I gasp and stare up at him in utter shock and revulsion. “You wouldn’t.”
“Yes.” He stands and straightens his crisp, white shirt. “I would. Do not test me again, Laryssa.”
The knock on the door is sharp, startling us both.
“I know you’re in there, Pavlov,” a man yells through the door, and all the blood drains from my father’s face.
“How?” he whispers and then turns to me. “Hide me, daughter.”
I shake my head, only enraging him further. He raises a hand, but before he can hit me for a second time, someone busts the door open, and three men walk inside.
“Did you think you could steal from us and get away with it?” The biggest one reaches for my father and pushes him against the wall.
This is it. This is my chance.
I scurry into my little bedroom and grab the bag I always keep packed—always ready to run if the opportunity arises.
I won’t get another chance like this.
“No, I wouldn’t steal from you. I just had to earn the money to repay you.”
Another man punches him in the face as I slip out the front door and make a run for it.
My heart hammers in my chest. I can’t hear the street noises through the rush of blood in my head and over my loud, panting breaths.
I have exactly four hundred and thirty-two dollars, some clothing, and my mother’s wedding ring.
And a new freedom.
Because I’m never going back to live with a man who makes me do the things my father does.
I’ll die first.
Chapter 1
~Shane~
“Take the shot.”
The voice is calm in my ear, coming from several thousand miles away in a secure office at the White House.
I’m lying on my stomach on a rooftop, my sights trained on the target, but people keep walking in front of him.
“Not clear,” I whisper and swear when the target walks into another room.
“It’s taken three weeks for you to find him,” the president reminds me. “Take him out. Now.”
Yeah, yeah. I don’t need her to remind me how long I searched for this asshole. And as soon as he moves a little to the left…
I squeeze the trigger, and less than a second later, the target falls.
“Mission accomplished,” I say and move quickly to the stairwell that leads to a waiting car below.
In less than three minutes, I’m safely away from the scene and headed to the airport.
“Good work,” she says into my ear. “Now, get yourself home. The plane’s waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Madame President.”
I nod to the driver, my partner for this operation, and he steps on the gas to get us to the airfield quicker.
Suddenly, the front window explodes, a bullet hitting the driver squarely in the forehead, killing him instantly.
“Miller’s down,” I say with a calm I don’t feel as I reach over to take the wheel. I maneuver him out of the seat and manage to step on the gas, winding my way through the foreign city.
If I’m caught, I’ll also be killed.
And I’m not ready to die today.
Only one car is following me, and it doesn’t take me long to lose them.
“Your transport has been compromised,” I hear in my ear. “The crew was killed. I need you to disappear for a couple of days. Lay low and await further instructions.”
“Abandoning me in a foreign country wasn’t part of the deal.”
“We’re not abandoning you,” the president replies. “We’ll get you out.”
“See that you do.”
“We expected you home a few days ago,” my brother, Carmine, says as I walk into his office at our family’s base of operations in Seattle, Washington. Rocco, my other brother, stares out the window but turns to look at me as I move farther in.
“Yeah, well, I got hung up.”
I won’t mention that I spent two nights curled up under a box, waiting for the US government to get me out of enemy territory after I assassinated one of the bad guys.
My brothers aren’t allowed to know any of that.
It’s better this way. The less they know, the less likely they could be killed for having the knowledge.
“Have I missed anything important?”
“Wedding plans,” Rocco volunteers and then smiles at our brother sweetly. “I mean, it was a rough few days there, deciding between lilacs and freesia. And then there was the matter of the cake flavors.”
My gaze bounces between Rocco—who’s clearly getting a huge kick out of razzing our big brother—and Carmine, whose mouth firms into a hard line.
“He’s the groom,” I say simply and cross to the small kitchenette to see what kind of food we have stashed away in the fridge.
I’m fucking starving.
“I never pegged Nadia as the type to get all swept up in the fancy wedding deal,” Rocco says thoughtfully.
“She’s a woman,” Carmine reminds him. “And big weddings are the mafia’s way. You know that.”
“So, which was it? Lilacs or freesia?” I ask as I return to the desk with a half-eaten sub sandwich and a bag of nacho chips.
“Both,” Carmine says with a shrug. “She couldn’t decide, so we went with both.”
“As one does,” Rocco says with a wink.
The door bursts open, and the bride-to-be herself hurries inside, her eyes wide with an emotion I rarely see on my brother’s fiancée.
Fear.
“Carmine,” she says as she hurries over. “I have Annika on the phone. She needs our help.”
“Put her on speaker,” I say, and we all lean in to hear what Nadia’s cousin has to say.
“Okay, they can all hear you,” Nadia says as she plants her hands on the desk. “Tell them exactly what you just told me.”
“It’s Ivie,” Annika says, immediately getting my full and undivided attention. “She’s been taken.”
“Taken by who?” I ask, keeping my voice calm but feeling my blood erupt through my veins with a surge of new adrenaline.
“I don’t know,” she says and sniffs. “I got a call from her, but I was about to get in the shower, so I let it go to voicemail.”
She sniffs again, frustrating me.
Just fucking tell me.
“I remembered it the next morning, this morning, so I listened to it. Oh my God, you guys. She’s been taken. She was trying to get me to pick up, to listen, and help her. And I failed her horribly. I need you. Is Shane there?”
“I’m here.”
“Thank God. Please, we need your help.”
We all look at Rocco, who’s already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“The plane will be ready when we get to the airport.”
“I thought Annika was going to tell me that this was all connected to Rich,” Nadia says, shaking her head as the plane lands in Denver. “That there was more information or that someone else was dead. Something. I didn’t expect her to tell me that Ivie had been taken.”
I swallow hard, fear a very real and icy demon settling in my stomach.