Page 63 of Sinner's Vows

I sigh. Even if Ariana seemed unconscious during the shootout, she’s in too deep now, what with trying to escape.

“What else did she tell you?” Matteo asks, and I wish I didn’t have to expose the secret she’s been keeping tight for more than a decade.

“She grew up with Franco, and he…he…brutally—” Fuck it. The mere idea of it makes my stomach clench tight, heat curve around my neck in anger, and my heart rate speed up. The words are stuck in my throat, but they’ll have to come out. “Brutally violated her when she was fifteen.”

It grows eerily quiet in the room as my brothers digest my words.

Here’s the thing: if you grew up like we did, with a mom who let us only know love, despite everything she went through, then you become protective like we are. There are reasons why we all had this rule—the one Matteo and Steph have already broken—that marriage isn’t for us. On the one side, there’s the gnawing notion we might turn out to be like our dad, a violent abuser, cruel beyond words. On the other side, even if we were better than the old Don, we need to fight for dominance in our world all the time. If I can’t protect a woman, it would be my ultimate failure. I don’t even want to go there.

“Well, fuck,” Luca says eventually. “If Franco weren’t dead already?—”

Matteo and Benedict grunt in agreement, and I slump back in my chair. Whatever Ariana is to us, she’s just been adopted by the Scalera brothers. Except she has this happy knack of wanting to escape and to put a hole in my heart. I’m not telling them about that. Or about what happened after, and how I got to learn about this in the first place. They need to know the basics. They don’t need to know everything.

“She just told you?” Luca asks, getting right to the freaking point I want to avoid. “Opened up like that?”

I grind my jaw. “We talked and…well?—”

“Well?” Benedict prompts.

A knock on the door makes me pause, and when Rosalia peeks in a few seconds later, I huff out a quiet breath in relief. Saved by a fucking platter of pastries. We wait for her in silence as she carries in the food, but Matteo searches my face as he nods with a quiet thank you. By the time Rosalia has left the office, the atmosphere has shifted.

“Doesn’t matter how he gets information out of Ariana,” Matteo says, now studying me intently with a glint in his eyes I’ve never seen before. “Let’s just call it Nicky’s magic…wand.”

What. The. Fuck.

A round of smirks circles the room, and I feel even hotter around my fucking collar. “Bro? Really?”

“Come on, Nicky, take it like the big man you are,” Luca says, a grin still eating his shitface. “When it’s your turn, it’s your turn.”

I reach for a croissant with a shrug. Let them razz me, I don’t care. I’m going to call order to this meeting. As my brothers reach for their own croissants, I have a moment of reprieve to organize my thoughts. We need to discuss Igor Petrov and my little fuckup.

“I’m thinking—” Benedict says between two bites, “—if you can get me her fingerprints, I can dig and get my contacts to see what they find on the Italian databases. If she’s lying about anything, it will eventually show.”

I’ve been brewing the same idea. I don’t relish going behind her back to get information on her, not with this newfound trust between us, but it’s for her own safety—and ours. “Okay, I’ll make a plan.”

“This idea Nicky has about us being under attack,” Matteo starts as he reaches for a napkin and puts his plate on the coffee table. “It all started with Randazzo. It got worse with the Don’s death. The question really is whether this is normal with a power change, or is someone fucking with us on purpose?”

“They’re fucking with us, Matty,” I say, suddenly tired to my bones. “The Borises admitted that Franco had promised to help them take over our ports once he got Gigi’s money.”

“But why would Igor Petrov send his nephew to contest agreements in such a way? Blood agreements that were made decades ago?” Matteo asks. “Why stir up shit if you don’t have to?”

Benedict clears his throat, raises his hand to pause all talking as he takes a leisurely sip of coffee. “Igor Petrov retired earlier this year. Might be that his successor has the need to prove himself.”

“What? Retired?” Matteo says. “How?”

“How the fuck do you get to retire out of the Bratva?” Luca echoes, putting the words there for me.

“His son took over. Ivan Petrov,” Benedict says. “It all happened while we were focusing on this Randazzo business and not paying attention. And here we are.”

“Ivan Petrov?” Luca repeats, a bit stunned.

Matteo shakes his head, holding his hand up. “So what the fuck is Igor Petrov doing in hisretirement?”

His tone gives it all away: what a joke, and maybe he’s a bit jealous.

“Bought a mansion in Maui and plays golf the whole day,” Benedict fills us in with a small smile. “It works out for some, you know.”

Instead of keeping an eye on whoever now rules the Bratva and making sure old agreements are honored, Igor Petrov gets to catch a tan and lose golf balls in the links.

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