She watched him disappear through the doors. A not-insignificant part of her wanted to stay right there in the car. She could tell herself she had no choice because she needed Plan B, and then she’d have no choice but to go back to the cabin, and then she’d have no choice to keep fucking Dante and hiding from all the problems waiting for her.
That was the thing, though.
She did have a choice.
She couldn’t let her selfishness hurt any of the people she cared about. It still took more determination than she could have anticipated to pull the door handle and step out of the SUV. Late-afternoon heat made her cardigan almost unnecessary, and she looked around, temporarily disorientated. Rose’s gaze landed on an old Latina lady pushing her cart, and she hurried over. “Ma’am? Do you have a phone I could use?”
The woman flinched but then peered at Rose. “I haven’t seen you around here before. You in trouble?”
No reason to pussyfoot around it. “Yes.”
“Don’t steal my phone.” She dug it out of a truly massive purse and handed it over.
Rose stared at it for a long moment. It was one of those flip phones that had been designed to look like the old ones from the mid-2000s. She held her breath and dialed her sister. Not Lorelei this time. She needed Anya.
“Romanov here,” her sister barked into the phone.
“Anya?”
Instantly, her sister went on high alert. “Rose? Is that you? Where are you?”
“I’m at a Walgreens in…” She held the phone away from her face and looked at the old woman, who was watching her suspiciously. “Ma’am, what town is this?”
“Cedarville.”
The name meant nothing to her, but when she repeated it to her sister, Anya cursed. “They were just through there yesterday. Hold on.” She didn’t bother to hold the phone away as she started issuing commands. “Call Uncle Jude. She’s in Cedarville.” A few seconds later, she came back on the line. “Can you stay where you are for fifteen minutes or so? Grady is on his way.”
She had a dozen questions about what their extended family was doing in the area, but it would have to wait. “No, I can’t stay here that long, and I have to give this phone back.”
“Fuck. Okay.” Her voice went muffled. “Give me your fucking phone, Vasily. No, I don’t have time to argue. Give it here.” A pause. “Okay, if you go to the street the Walgreens is on and head north, there’s a bunch of shops and shit. Go to secondhand motherhood store or whatever the fuck Moms and Me is and hide there. Grady will be there in ten.”
“Okay.” She ignored the guilt threatening to swallow her whole and hung up. This was the only way. Honestly, this was preferable, because if she set things to right, maybe she could divert her family from a quest for vengeance and calling for Dante’s head. He wouldn’t thank her for it, but it was better than the alternative.
“Thanks for letting me borrow the phone.” She looked up and froze. The old woman wasn’t looking at Rose. She was looking at something over Rose’s left shoulder, her expression terrified. Fuck, Dante must be back already. She handed the phone back and started to turn. “I can explain…”
Rose trailed off.
It wasn’t Dante standing behind her, violence written across his face. It was a man she’d only seen in pictures, one of the people her father had warned her about as active threats to her existence. He was a lean, dark-haired guy with a remarkably normal face considering his reputation. Just handsome enough to be utterly forgettable, at least until a person looked into his empty gray eyes. She numbly passed the phone back to the old woman and stood there as she rushed into her car and practically left half her tires on the pavement peeling out of the parking spot.
I thought he’d be taller. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep the words inside.
“You know who I am.” His thick Russian accent should have felt familiar, but she couldn’t see past the threat.
“Da,” she answered in Russian. “I know who you are. The Mad Wolf.” The one their Russian extended family sent when the situation had gotten messy and they wanted to make an example of the offending parties.
Casimir Romanov.
Chapter 16
Dante made it in and out of the store in record time, the small box with the Plan B tucked safely into his jacket. The few people in the aisles had all seemed remarkably normal, but that didn’t stop him from keeping his head on a swivel. His odds of finding Rose still sitting in the SUV were about fifty-fifty. She seemed to take the stakes seriously, and she would want these damn pills, but she was also resourceful and loyal to her family. She might put herself at risk to try to escape.
He didn’t run back to the vehicle, but he moved quickly, scanning the parking lot all the while. Dante was a few cars away when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Too fast to be a normal shopper. He pivoted and headed in that direction, following the instincts that had kept him alive more than once.
Then he heard the quiet Russian cursing and started to run.
He veered around a box truck in time to see a dark-haired white man grab Rose by the throat and slam her into the ground. Dante crossed the space between them in the blink of an eye, moving so fast, he barely registered the decision to take the first step before he had his gun pressed to the stranger’s temple. “Release my woman. Now.”
“Ah, the Italian.” The accent confirmed what Dante already expected. This was one of the Russian Romanovs. The man didn’t look at him. He just kept gripping Rose’s throat like he wanted nothing more than to crush her. He could do it. He could easily do it before Dante pulled the trigger.
True fear licked through Dante, but he forced any trace of it out of his voice. “Take your hand off her neck. Next time I ask, it won’t be so nicely.”
The Russian seemed to consider that for a moment and slowly eased his hands off Rose. He didn’t move from where he had her pinned to the ground. She coughed, the sound raspy and painful. The sensitive skin of her neck was bright red; it would bruise later. But she was alive, and that was all that mattered. Rose didn’t rub her throat. She just glared at both of them. “Dante Verducci, meet Casimir Romanov.”
Fury washed through him, overwhelming his fear. He’d heard of the Mad Wolf. Who hadn’t? He was the fucking boogeyman of the underworld, the man mafia parents scared their children with before putting them to bed. He was the reason Lorenzo had never tried to fully remove Kirill Romanov and his family from LA. The Russian Romanovs might be distant cousins, but they took that sort of thing seriously. The last family that tried had been wiped off the face of the earth.
The fact he was here, going after Rose instead of Dante, was a bad sign. It meant her suspicions were correct and Jovan’s people were only too happy to use this as an excuse to remove the thorn in their side and teach Dmitri Romanov a lesson in one blow. “I don’t give a fuck who he is. I’m going to take great joy in skinning him alive before I crush his throat like he tried to do to you.”
Casimir gave a dry chuckle that sounded like someone had already done damage to his vocal cords. “You will try.” He shrugged, apparently unconcerned about the threat of Dante blowing his brains out. “You will fail.”