Page 19 of Paved in Venom

“What did he do?” I ask her.

“He stopped in front of me and smiled, said that he liked to break defiant things and that if he didn’t already have a pet, he’d keep me for himself.”

My hand tightens into a fist at her words, and when she sees my anger, she looks away and hugs herself tighter. I force myself to take a breath and relax.

“They weren’t Romanian. I don’t know what they were, but they weren’t speaking Romanian.”

I look over and meet Matvey’s eyes. We’ve always suspected that there’s a Bratva behind all this, but we’ve never been sure.

“Did it sound like this? Like Russian?” I ask her and then switch to Russian, asking my brothers what they think of all this.

Simona listens while Roman says, “This has to be them. They’re too big, too well organized, and they have enough money to operate around the world.”

“What if we go to where they held the auction? Maybe someone’s still there? We could grab them and torture them for information. Someone has to know something.”

The pain and anger in Matvey’s voice is what we’re all feeling, and the temptation to do what he’s suggested is fucking strong, but we can’t do it, not yet anyway.

“There’s no way in hell anyone worth questioning is still there. All it will do is blow our cover,” I tell him.

Roman nods. “He’s right. It’ll just give us away and ruin everything we’ve done so far.”

Simona cuts in and says, “That sounds like what they were speaking, but I can’t be sure. The man who talked to me was tall, dark hair, and blue eyes. He looked so damn normal. I can’t get over how fucking normal they all looked. You’d never know they were buying and selling women.”

“Any tattoos?” Lev asks.

“I could see one on his hand. It looked like a black feather. I couldn’t see the rest of it because of his suit.”

“How did you get out of Romania?” Vitaly asks.

“I have no idea,” she says, and I can hear the exhaustion in her voice. I know everything is starting to catch up to her. “I thought I was still there, but when I woke up, he told me I was in America.”

Matvey leans forward, the hood of his sweatshirt slipping back a bit in his excitement. “You met the boss here?”

“Yeah,” she whispers.

Matvey looks around at us and says in Russian, “The fucker is here. He might still be here. Cut off the head of the snake, and it all comes falling down.”

“Maybe,” I tell him. “We still don’t know who the fuck he is.”

“We need to go to the club tonight.”

I shake my head at him. “Matvey, we can’t. She’s exhausted. I just fucking bought her a couple of hours ago.”

He stands up, growing agitated as he points his finger at her. “If he’s there, then she can identify him.” His dark eyes turn back to meet mine. “This may be our only shot.”

“What’s he saying?”

I look over at Simona, wondering how in the hell I’m going to ask her to do this for us.

Chapter 4

Simona

I look up at Danil, the man who bought me, the man who I’m still trying to figure out, and ask again, “What’s going on? What is he saying?”

His brother, the one in the hoodie with the intense, dark eyes is looking at me and growling something in Russian. His voice is deeper than the others and raspy sounding, making him seem intimidating, especially with the wild look in his eyes.

Danil turns to me, locking those grey eyes on mine, and I try very hard to not think about how damn good looking he is. He scratches at his stubbled jaw and says, “There’s a club that we’ve been going to that’s connected to the group that brought you here. It’s how I found out about the auction and got an invite. Matvey wants you to come to the club with us to see if you can identify any of the men.”

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