Not my brother’s—never his after what he’s done and all the threats he’s made against Svetlana. I used to think I knew him, that there was good in him, but not any longer.
But am I on the Andrianis’ side? Everything was once black-and-white, but now it’s gray. I don’t know where I belong or who to trust.
“Yours,” I tell Misha anyway.
It’s the answer he wants. The only answer I can afford to give him.
“We are blood. Never forget that.” He flicks the blade open, closed, then open again, before running his thumb along it. “Because if you do…”
He doesn’t have to finish his sentence. I already know what he’s saying. He’ll kill me.
“What are you going to do?” I ask Misha.
“It’s not what I’m going to do,sestrenka. It’s whatyou’regoing to do.” He flings the knife, and it whips through the air, landing in the wall behind me. “You’re going to kill Scorpion Andriani.”
Chapter 21
SCORPION
“Where are we at on the device?” Priest asks as we’re all huddled up in the underground offices of the casino we run together as part of our aboveboard operations. Like everything we own and run, it’s a front for the rest of what we do. But it pays to look official.
He’s wondering about the IED we’re going to plant in Sidorov’s sex club.
The plan is to make sure no one is in it, but now that I know Katya is in close contact with her brother—close enough to seek him out for a meeting and spend over an hour at his penthouse—I’m worried she might get caught in the crosshairs. That’s not the only thing I’m worrying about, though.
I’m also worried she’s in deeper with Sidorov than I thought.
“It should be ready in another day,” Lucky reports. “I have my guys working on some prototypes out at the farm. The first two they rigged up didn’t explode. The next three exploded before they detonated them remotely.”
The farm is a massive equine property we recently acquired in the western part of the state. Currently, there are no horses stalled there, and it’s far enough from the nearest town thatexplosions won’t draw any curious onlookers or questions from the cops. It’s the perfect place in many ways, and we were damn lucky to be able to get our hands on it.
Saint nods. “We don’t want to rush it. We need to get this right so it detonates precisely, or we’ll get other people in the crossfire.”
People like Katya.
My gut twists again. What the fuck was she doing there?
“Something wrong?” Priest asks me, obviously reading my expression.
Damn. My brother has always been far too perceptive. He sees what most others never do, and he can smell a lie a mile away.
“Katya visited Sidorov this afternoon,” I admit, knowing it sounds bad.
Priest frowns. “Without your knowledge?”
“Antonio cleared it with me, so she knows I’m aware of her visit. It’s no secret. But she didn’t mention she was headed there when I left this morning.”
“Has she been in communication with her brothers?” Saint asks.
That’s the other part that’s been needling me. “As far as I’m aware, she hasn’t. She’s closer to Dmitri than she is to Mikhail, but I don’t think she’s tight with either of them.”
Priest scrubs a hand over his jaw, looking unhappy. “You don’tthinkshe is?”
“Look, you’re the one who made me marry her,” I snap. “Maybe you should have worried about her connections to the enemy before you forced us into an arranged marriage.”
He sighs. “We’ve been over this. You know damn well why you had to marry Ekaterina Sidorova. You took her hostage, and her brother retaliated by taking Isla, Rocco, and the others.”
“I fucking know the reason. But let’s not forget about the fact that the Bratva bombed our goddamn restaurant.”