by Bella Rose
What did that mean?
Sasha stood up and paced around and around the scene. He noted the scuff marks on the concrete that suggested something heavy had been here. Like crates. Then he caught the scent of something foul that smelled a lot like vomit.
Following the smell like a hound, he found himself behind the dumpster. There was a little wet circle on the pavement with some chunks that might have been food. Definitely vomit. But who would even be back here? Sokolov spies trying to find out what had happened to Grigori? It seemed possible. But what had happened to this person, this watcher? Not killed—where was the body? Had they held their disgust in until after the gunmen had left the scene? It was all so very odd.
Then Sasha remembered Ivan’s assertion that the lady had gone to the mall. There was only one mall that Sasha could even imagine Maria going to. The other two were on opposite sides of the city. What if Maria hadn’t gone to the mall? What if she had been following some idiot lead on Grigori’s killer? A Sokolov soldier or spy wouldn’t vomit at the sight of blood. But Maria would.
“Damn you, Maria,” Sasha muttered. He turned on his heel and hurried back to the car. Sliding into the backseat, he slammed the door behind him. “Go to Westgate Mall,” Sasha ordered Pyotr. “Hurry up. I need you to hurry.”
“The mall?” Even through the rearview mirror, Sasha could see that Pyotr was confused. “What do you need from the mall right now?”
“My wife.”
Pyotr raised his eyebrows. “She went to the mall without escort?”
“Sort of.” Sasha really didn’t have time for this. “Just contact Yuri and have him meet me there with a few soldiers. We’re going to search for my wife, and I need as many sets of eyes as possible.” Sasha rubbed his hands down his face. “My God! That place is a madhouse at any given moment! It’s going to take me a year to find her!” If she had even gone there to begin with.
“Are you certain that she’s there?” Pyotr was aghast. “Perhaps she’s home by now.”
“Find out,” Sasha ordered. “And no, I’m not sure she’s there, but I sure as hell hope she is!”
Fear wound its tendrils around Sasha’s heart. Even now his precious Maria might be in the hands of lunatics who had just murdered two of Sasha’s avoritets without hesitation. The murder had been decisive and brutal. The man or men who had ordered and performed this hit had been unflinching. Sasha could not take any chances that Maria might come into contact with these men. There was no telling what might happen to her if she did.
“Ivan says that your wife has not returned home, sir,” Pyotr told him. More than a little tension had crept into the man’s voice. “The rest of the men will meet us at the mall.”
Chapter Sixteen
For some reason, it did not make Maria feel any better to know that the man currently holding her hostage was her mother’s younger brother. Carmine was ruthless, and he was apparently in the gunning for a promotion. Since the man had four brothers, this was kind of a big deal. Or at least, that’s what Maria gleaned from listening to the conversation in the car on the way back to her uncle’s…whatever this place was.
“It’s really too bad that you had to go snooping, kid.” Carmine pulled up a chair, flipped it around, and sat backwards with his arms resting on the back of the chair. “If you hadn’t been there, this job would have been clean as a whistle, you know?”
“You murdered a couple of thieves and took stuff that you didn’t pay for,” Maria muttered. “I’m sorry. How did I get in your way exactly? It sort of sounds like you were already screwed.”
“Whew!” Carmine whistled. Then he looked over at his men and said something in Italian. Maria had less Italian than Russian and couldn’t begin to decipher his words. Carmine laughed and turned back to Maria. “I just told the boys that you’re as spicy and sassy as your mother! That bitch never knew when to shut her mouth.”
“She was older than you.” Maria tried to establish some family link. It was her only chance at getting Carmine to decide not to kill her. She could feel it. “I remember her talking about when the two of you were growing up. Because you were the two youngest and that family was so big, you were always fighting and beating on each other.”
“Your mother could scrap like any good Dinozzo soldier,” Carmine agreed. “I remember one time she hit me in the face so hard she took out one of my teeth.” He opened his mouth to show her a missing bicuspid on the upper right side of his mouth. “Plus I couldn’t hit her back because she was a girl. It was way unbalanced.”
“That does sound unfair,” Maria agreed.
Carmine snorted. “Trying to kiss up? It won’t do you no good, little girl!”
“No, I’m not kissing up. You had your tooth knocked out and couldn’t hit back. It sounds unfair. No matter what the situation is.” Then Maria realized that she might have a way to at least force Carmine into action before he was ready. “I mean, it’s probably pretty embarrassing to have the whole family know you got beaten up by a girl all the time. Right?”
“That’s not true!” He belted out the words, but seemed to be trying to play it off as no big deal. “Being the kind of guy who doesn’t hit a woman doesn’t make me weak.”
“Maybe.” Maria gave a very deliberate shrug. “Maybe not. I suppose it is all in the telling. Right?”
***
There had probably never been a more amusing sight than forty Tarasov soldiers running around Westgate Mall calling for a woman named Maria. Sasha was pretty sure that’s what the other shoppers thought, at least. Most of the people were very helpful, up to a point. They simply didn’t understand that if Maria was not at the mall, she might be dead.
“We cannot find her.” Vasily approached Sasha with a very careful expression on his face. “Could it be possible that she went home to her Sokolov relatives? I know that the other women in the house were giving her quite a bit of trouble. Perhaps she grew tired of it and went home.”
“My house is her home,” Sasha snarled. “And if you could see that she was having a hard time, why would you not help her?” This was pointless. He could not keep railing at his men for failing to find a woman who was so obviously not inside this structure.
Another Tarasov soldier emerged from a department store and shook his head at Vasily. The man took a breath to say something to Sasha but seemed to reconsider when he spotted his pakhan’s sour expression. They were all going to know how pissed he was in a minute. He was going to tear this entire place apart and to hell with the consequences.
“She’s not here,” Vasily insisted. “Where else should we look?”
Sasha made a frustrated noise and tried to work out who Dimitri and Kirill would have contacted about a weapons sale. Would they have gone to a rival Russian family? It seemed unlikely. Then Sasha thought about the fact that Grigori Sokolov had been helping them down at the harbor. Who would Grigori know that Sasha did not?
Maria’s mother was Italian.
What if Grigori had some Italian contacts? Could it be possible for him to find a buyer from Maria’s mother’s family? And would Emil Sokolov even know if that was the case?
“You men stay here,” Sasha ordered. “I’m going to chase down another lead. I want you searching. Do not stop. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.” At least Vasily did a decent job of disguising how tired of this task he was. The man might make a good avoritet someday. Of course, now that there were two openings in the Tarasov family, Sasha would have to promote other men at some point.
It was a sobering reality. But it did not keep Sasha from striding out of the mall in search of Pyotr and the car. It was time to pay old man Sokolov another visit. He would find out where to find his ex wife’s relatives and go from there. And Sasha would be damned if he apologized to Sokolov for planning to murder any of his dead wife’s family members who might be involved.
***
“You know,” Maria said, trying not to sound too eager. “If you call my father he can
make it look like I was with him the whole time. Then there will be no need for any uncomfortable meetings, you can just take your weapons, and you and I will never have to see each other again.”
Carmine snorted. “That sounds nice and simple, doesn’t it? But you’ve left out the part where you go running to your husband to tell him where his missing merchandise is.”
“Why would I do that?” It was an honest question. Carmine just didn’t realize the truth behind it. “It’s not like my husband is particularly fond of me or anything. I’m just a broodmare, you know?”
Carmine laughed out loud. The other three men in the room were howling along, as well. She did not appreciate being the object of their ridicule, but if it kept her alive she was willing to take it. At this point, she needed a plan. There had to be a way out of this.
“What about money?” she suggested suddenly. “What if my father could give you money? You’d make the cash off the weapons sale, plus you would get a big fat check from papa when you brought me home. He’ll just blame the Tarasovs. That’s pretty much how it works, you know?”
“Poor little Maria.” Carmine stroked her cheek and gave her a sarcastic smile of pity. “You got stuck in an arranged marriage just like your mother. Must be fate.”
“Yeah, so I guess you’d better watch out for your daughters, eh?” she retorted. “Haven’t you married yet?”
“No.”
She thought of Olga and Ana. “I could get you some hot little Russian girls.”
“Trying to buy your way free? This is pathetic!”
“Actually I’m just trying to get rid of these Russian girls. They’re total bitches.”
Carmine was laughing again. And then his phone rang. He answered the call and spoke in rapid-fire Italian to the person on the other end. It made absolutely no sense to Maria. She didn’t even know where Carmine lived these days. She had always assumed that he and his brothers lived with their father in the sprawling mansion that her mother had grown up in.
“So?” she prompted once Carmine was off the phone. “Are you finally going to let me go?”
“My oldest brother is the boss of the family now,” he explained. “It’s up to him what happens to you.”
“And what does he say?” She licked her lips. This was probably not going to be good.
Carmine looked almost fascinated. “He wants to meet you.” Then he turned around and gave a few clipped orders to his men.
Before Maria knew it she had been trussed up and tossed back into the van that had taken her there in the first place.
***
“Where is Maria?” Sasha could not stop the words from spilling out as soon as Emil opened the front door of his home.
The old man raised his eyebrows. “Why would you assume that she is here? I have not seen my daughter since the day you wed her. I think you know that.”
Sasha shoved his way inside. He saw a chair in the foyer and managed to sink down onto the cushioned seat before he disgraced himself by falling flat on his ass. “She’s missing.”
Now he had Emil’s attention. “Missing?”
“Yes.” Sasha struggled to explain. “Did Grigori know anyone in your wife’s family?”
The old man took his time answering, and when he finally did, he looked very irritated. “Sometimes I suspected that Grigori and Carmine were keeping in touch here and there. The two of them had a penchant for underhanded schemes that often wound up with someone getting shot.”
“I think that’s what happened to Grigori,” Sasha admitted. He rubbed both hands down his face. His men had kicked up a huge fuss about him coming in here by himself, but he had stood his ground. Now he was glad. His Tarasov soldiers did not need to fully understand how badly they had been betrayed by their own.
Emil took a seat on an adjoining chair. He did not invite Sasha to enter the living room or to have some vodka in the den. Sasha was glad. There was no more time for bullshit.
Sasha sucked in a big breath to try to force his brain to think rationally. “I believe that two of my men betrayed me and stole a shipment of weapons. I think they sold these weapons to a contact that they got from Grigori. I also think this contact murdered them. I just found their bodies in an alley outside my warehouse.”
Emil hissed an oath. “That sounds like Carmine. He’s bloodthirsty and the first one to turn on someone who thought they had a deal. It wouldn’t be the first time. But what does that have to do with Maria.”
“I think she was following my men. Or perhaps she’d found the warehouse and was trying to find out what her cousin had to do with it.” This part made Sasha feel angry at the world, although mostly himself. “She was determined to find out what had happened to him and I told her I would handle it.”
“Ah,” Emil murmured. “But Maria does not like to wait for answers when she does not completely trust the source of those answers.”
The old man was shrewder than Sasha had given him credit for. But there was no point in hiding it now. “I think that’s exactly what happened.”
“If Carmine has her, we need to move fast.” Emil leaped up from his seat. “Let’s go!”
Chapter Seventeen
Maria had never met her mother’s oldest brother. She was starting to get a pretty good idea of why that was. The guy was an arrogant ass. As far as he was concerned, being the capo of the Dinozzo family made him equal to the King of England or the President of the United States.
Enzo was tall and hugely built. His salt-and-pepper temples suggested he was in his late fifties. He did not walk—he strutted. And when he entered the room, every single person in attendance groveled like a dog. It was actually quite fascinating.
Maria took stock of her situation. She was sitting in a big room that appeared to be in some kind of bar or restaurant. Her father’s club was such a place—a lounge that did as much bar business as it did dinner and dancing. But this place was seedier than the Sokolovs’ club.
An air of something derelict permeated the brick building. The walls inside were bare brick stained black from all the cigarette smoke. There was a grand piano at one end of the room, but the bench was missing. In fact, the entire place was empty except for the Dinozzo lackeys hanging about. That alone made Maria think it was still early. Maybe she could manage to escape. Or even better, maybe someone would come looking for her.
“So this is Isabella’s daughter,” Enzo mused.
He stopped right in front of the chair where Maria had been deposited. Her hands were bound with zip ties, and her feet were strapped to the chair. She felt vulnerable, and it made her not only nervous, but pissed off. Now this big Italian bastard was staring at her as though she were a bug under his microscope and he was trying to decide whether or not to let her live. It was barbaric!
“Yes. I’m Isabella’s daughter.” She gazed up at him and tried her best not to flinch. “I am also the daughter of the Sokolov pakhan and the wife of the Tarasov pakhan. It’s in your best interest to let me go.”
“Now why would I do that?” Enzo stood back and crossed his arms over his broad chest. He glanced around at all of the men in the room, and the mobsters started to laugh and jeer at her as though they were doing it on cue.
“Seriously?” Maria glanced around the room. “Is this pathetic pandering supposed to somehow inflate your already massive ego? I swear, holding me hostage is not going to end well for you.”
“And letting you go would?” Enzo scoffed. He began pacing a path back and forth in front of her. “My brother received a shipment of stolen guns.” He pegged her with a hard glare. “Guns stolen from your husband.”
“So what?” She did not bother to hide her annoyance. “I’m getting pretty tired of being jerked around just because of something that happened to other people. So you stole guns from my husband. That’s his problem. Not mine.”
“Aw.” Enzo pouched out his lower lip and mocked her. “Is the honeymoon already over?”
“It was an arranged marriage.” She
hated the words as she said them. “There wasn’t a whole lot of love to begin with. Keep the guns. And to be honest, I’m damn glad you killed those assholes back in that alley. They were the ones who murdered Grigori.”
Enzo spun so quickly she actually flinched in shock. “So you’re loyal to the Sokolovs!” He made it sound like a dire accusation.
“At this point I don’t give a fuck about any of them,” she said bitterly. “They’re all a bunch of asshole men who seem to think it’s perfectly all right to treat women like property.”
From his place at the bar across the room, Carmine began to laugh. “She sounds like Isabella!”
“If this is what my mother had to deal with when she was growing up, then I feel sorry for her,” Maria shot back. “She was your sister! Didn’t either of you care about her happiness or her safety? What if she’d been beaten or raped by her husband? Would you have even cared?”
Carmine shrugged and poured himself a shot of whiskey. “It wasn’t our problem. She was a grown ass woman.”
“Who took one for the fucking team!” Maria was so done with all of this! She wanted out. She wanted her own life. She wanted—well, she wanted her husband to love her for real, but that was a pipe dream and she knew it. Sasha would only ever see her as a pawn in his game. She glared at Enzo. “Can I go now? Seriously. Meeting you has been nice. Really. A genuine pleasure. Now that we’ve done all that family bonding, let’s cut the bullshit. Either let me go or tell me what you’re really planning.”
Enzo blinked at her but said nothing. That was pretty much what she had figured. The asshole had been planning to use her as collateral for something.”