Chapter 2
Gavril
After the phone call
“Fuck!” I shouted, scrambling to put on the tracker that was embedded in Anatoly’s cell phone. This couldn’t be happening, not now.
“What do you need, pakhan?” Ivan said from the driver’s seat, sensing my anger.
I showed him the location of Anatoly’s signal, glad that it was still beeping strongly. Wherever he was, I was going to get there immediately and find out what the hell had happened. “Take me there. Immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” Ivan answered as he changed directions, heading toward the location quickly.
Jon Hampton had my wife. My chest felt like it was going to explode with both fear and anger for what was happening, knowing that I had made a mistake in sending Naomi away. I thought that she would be safe from the impending war, but I had failed to consider that the FBI agent could make a move on my fucking wife during this time.
It had been my mistake, my lapse in judgment, and now Naomi was in the hands of a madman.
Shoving a hand through my hair, I could barely contain my anxiety as Ivan drove the car through the city and out the other side, heading toward the highway where Anatoly’s cell phone pinged from. It wasn’t just Naomi I was concerned about. I knew my friend. He would never allow Hampton to take Naomi without putting up a fight, and as much as I didn’t want to think about it, deep down I knew that Anatoly was likely dead.
I felt rage. I felt sadness. I hated the fact that I hadn’t anticipated this. And now, my carelessness had put my wife back in the hands of the one person I had promised to protect her from, and it had also gotten my best fucking friend killed.
It didn’t take long for Ivan to find the abandoned vehicle surrounded by two police cars. “Keep driving,” I growled, knowing immediately that there was a dead body there.
“Yes, pakhan,” Ivan said softly, driving past the sight. I tamped down the need to punch something, my grief coming out of left field. Anatoly was dead. My best fucking friend, the man I could trust to be at my side throughout it all, was gone.
It was my fucking fault that he had died. Had I not sent him with Naomi today, he would still be alive and well. I would get his body back from the cops, I decided, clenching my jaw. There were a few phone calls that I could make and get Anatoly back on Russian soil, buried quickly and quietly as he would have liked. Anatoly wasn’t one to want much of a fuss about him, and it was the least I could do.
The good news, if there was any, was that I only saw one body on the ground and not two, meaning that my wife and child were still alive. Given what she had told me about Jon Hampton, he was going to gloat about this for a while, likely to try to break me with the fact that he had her in his clutches. I hadn’t given much thought to this news hurting me like this. There had been a time when I had thought about giving her up completely, but after what had happened over the last few hours, I couldn’t.
Yet I still had sent her directly into the arms of the one man that she was terrified of.
In some ways, I was no better than the bastard who’d taken her. I had promised her safety, and I had broken that promise.
I had taken her trust, her love, and thrown it back in her face to the point that she had given up hope. I was every bit the monster she thought me to be, and I hated it. I didn’t want to be her monster.
Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted to be in her eyes.
The ride back to the mansion was quiet and when I arrived, I ignored every person that was waiting for me, striding to the study and yanking the bottle of vodka off the wall. I didn’t even bother with a glass as I took a long draw off the bottle, letting the fiery liquid slide down my throat to burn my insides.
It wasn’t going to be enough to dull any sort of pain I was feeling currently, but it gave me a moment to think about what I was going to do.
There was nothing I could do about Anatoly’s death right now, but the moment I laid my fucking hands on Jon Hampton, I would ensure that he received whatever torture was appropriate for what he had taken from me.
My cell buzzed in my pocket and I yanked it out, seeing my mother’s number flashing on the screen. I could choose to ignore it, but she would no doubt call back.
Fuck. I didn’t have time to talk to her right now.
“Tell me what is going on, Gavril,” she said nearly immediately the moment I answered the call. “I demand it.”
“I’m handling Bratva business, Mother,” I told her. “That is all you need to know.”
She laughed into the phone, but there was no warmth to her voice. “I thought you had taken care of the Krasnaya Bratva, Gavril. Why am I hearing all the way in Russia that they are about to start a war? I thought your plan was foolproof.”
She was goading me. It was the way my mother liked to play, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear that I had fucked up and gotten myself into a bigger mess. “You know nothing is set in stone.”
“Hiding the truth is like burying a body in the snow,” she snapped, her anger radiating through the phone. “So, tell me what is going on. That is an order.”
I sighed, rubbing my forehead with my fingers. “Sveta wasn’t Sveta,” I started out, figuring I might as well tell her everything. She was going to find out anyway if she hadn’t already. “Her name is Naomi.” Even saying her name tightened the knot in my gut, and I knew no amount of alcohol was going to make it go away.