Page 56 of Savage Proposal

Damian shook his head, hissing softly as the movement pulled at his stitches. “I tried that already. It just gets muddier.”

“Play it again.”

He dutifully backed up the video, and we watched it again. “Did he look familiar to you at all?” We didn’t regularly deal with members of the Bratva, but it did come up from time to time.

“No,” he said. “But I recognized that.” He pointed to one of the blobs on the man’s forearm. “It’s a wolf.”

Fuck. “You’re sure? Absolutely?”

“Why does a wolf matter?” Elio asked.

“The Volkovs,” I said. Out of all of the Bratva families, the Volkovs were at the very top. Their Pakhan, Artem, was a quiet force. He’d risen through the ranks without fanfare. The man was like a sponge, absorbing all of the Bratva enterprises around him. “It seems that Artem has decided that the Bratva territories aren’t enough for him anymore.”

Elio scoffed. “Is he suicidal? Or just stupid?”

“Neither,” I said, glaring at Damian’s laptop screen. “Artem didn’t get to where he is by making sloppy mistakes.” I waved a hand at the computer. “Thisis amateur shit.”

Elio’s eyebrows collapsed inward, confused. “So, maybe he doesn’t know?”

It would be better, honestly, if Artem didn’t know about his people trying to fuck me over. If he didn’t know, then there was a chance this wouldn’t turn into an all-out war. “We’ll put some feelers out,” I decided. “See if any of the other Bratva families arein on this.” Surely, Artem wouldn’t be that arrogant as to come after any Cosa Nostra family, let alone the Vitalis, on his own.

Damian made a noise of assent. “There’s more,” he said, and his eyes slid to Elio. “I’ve got an update on that thing you asked me to look into.”

“Elio, out.”

“What?”

“Just go bother your wife for a bit.”

His mouth opened, as if he was going to argue, and then he shook his head and chuckled. “Don’t know why I’m trying to stay when I could go fuck my hot wife.” He touched his forehead in a mock salute. “Later.”

Once the door closed behind him, I turned back to Damian. “Did you find the men who attacked Isabella?”

Damian grimaced. “Not exactly,” he said. “But I did look into minor families and their business doings the year she was attacked, and none of our families had active harvesters.”

That wasn’t surprising. Not many of the families in the Cosa Nostra were interested in dealing with organs. They could net some serious cash on the black market, yes, but it was all so messy. Too many things could go wrong, and harvesting tended to attract a lot of unwanted attention from the Feds and the media. Before my father’s retirement, he washed his hands of that particular enterprise, and I had never bothered to pick it back up.

“What organization deals in the organ market?”

Damian’s smile was more a bearing of teeth. “Bratva,” he said. “They regularly use harvesters to collect debts.”

Debt? I heard a buzzing in my ears. Ice water surged in my veins. “If Isabella’s father was willing to hand her over to me,” I mused, “then it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that he’s done it before, right?”

“Is he really so callous?” Damian asked.

I snorted. “We could have doneanythingto Isabella. It’s not like we had some kind of contract with the man. He just gave us all of her information and told us that she would pay.”

“But to sign her death warrant? Would he do that?”

I had only met Santino Rossi a handful of times at the casino, and he always struck me as a contemptible addict. But had I ever noticed a lack of humanity in his eyes? I couldn’t say for certain. “Keep looking into it for me, yeah? If he sold Isabella to harvesters, I want to know, but I want the men who put their hands on her as well. They all need to die.”

Damian nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”

I found Isabella in my bedroom, stretched across the bed. For a moment, anger expanded in my belly like a balloon, but the more I looked at her, face serene and relaxed in a way that it never was, that anger contracted and shrank.

“Dolcezza.”

She stirred, and her warm eyes fluttered open. For a moment, a soft smile touched her face, but then her eyes found me, and itslipped away. She pushed herself up on her elbow. “Did you need something?”

---