But what happens when there’s no way out?
* * *
I took Ilya into a room in the house and cleaned him up.
When this is over he’ll go back to L.A and then on to Russia to be buried with his family. His wife and two daughters.
That was all he wanted and I will do that for him.
I sit in the chair in the room looking at his body on the table covered with a sheet.
I’ve been in here for awhile thinking.
Thinking about how I’m going to get Aleksei and Olivia and fix everything.
At this point I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to do anything with the vast control Jude has over Eric.
I feel a fucking failure. From where I’m sitting staring at the cold dead body of a man who was like a father to me I sure as fuck look like a failure.
Today I was right there in the same vicinity as Aleksei and couldn’t do shit to get him back. I had to watch him go away from my sight like when last I saw him, and I only turned my back because I wanted a chance to get him without dying.
There wasn’t a fucking thing I could have done.
In the same breath Olivia was taken. I thought she would be safe nut it was me and foolish selfishness that brought her along with that damn mantra believing the only person who could take care of her is me.
Jude is going to hurt her. I could hear it in his voice as he spoke. He took pleasure in it the same way he did with Gabriella. She told me when we met someone has raped her when she was fifteen, but she would never tell me who did it.
I tried so hard to get her to tell me but she never wanted to divulge the information. Now I know why. When we met Jude and his father had just started to climb the ladder in Russia. She was scared and scared of what I might do to get myself in trouble.
Everything is a fucking mess and to add salt to my open wounds there’s been no word from Alejandro on Maksim and I wish no news meant good news. But dare I hope.
I’m here now without the two people I was supposed to trust and stopped myself from doing so because I was almost sure one of them had betrayed me.
I was almost certain I’d stumble across something that would prove my suspicions right, and worse of all I’d recruited them to their roles so I could watch them. all the while doing my best to find out who delivered Judas’ kiss of betrayal to me.
But it was me who was betraying them both by doing all that I did and in the way I did it.
Both Maksim and Illy never deserved that, and the shit thing about it was they knew what I was doing all along.
But such is the way of the Voirik. There’s a reason why we’re one of the most fearsome in the Bratva. We don’t just live and die by the brute strength of our bodies. It’s our minds too.
That was the kind of man Ilya was, and the kind of man Maksim is.
The door creaks open and I swivel head toward it.
Dominic comes in with a tentative expression on his face.
He’s been still trying to get his device to work, and Massimo has been regrouping with the men we have left.
Even with both, I don’t think we don’t have enough to deal with the set up Jude has with Eric at the helm. We’d have to wait for more men to come on all fronts then maybe we’d stand a chance.
“Hey. I thought I’d come and check on you. I’m working with Gibbs’ team to see we can hook into the security system. They’re seeing what they can do on their end. I thought maybe you could use a break from being in here.”
I nod because he’s right and even if I don’t want to leave Ilya, I should.
I have to think of the next moves, the next step. I can’t allow myself to fall into the shit of nothingness that awaits failures.
I can’t give up.