Sidorov chuckles. “She is a wild one. Perhaps you’ll be man enough to handle her, Andriani.” His accent is heavy, tinged from the years he’s spent in exile in Russia. He gives me a disdainful once-over. “But then again, perhaps not. We shall see,da?”
Everything in me goes cold as I turn to Priest.
“What the fuck is he talking about?”
My eldest brother doesn’t answer me. Just stares back at me with an unforgiving expression, revealing nothing. I have a sick feeling I’m not going to like whatever fucking bargain it was that he had to strike with Sidorov to get Saint’s woman back safely.
Sidorov rattles off something to Ekaterina in Russian, his voice like the lash of a whip. She goes pale, the fight seeping out of her, eyes wide.
What the hell did he just say? And why should I care?
Easy. I don’t. I stare back at Ekaterina, the woman I’ve been holding hostage for two days, and I feel what I’ve been trained to feel, what this life has taught me to feel. Fuckingnothing. Whatever happens to her doesn’t have anything to do with me. Even if Sidorov decides to kill her. That’s his prerogative. She’s his problem, not mine.
“I believe you owe us four people,” Priest addresses Sidorov then, his voice hard.
Pakhan nods and instructs one of his guards to bring out their “guests.” The door to the meeting room opens, and Isla and three of our guys, including Priest’s driver Rocco, come pouring through it. Holy shit, no wonder they were emphatic about my returning Ekaterina to Sidorov. They had three of our best men along with Isla, and from the looks of them, they must have put up one hell of a fight to defend themselves.
Saint is out of his chair in a blink, rushing across the empty space and hauling Isla into his arms.
“Alessio,” she chokes out, clinging to him.
Saint is worrying over her, demanding to know if she’s hurt. I look away from their reunion, uncomfortable with the outpouring of emotion. It’s so fucking unlike Saint. He must be gone over this woman. I meet Rocco’s gaze. He looks like shit, pale and ashen, but he’s standing on his own two feet. I give him a nod, relieved it’s not worse. I feel Ekaterina’s eyes on me, watching, shooting daggers, but I don’t look in her direction.
“I’m fine.” Isla is reassuring Saint, dragging my attention back to her. “But Rocco got shot. And Santino and Giovanni got into it with the men who took us. I think they all need to get checked out.”
She has to tell him more than once before he’s willing to accept it.
“We done here?” Saint asks Priest, his voice tense and edged with tightly leashed fury.
I glance back at our eldest brother. Priest is in the middle of signing a contract of some sort.
“All we need is Sidorov’s signature,” he says.
Sidorov is still looking faintly amused by all this.
He takes up a pen and scribbles out his signature on both copies of the document. “It’s done.”
Priest picks up his copy of the agreement. “We’ll be in touch to hammer out the specifics—the when and the where of the wedding.”
Wedding? Jesus fuck, that’s not what I expected. Apparently one of the sorry bastards in our ranks is going to be sacrificed to matrimonial bliss with a Bratva princess. Marriages have been used to ease tensions in the past, but I didn’t see this as Priest’s play to get us out of a war with the Russians.
“Agreed,” Sidorov purrs smugly, extending his hand. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Andriani.”
Priest takes it, shaking with him. “I wish I could say the same.”
“The wedding?” I repeat, not liking the idea of aligning ourselves with these shifty bastards through blood ties. “Who’s getting married?”
My older brother looks straight at me. My older brother whom I love, whose wedding I just stood up in not long ago, the don I would lay down my life for. And what I see in his eyes is fucking chilling.
“You are,” he says to me.
“The fuck? I’m not getting married.” I look around the room, feeling like I just walked into an ambush and I’m about to go down in a hail of bullets. “No fucking way.”
Something dawns on me. My eyes go to Ekaterina. The answer is there, staring back at me.
I jab a thumb in her direction. “Her? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I’m not marrying that spawn of Satan.”
“You have some time to acquaint yourself with the idea,” Sidorov says, sounding pleased with himself.