Page 367 of Sinfully Savage Mafia

Papa’s blue eyes twinkle and he holds out a hand to me as Mama fusses over the meal she’s preparing.

“It’s been hours,” I say to her in a teasing voice. “Isn’t it done yet?”

Mama gives me a sharp look, her lips parting to speak the word burned into my memory.

“No!”

A flash of red floods my vision as the tears freeze and crackle on my skin.

It was only supposed to be a friendly business dinner.

“No!”

One swing of the machete took Mama’s life.

The second one killed Papa.

“No!”

I never saw it coming.

“I’ll always make sure you’re safe, Anya…”

“Don’t ever look back, Anya…”

“They will kill you, too, Anya…”

My head swarms with terrifying thoughts and images I will never be able to erase from my memory.

Mama and Papa trusted them, invited them into our home.

And they took everything from us that night.

“What’s happening down there?” I whisper to my older brother Maks in the darkness of his bedroom. Dishes smash against walls, gunshots explode into the air, piercing screams shattering me to my core. “We need to get Mama and Papa!”

“It’s too late,” he says in a tight voice. “For them.”

He knew this would happen.

He was ready for them.

I pull my arm out of his tight grip. “No, it’s not! We have to help them!”

He grabs me by the shirt, his eyes blazing with rage. “Mama and Papa are gone. And if you don’t want to end up like them, you need to do as I say!”

* * *

My feet pound against the snow as I drag myself closer and closer to the boat, my fingertips frozen to the point that I’m not sure I can even press the numbers into the security keypad. My breath freezes as it hits the air, my teeth chattering like I’ve been plunged naked into a pool of ice cubes.

I reach out to hit the buttons, the boat bobbing on the water, and I’m suddenly thrust into the backseat of a blacked-out Ford Expedition.

Maks’s truck.

Pulsating electronica fills my ears through my earbuds, my eyes drooping closed as I sprawl out on the leather. “Did you really need me to come with you? You could have just brought the ice cream home, you know,” I grumble, scrubbing a hand down the front of my face. I’m exhausted from doing a job the night before in a town upstate, and all I really want to do right now is burrow under my covers and sleep.

“Relax,” Maks says. “This won’t take long. Don’t be such a bitch.”

I feel the car turn right and the cool, salty air billowing through my hair tells me we’re at the pier.

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