Page 88 of City of Salvation
Which—good for her.
Good for them, too. Having someone to pass your girlover to when they were driving you fucking mad? The dream, because women were fucking headaches.
Like when you have the best sex of your fucking life after months of tension and falling for them, only to have them run across the country from you and send a fucking text invite to meet them at a club.
A hand clamped onto my shoulder. I grabbed it and twisted out of habit.
“Hey, dude, calm down. I was going to point out that all your inside thoughts were making their way to the outside,” the guy who wore a katana said.
Kenji, I thought his name was. I’d decided I liked him the moment I saw him with the weapon strapped to his back andfuck youon his knuckles.
“Sorry,” I muttered, releasing the hold. I’d been tense from the moment Scar’s voice had filtered through the other end of the line.
“Don’t worry about it. Better than cutting off my hand. That’s what tends to happen to me,” he said.
I stared at him for a beat, seeing if he was fucking with me. But the blank look he gave me indicated he was dead serious.
I smiled from ear to ear.
“Do you have an extra one of those for me to use tonight?” I asked, ignoring how Gunner shook his head next to me, muttering his objections.
“Dumb and dumber,” shouted the third guy in the quadruple, the one with the Irish accent. He was Scar’s actual husband, from my understanding—Caleb. “Let’s focus. And neither of you is bringing one of those tonight. Pissing off Andrei isn’t going to help us. I think that fucker is about as unhinged as you two are. Maybe even more.” He mumbled the last part and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
That was who Nikki chose to run to? An unhinged mother fucker in New York? The realization was another blow to my heart.
Unaware of my internal heartbreak, Kenji rolled his eyes before mouthing to me that he had one for me too.
Maybe tonight wouldn’t completely blow after all. I could cheer myself up with violence.
“Okay, so you’re already all caught up on who Nikki Adams really is. Natasha Petrov, daughter of Aleksandr Petrov. This,” Scar passed out a glossy photo of a man who appeared to be about ten years my senior, “is her ex-husband. Or current husband? Really, who knows, since the whole thing was a Bratva sham. Criminals have a weird thing about taking wives without their permission.” She shot a look at Caleb, who only looked back with heated eyes.
I had a feeling that if we weren’t in the room, he’d be fucking her.
Ryan took over as the two continued to eye-fuck one another. “I’d always known she was on the run from something, but I let people’s shit be their shit. So, I never asked for specifics, but she did tell me about him when we were captured together.” Gunner pulled her into his side, kissing the top of her head as a silent show of support. “When we were being held, she said she’d found a note, and that’s what had led to Mario grabbing her. She made me swear not to mention anything. Said it was all probably nothing.”
“But then another note showed up,” I chimed in, revealing what Nikki had shared with me the night I’d tied her to my bed.
“What did it say?” Scar asked.
“Her birth name,” Ryan said, which was news to me. Good to know Nikki had at least told Ryan that much. She’d trusted each of us with different pieces of herself, sohopefully now, we could put them together and get to the bottom of how the fuck to help her—and to get her back.
“She received the note while dancing at Lotería. It’s why she went after Jardani. Yuri’s been fucking with her. Of course, I didn’t know any of that since she wasn’t disclosingwhowas after her,” I said. My mind was whirling about how this all connected. “Now it makes sense why the Reapers would risk a war. They figured they’d have a big bad Boogeyman backing them if they delivered his wife,” I said with a sardonic laugh.
“Okay, great, we know all this shit. But why is she in New York now, and with this Andrei fucker?” Gunner said, asking the million-dollar question.
Ryan’s eyes flicked nervously to Scar, her information specialist. Scarletta’s face was perfectly blank, a skill she’d probably honed for years.
“Andrei is high up in the Ruska Roma. They are rivals of the St. Petersburg Bratva,” Niko answered for her as she passed another piece of what looked like a newspaper across the way. The article wasn’t in English, but the photos told the story. “A few years ago, there was a Bratva wedding. It was a big deal. Everyone was to attend, which was how I ended up there. Yuri, the leader of the Bratva as a whole, was to be wed to his second-in-command’s daughter, Natasha Petrov. Aleksandr Petrov would gain a sizable chunk of money and territory to control. As we told you when we called, shit went sideways at the wedding. The Ruska Roma has always opposed the Bratva. They are mortal enemies, essentially. Ruska Roma’s men were also in attendance, hidden in the cathedral before the ceremony,” Niko said as my eyes scanned the photos, my mind crafting images of Nikki there amongst the barrage of bullets.
“Did the Ruska Roma people kidnap her?” That would make sense—and then she’d somehow escaped them and hid out in the States. But then why the fuck would she run back to them?
Niko shrugged a massive shoulder. “Don’t think so. She ran into me that day, and I let her go.” All eyes were on him when he mentioned that bit of information. “I didn’t think she spoke English since she didn’t actually say anything to me, but she had this look of fear on her face and reminded me of…” his voice trailed off as he made eye contact with Caleb over Scar’s head. “I knew how women get treated in criminal organizations and assumed she may not have actually wanted the marriage.” He shrugged a massive shoulder. “But no one knows what happened to her. Or how they gained access. The location wasn’t disclosed. Cars were sent to pick up attendees, and all of our phones, watches, essentially anything electronic, were taken from us before getting into the vehicles.”
Frustration flowed through me. Did this Andrei fucker find her too? Maybe he’d threatened her, and that’s why she was here.
“If I happen to impale someone at his club, what kind of trouble are we talking?” I asked.
“You’re not impaling anyone,” Caleb bit out. I wondered if the grumpy fucker was always like that.