Trapped with the Mob Boss: A Mafia Romance (Petrov Bratva)

by Nicole Fox

  “Maybe she doesn’t speak because she knows her father is not coming to save her,” I say. “Maybe she doesn’t want us to know she’s meaningless to the man, and therefore, we can do whatever we like with her.”

  She stiffens at the sound of my voice. So does my father. He turns to me, eyes narrowed, disapproving. But then he smiles. “Good insight, Yuri.”

  Finally, she lets out an unimpressed huff. “If he’s insightful, then I’m the strongest person in this room.”

  My father’s eyes light up like he just got a broken toy working again. “Please enlighten us then. Why else would you not want to speak about your father? Why else would he not immediately pay your ransom?”

  Bella leans forward, her top lip pulled back. “Maybe my father hasn’t responded to you because the United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  He raises an eyebrow, considering her words for a moment, and then laughs. “Of course, the United States negotiates with terrorists. Just because they do not hold televised debates doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Those negotiations take place with cryptocurrency and back channels, silly girl.”

  Bella is unsure of herself, and my father pounces. He stands up and moves around the table to lean against the front edge, his hands folded in front of him. With his girth and smile, he looks harmless, but I’ve seen him strangle men with his bare hands. I’ve watched him press a gun between someone’s eyes and pull the trigger without blinking. I can’t judge him, for I’ve done the same. It’s all in the name of family. Of loyalty. Everything we’ve done and will do is for loyalty. And my loyalty to my father and my family will override whatever bit of guilt squirms inside of me for what my father is about to do to Bella.

  “You were taken for a reason,” he says. “We’ve watched you. Yuri saw you walk to your gym, buy your morning coffee, and meet friends for drinks. He has been watching you for weeks, preparing for this moment. So if you are hoping to avoid talking to us long enough for your father to sweep in and save you, I’m afraid you may be waiting a while.”

  I can feel Bella looking at me, and I’m not sure why I care what she thinks. If she thinks I’m a stalker, so what? Technically, I am. If she thinks I’m a monster, so what? Technically, I am.

  I followed Bella for two weeks, tracking her movements, preparing to strike should the need arise. We reached out to her father, seeking yet another return on our investment in him, but Father found him unresponsive. He no longer accepted our calls or offer for meetings. He had gone radio silent, so we needed a way to break through the static.

  Senator Jack McNair is a politician through and through. He attempted to charm my father, convince him they were good pals rather than business partners willing to stab one another in the back at the slightest shift in the wind. The senator sent holiday cards and gift baskets; he called himself a family friend, though he kept Bella a secret. We knew she existed, of course, but he didn’t speak of her. He dismissed his only daughter as a silly girl with no ambition. A woman who was better suited to a life of shopping and ease than any political ambitions. Later, we even learned he hired his own paparazzi to photograph Bella and perpetuate the lie that she was frivolous. He didn’t want us to know the truth: that Bella means everything to Jack McNair.

  She is his pride and joy. A brilliant woman who, when snubbed by an IT tech at the computer store, enrolled herself in classes so she could fix her electronics by herself. She parties with her friends and gets drinks in the middle of the day, but she carries herself differently from them. Bella McNair has class, and following her over those weeks, I saw it first-hand. She will be an important person one day, and Jack McNair knows it. And he attempted to keep it from us.

  So, sitting in the room with Bella and my father feels like cracking open a Christmas gift I’ve been staring at and longing for all month. I’m excited, yet nervous she will not live up to my expectations. But so far, she’s exceeded them.

  My father claps his hands again and breaks me out of my thoughts, the sound echoing around the room. “Since you now understand the nature of your stay here, this is your opportunity to tell us what you know freely.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she says stiffly, her chin raised.

  He smiles, head tilted to the side. “Now, I know that is a lie.”

  She raises an eyebrow, her pink lips puckered. “Then apparently you don’t know anything either. Because I’m telling the truth.”

  She’s sharp. And while my father may love a pretty face, he hates a sharp tongue. His smile turns deadly. “You may be able to hide behind your pretty face for most people, but I’m not most people. Tell me why your father is not responding to me.”

  “I don’t even know who you are or how you know him,” she snaps. “How in the hell would I know why he isn’t returning your calls? Have you tried sending him flowers?”

  He tucks a hand under his jacket and places it on his hip. “Do not test me, girl. I’m offering again to let you freely tell me any information you have about your father. I will not make the same offer a third time.”

  Bella raises an eyebrow and looks at me. It’s the first time our eyes have met since stepping into the room, and I feel stripped bare. Her blue eyes are wide with fright, but also steely determination. She’s not going to go down easily. “I’ve heard a similar phrase before. Did you two read the same kidnapper’s handbook?”

  Before the sentence is even fully out of her mouth, my father lunges across the narrow space between them and presses a blade to her neck. Bella gasps.

  “I’ve killed another woman with this same blade,” he whispers, swiping it down across her neck. I see her flesh bending around the press of the metal, but it doesn’t break skin. Not yet. “She denied me information I wanted. She refused to tell me what I wanted to know, so I ripped out her throat. Do you know how long it takes to die from a slit throat?”

  Bella swallows, her throat bobbing against the blade.

  “It depends on how deeply you cut,” he continues, twisting his head to look at her neck like he’s looking for a good point of entry. “And where. An artery will be half a minute, if that. But if I make shallow cuts, each one moving deeper and deeper. It could take minutes. Ten. Fifteen. You could begin to bleed out and go weak before I pierce your windpipe. At least, that is what happened to the last woman who dared keep her mouth shut when I ordered her to open it.”

  I can’t tell if I’m imagining things or not, but it looks like Bella’s eyes dart to me. For help? Surely not. She can’t expect me to save her. Not after what I did to her in the room. Though, if I felt her excitement for me, surely she felt mine for her. But that was a natural response to a beautiful woman. It doesn’t mean I care for her. And she knows that.

  Except, she looks at me again, and this time my father follows her gaze. He studies me for a second and then stands up, arm extended. When I don’t move, he steps forward and presses the knife into my hand. “Yuri has killed people, too. It takes a lot of strength to slit a throat, doesn’t it?”

  I take the knife and nod, not looking at Bella.

  “I’m getting older. Weaker,” he says. “But Yuri is young and strong. He has the strength to make your death quick. And the stomach to make it slow. Your choice, Bella, dear.”

  She looks up at me and then back at my father. “You’re going to kill me?”

  He smiles that same warm, fake smile. It’s sweet enough to rot teeth. “Only if you don’t cooperate. Remember what I said about respect? About following our rules? Follow the rules, and you’ll walk out of here. Break them, and—” he nods for me to move closer to her, so I do. Barely.

  I don’t press the blade to her neck. I just squeeze it in my hand, my knuckles going white around the handle. I’ll do it. I’ll kill her. But after watching her for weeks, I feel closer to her than most of my victims. It would be difficult to watch her die, though I would do it. If I needed to.

  Bella looks at me, at the knife in my hand, and her skin goes pale. She
blinks and looks down at the floor. “I don’t know anything. Maybe I’ve seen something strange here or there, but my father has always sought to keep me out of his private business.”

  The same way he sought to keep her away from our attention. He wanted Bella to be safe. The less she knew, the better. Except for now, of course, when knowledge could save her life.

  “Tell me,” my father says, kneeling down in front of her. He places a hand on Bella’s knee, and she recoils from his touch.

  “He met with strange men,” she says, the words spilling out like molasses, sluggish and stubborn. She doesn’t want to tell my father anything, but she thinks I’ll kill her if she doesn’t. Apparently, I’ve done my job well. “No one I’ve ever seen before. I was waiting outside his office, and after the men left, my father seemed upset. He met with them a few times, at least.”

  “Did you ever meet them?” my father asks, eyes focused. He’s in fact-finding mode now.

  She shakes her head. “He usually introduces me to his colleagues, but never these men. He seemed upset that I was there unannounced. He told me to always call before coming to his office. It was one of the few times he ever snapped at me.”

  “What did they look like?” he asks.

  Bella shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

  My father gestures to me, and then tips his head towards Bella. The words are written in the air between us. Scare her. Hurt her. Get the information.

  Bella hears the silent command too, and she begins to shake. Any façade of toughness falling away. “They were tall men in suits. They looked normal. I didn’t pay much attention, except ... ”

  Her voice trails off, and her face goes blank. Her eyes are miles away, focused on another place, another time.

  “Except what?” my father hisses.

  “They had pins,” Bella says as if she’s recovering the memory like a fossil in the ground, sifting dirt away from it bit by bit. “They wore them on their lapels. Red squares with a winged animal inside of them. I thought they were maybe some government organization, but then I realized it wasn’t an eagle, but a dragon. With two heads.”

  My father looks up at me and then back at Bella. He’s like a dog with its hackles raised. On edge, alert. “You’re certain?”

  Bella twists around, brows pulled together. “Yeah. What does it mean?”

  “It was lovely to meet you, Bella,” he says, smiling that idiotic smile again. “I do hope we’ll have a chance to talk again.”

  “No, wait—” Bella starts, but before she can say any more, I grab her arm and haul her to her feet.

  We’re at the door when my father speaks again. “Get her somewhere safe.”

  I nod and drag her down the hallway. This time, Bella doesn’t resist.

  Chapter Five

  Yuri

  When I drop Bella back in her cell, someone has brought a cot down for her to sleep in, but she won’t need it. Not for long anyway.

  She has questions. I can see them written in her expression, in the nervous tangle of her fingers. But she doesn’t speak them. She probably doesn’t think I’ll answer them. Smart girl.

  I leave her in the cell and spend the next hour preparing things. When I return, she’s asleep.

  “Wake up.” I look up towards the ceiling as she opens her eyes. Watching her wake up feels too personal. “We have to go.”

  She jolts up and readjusts her dress, pulling the neckline up to cover her pale pink bra. “Go where?”

  I move forward to grab her arm, but she pulls out of my reach and stands up. “You don’t have to drag me around.”

  “I wouldn’t if you’d cooperate.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Asking questions doesn’t make me uncooperative.”

  “No, it just makes you slow,” I say. “And we don’t have time.”

  The hour it took me to arrange for the car and lodging and secure our perimeter took too much time already. I need to get Bella out.

  “Is my father coming for me?” she asks.

  I make to grab her arm, and she pulls away again, backing into the corner and holding up her hands like she might try and punch me if I get too close. I fist my hands at my side and take a deep breath. “Not in the way you think.”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking,” she says.

  But I do. I can see her hatred for me in every line of her face. And I know that hatred is only going to grow as I advance towards her, cornering her like an animal, and wrap my hand around her upper arm. Bella tries to shake me off and pulls at my fingers with her own, but my grip is iron tight.

  “Just tell me what’s going on and maybe I’ll go with you willingly,” she says. “Have you ever thought that forcing people to do what you want might not be the best way?”

  I lead her into the hallway and she tries to turn towards the stairs, but I drag her in the opposite direction, deeper into the basement.

  “I’ve never had that thought.”

  People rarely do what I want them to. Bella certainly doesn’t. If she did, she’d talk a lot less often. Forcing them is the fastest way to get things done, especially now, when efficiency is the name of the game. So, I drag Bella down the hallway and through what looks like a normal door, but is actually another hallway shooting off to the right.

  “I thought this was a dead-end,” Bella says, looking around.

  We move to the end of that hallway and through another door to the left that opens to another hallway. The space was designed to be deliberately confusing. Each hallway looks identical, and if someone who didn’t know their way around stumbled through them, they’d get so turned around they wouldn’t know which way was up. I can tell Bella is feeling the same way when we come to the door at the end of the last hallway. When I open it and an evening breeze fills the hallway, Bella inhales sharply.

  Then she jerks against my grip.

  I haul her against my chest and then press her into the doorframe. She struggles for a moment before going limp, her entire face sagging in disappointment.

  “Try to run, and I’ll kill you,” I whisper solemnly. “Don’t make me do that.”

  Her face snaps up to mine, and I see for the first time that there’s a ring of yellow around her irises like a silver lining around a cloud. “So, if you kill me, it’s my fault?”

  I grip her arm once again and move her through the door and towards the waiting SUV. The windows are deeply tinted and the engine is already running. I open the passenger door and, before she can resist, I grab her waist and lift her into the seat. She kicks frantically for a second and then scowls at me as I pull on her seat belt and gesture for her to put it on.

  “If you try to run, I’ll have to kill you,” I explain.

  I shut the door and walk around the car. I’m in front of the headlights when I hear her pulling furiously on the passenger door handle. When she realizes it’s futile, she curses loudly, and I barely manage to bite back a smile.

  She studies the roads as we drive through the city, memorizing our path. I want to tell her it doesn’t matter, but the task keeps her quiet, so I let her waste her time.

  When I pull up in front of the hotel, she turns to me, brows pinched together. “Why are we here?”

  “We need a place to lie low.” There’s a line in front of us for the valet. It’s short, maybe only a few minutes’ wait. But that’s a few minutes of Bella prodding me, pestering me with questions, raising my blood pressure.

  She leans forward to look out the window, up at the hotel. It’s thirty floors high, at least. A reflective tower that takes up most of a city block. “This is where we’re lying low?”

  “The phrase isn’t literal. We won’t actually be lying low.”

  “If you weren’t such a dick,” she says, placing special emphasis on the insult. “You might be funny.”

  When I don’t answer, she shifts in her seat, her hands wedged under her thighs. Silence makes her uncomfortable. Which makes sense, given how frequently she feels the need to talk. �
�What are we doing here though? Why wasn’t the last place good enough?”

  “Did you prefer the cell? I can take you back if you’d like.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she huffs. “Your father seemed nervous when I talked about the men my dad met with. Who were they?”

  We’ll talk about this later. Or not. I haven’t decided yet.

  “You want me to cooperate and be a good little girl, but I can’t do that if I’m stumbling around in the dark,” she says, loud enough I’m afraid a passing valet can hear her. He turns slightly towards the car, but professionalism compels him to keep moving and not try to look through the windows.

  “Keep it down,” I hiss, my upper body remaining still while my hand darts across the console and squeezes just above her knee.

  “I will if you tell me what in the hell is going on,” she shouts.

  This time, I’m sure one of the bellhops scooping suitcases onto a metal cart can hear Bella’s high-pitched shrills, and I have to contain this. Now.

  “Men are coming for you,” I say flatly, trying not to let her see how nervous I’m. “The pins you saw belong to a secret society in Russia, and if those men were meeting with your father, he’s under their thumb.”

  Bella’s long hair falls over her shoulder, and she tucks a lock of it behind her ear. She needs a shower and a change of clothes, but even mussed and greasy, she’s effortlessly beautiful. “What does that mean? Under their thumb?”

  I sigh, inching the SUV forward. We’re next in line, and this conversation can’t happen in public. No one can overhear us. “It means that, whether he wants to be or not, your father answers to them. And it explains why he’s stopped responding to us.”

  She shakes her head. “So, you’re hiding me here because the men he’s working for were coming to rescue me?”

  “Rescue you? No,” I say, chuckling softly.

  “But my father is working with them, so—”

  “Your father was also working with my father,” I say by way of explanation. “Would it comfort you if my father was coming to your rescue?”