Page 79 of Devil's Vows
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GABI
I don’t see Ivan again, and the day goes by quickly with the girls and our activities. They’ve easily settled into the routine I’ve put together, craving the security it brings.
While they’re napping, I go down to the kitchen with the baby monitor to prepare dinner.
Yuri is giving me more free rein. He’s never far, always on his phone or his laptop, a lengthy shadow watching us. Whenever I pick up a snippet of his conversation, I listen in, but since my bathroom slip with Milana, I’ve become more cautious. Now, I can’t help catching words likeMoleandMara, concluding that he talks in code about two people who have intel on a third party he merely refers to as the Shadow. I shrug it off as nothing to do with me and focus on my work.
Ivan said he’ll see me tonight, and I want to replicate last night’s family meal where everybody was at peace, stitching together the shreds that remain of their lives. If nothing else, I can reconcile Milana with her brother and her nieces before either one of us leave. In Italy, people do that through food.
Kostya has been very handy, my own personal shopper, and there’s no limit on his spending. As I unpack the organicvegetables from a local farmers’ market, Milana ambles into the kitchen.
“Can I help?” she asks, meeting my gaze. “Last night’s dinner was so good, I can definitely learn a thing or two here.”
I smile at her. “Sure. The veal Saltimbocca recipe is in my head, but it’s easy enough.”
With Yuri’s presence at the dining table, we can’t speak openly, but if this is Milana back in a hope phase, I’d love to have her. We can just get to know each other like normal people, not two women plotting our escape out of organized crime.
“What’s new?” she asks softly as she leans in to gather the veggies to rinse.
“Nothing new.”
I bet Ivan won’t share the talk he had with my brothers, or even if they spoke at all. I haven’t had messages or calls from my brothers on my normal phone, or on my burner phone, which I now have the convenient excuse to check because I’m on a fake period. The suspense is killing me. They better fall for our bait.
With dinner keeping warm in the oven, and we’re in the garden with the girls for a last quick play session before Ivan gets home, Milana and I have covered a lot of ground. We spoke mostly about her career as a pianist and the studio recordings she’s done. About her student life at Juilliard, which was as ‘normal’ as it could get, what with a bodyguard preventing her from having a real life. About the time she spent in Russia as a kid, her mom’s untimely death and the old Pakhan’s arranged marriage to another Russian who has connections to the Bratva there.
“Where’s your stepmother?” I ask now, fishing for information about everybody. Ivan hasn’t mentioned her.
“Rehab, somewhere upstate. I’m not actually sure.”
“Oh. More drugs?” Seems to be a real problem in these circles.
“Yep. Ivan was kinder to her than to Darya, for now. I wouldn’t be surprised if our darling step-mamma dies once our Papa is no more.”
“What do you mean?” I ask as foreboding zaps through me. “Darya committed suicide?”
“Oh, Gabriella. Believe that if it helps you sleep at night.”
Her tone says it all.Stop being so naive.If you want to get out of here, away from vows made on your behalf—all of them—start thinking like a Mafia princess and not like a convent girl.Look and learn.Stop running. Start playing the game. Don’t fight the cage, make it work for you.
“But—”
She shakes her head. “It was a toxic batch of fentanyl, and I have no clue how it got to Darya. But that’s how they do it. Kill off many to disguise an assassination.”
I bite my lip as I hide my trembling fingers in my sweater’s pockets. Mother Lucia. Tortured to death, last in a line of similar victims to mask the reason why she specifically was killed.
“Who arethey?” I ask, not ready to face the truth.
“They are us. The Bratva.”
Her explanation is so matter of fact, it chills me to the bone.
They are Ivan.
She cocks a brow at me.
Cruel. Ruthless. Calculating.
