Page 36 of Devil's Vows
I press my lips together, begging my terror to stay trapped and not give away my inner turmoil. I can’t say for sure. There’s no way they’re the same. Those tattoos could be anything?—
“Mr. Petrov, hmm,” Yuri repeats with a raised brow as a small smile twerks at his lips.
“What else must I call him?” I ask, too rattled to think.
“Not my place to say. I’ll take your phone.” He holds out the phone to me. “This is now your phone. I’ll take the old one. We can use the same SIM card, but this one doesn’t have a photo function. No tablets or cameras allowed, either.”
Suddenly, it’s all too much. I want to trap his hand and make sure they aren’t the same tattoos burned in my memory, but I can’t. I don’t want to touch him at all. Instead, I snap. “Good grief. What is this place? I’m not going to?—”
“You arenotlosing contact with your family,” he cuts in, his tone cold. “We just don’t want you sending images of the girls or the house to anybody. You can speak to them all you want. It’s a privacy and security issue, something your brothers will appreciate, I’m sure.”
He takes a step in my direction, and in my head, it’s so threatening that I step back, pulling the girls to me. This man, his voice, his words, hisfingersseem to tap into my fear. But Irisha and Katya aren’t afraid of him. They aren’t fazed at all with being left with him. In their heads, he’s probably like their grandpa—he looks old enough—and I can’t be sure of anything.
It’s just my new circumstances fucking with my mind. For the first time, I’m alone, without Mother Lucia, without brothers in my periphery, without Petrov. It’s my subconscious playing games, but I’m in charge of where my mind goes.
I take a deep breath, yelling inwardly to myself to calm the fuck down.
This isn’t Italy. I haven’t been trafficked. I’m safe. If they wanted to do anything to me, they would have done so already. His request, which is probably just a command from his Pakhan, isn’t unreasonable. Not in the world we live in.
“Okay,” I say, deflating but pulling up tall at the same time. “Come, girls. We need to find some lunch. But first, the phone.”
Back in Petrov’s room, Yuri watches how I send a messageon the family group chat, letting them know I’m at Petrov’s house and everything is fine, but that I’m getting a new phone. I hand my old phone over to Yuri, making sure our fingers don’t touch in the process. Just the thought of this man’s skin against mine gives me hives.
As I watch him pocket my phone, I groan inwardly. I’ve never really had the latest technology, and the smartphone Dominic bought was a waste on me. Still, a click sounds in my mind, as if a door just closed. All I need is the twist of a key in a lock to start spiraling toward a full-on panic attack.
I want to run. Away from him. Away from every other old Russian who has crossed my path, but any escape plan faces a pile of complications: armed security everywhere, a house that’s mostly off-limits, Yuri who’s keeping an eye on me as if I’m plotting to defect from his communist regime.
I’ll figure it out. I can worry about it later. Right now, it’s too much, and I can’t digest or deal with any of this on an empty stomach.
“Is there lunch?” I ask, prioritizing. Girls don’t run far on empty stomachs. It’s already past noon, and I’m surprised the girls haven’t snapped yet. At the kindergarten, kids were fed on a regular basis.
“Let’s see what’s in the fridge,” Yuri says. “Make a list of what we need. I’ll send Kostya, our general errand runner, to shop for you.”
“I can do it for us? It would be a fun outing with Irisha and Katya.”
“The girls don’t do outings. Everything they need is here,” Yuri says, his cold stare cutting me right off.
I drop my gaze. When I was with my brothers, I didn’t have the urge to go anywhere. I could have just walked out…always with a bodyguard, but still. I had freedom. A sense of being trapped bubbles to the surface.
“Okay.”
I was naive to think a Bratva household would be different from a Mafia one. Whatever I’ve gotten myself into, I can’t blame my brothers though. I insisted on coming here. They will fetch me in a blink, but that would defeat my goal of disappearing from their lives.
This morning in Central Park, I sensed Dominic would kidnap me right back if it weren’t for Irisha and Katya being there, stopping a shootout. To think Petrov brought his daughters to the meeting, basically two tiny human shields, is too much.
I shrug off the morbid notion. Ivan Petrov loves Irisha and Katya and would never do that. Everything in this house signals that their safety is his biggest priority…and concern. The purpose of meeting was for the girls to warm to me, which I understand. If I were a parent, I’d do the same, but there’s more going on here.
With this level of security, and under this grandpa’s guarded one-eyed glare, it’s going to take me months to decipher the layout of the house and the grounds and figure out an escape plan…if I need one.
My heart sinks. I don’t have months. Every day I stay here knots me tighter to the girls and their world.
“After lunch, I’ll show you the outbuildings,” Yuri says as he leads the way back to the kitchen and opens the fridge. “There’s the tennis court and a dance studio where they get lessons with tutors—American tutors, vetted by me.”
He pulls out some cold cuts, a store-bought vegetable platter on the verge of expiring, if it hasn’t already, and a pizza box. He places everything on the kitchen island and lifts the box’s lid, revealing four old slices of curled-up pepperoni pizza which basically kills my appetite.
“The stables are empty right now, but we’ll bring back horses when they’re older. For the rest, it’s you. And the playground, of course.”
“Of course,” I nod, not wanting to give away that I’m quietly panicking inside.
