“Her apartment is on the third floor, and her curtains were closed, but I called Nikolay and had him run a background check. It’s a very basic one since I wanted the results quickly, but I learned that she has a three-year-old daughter named Alexis. She’s also thirty years old and works as an officer manager at an advertising company. She got that job a couple of weeks after her old boss was murdered. Nikolay can dig deeper if you want.”
Three years old. Her daughter was a helpless child, and those fuckers threatened to take her away if Sarah didn’t lie on the stand. The protectiveness I felt toward Sarah suddenly extended to this little girl I’d never even met, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
Who the hell was I? I’d never been like this, never been a man who cared about other people without already having a close personal connection. One night in bed didn’t count.
But I cared about Sarah. I even cared about her little girl.
“I got the license plate of the van,” Maxim said. “I’ll contact one of our men in the NYPD and have them run it down.”
I nodded. “Go ahead, but we already know. It’s the Italians. Baldoni is enough of a bastard to threaten a woman and her child, especially if it puts me behind bars.”
I knew the Don hoped that getting me out of the way would weaken the Bratva enough that he could move into our territory without much resistance. He’d be wrong about that. My men were well-trained, and he wouldn’t like it, but as my brother, Maxim would be obligated to take over if I got locked up. He’d make sure the damn Italians couldn’t move into Brooklyn.
But I was tired of being reactive. I wanted to get ahead of this mess. I had to admit that the Italians got one over on me with the current charges—I didn’t see it coming. But I was done letting them direct the narrative.
And threatening Sarah and her child changed everything.
If they were trying to force her into perjury, they weren’t just endangering her life—they were setting her up to destroy it themselves. Prison was a very real possibility for her, no matter how this trial ended. I needed to make sure she was safe.
I stopped questioning why I felt this way. I just needed to act.
Because Baldoni wasn’t just ruthless enough to threatenher. He was a callous bastard, and I was sure he’d follow through on the threat, whether she complied or not. I was sure he’d eliminate her just to tie up a loose end.
“Go home,” I told Maxim. “Call me when you get the license plate information from the police.”
He drained his glass of whiskey before leaving. Once he was out the door, I texted Nikolay. If he did a basic background check on Sarah, he’d have her address. I told him to send it to me and left the house as soon as it came through, plugging it into my GPS.
***
Her apartment building was in a decent neighborhood, not the kind of place where people were afraid to walk down the street or saw drug deals happening on the corners. My kind of business didn’t touch a neighborhood like this.
But the building wasn’t exactly secure. There was no doorman, and I didn’t see any security cameras. The entrance was locked, but one of the residents was coming out just as I approached. He held the door open for me without a second of hesitation.
Idiot.
I took the elevator up to the third floor. It was late, and all of the apartments I passed were quiet. That made my knocking on the door of Sarah’s apartment seem jarringly loud.
The door across the hall opened before Sarah’s, and I turned around to meet the annoyed glare of an old man with a cane. One look at my stoic face, and his eyes widened with apprehension. He stepped back inside his own apartment and closed the door, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was calling the police.
Good thing the NYPD had bigger issues to deal with on an average Friday night than a man knocking on someone’s door.
Finally, Sarah’s door opened, and I turned back just in time to see shock and fear chase each other across her face. Her breath hitched, and I could see tension in the cords of her neck, her shoulders bunching up as color drained from her face. She was holding the door open only enough to look out at me, clearly not about to invite me inside.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, a tremor in her voice that I could tell she was trying to hide.
My brave girl.
No.Notmygirl. I might have been inexplicably drawn to her, but that didn’t make her mine. She was scared of me and would never consent to being mine.
But that was too bad.
“Pack your bags,” I said, pushing her door open enough to make my way inside. She let out a squeak of surprise and outrage.
“Pack my bags? What are you talking about? You can’t just come in here. This is my home, and I don’t want you here!”
There was that fire again. I almost smiled, but I didn’t think that would help things when she was so upset already.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re both going to leave soon. You’re coming with me.”