-first century, law enforcement was not kind to its women.

But on the other side of that, it meant that I’d learned how to rile men up. How to get their attention in the wrong kind of way. How to make themangry.

I wasn’t going to let myself be slowly cut to pieces. And I was sure that Marco wouldn’t agree to the Petrov demands. Or at the least, his brother and father wouldn’t let him, and they were the ones really in charge. That meant that my only option was to goad Misha into killing me quickly.

And boy, had that been easier than I’d expected.

I think it was that Misha really didn’t expect a woman to come at him like this. He was used to men and their various possible reactions—the pleading and begging, the stoic silence, the bravado and sass. I chipped away at him using the psychological techniques the bureau had taught me.

I wasn’t a profiler, or anything like that. But we all learned a bit about that kind of thing. And we all had to know how to read people on the fly, especially when we were undercover. Misha was a consummate professional. He cared about doing his job well, and he cared about being of value to his bosses. Not his bosses here in America but the ones in Russia who’d sent him over to do the enforcing that others couldn’t or wouldn’t.

---