I pace away from Katya, not wanting her to hear what’s going on, and scrub a hand over my jaw. “Is it the kind of problem I’massuming?” I ask Priest quietly, needing to know what we’re up against.
“It’s worse,” he bites out. “Meet me here in ten minutes. We’re going to have to head back into the city.”
“What about Katya?”
“The women should stay here for now. I’ll send some guards down to the guesthouse. If she wants, she can move to the main house with Luna and Isla for company. There’s plenty of room. It’s your call.”
From the tenseness in my brother’s voice and the fact that he’s planning to leave his wife behind, I know something bad went down. “I’ll bring her along with me,” I decide instantly.
I’m not chancing leaving my flight-risk wife alone for what could be one or more days. She’ll be better off at the main house with Luna and Isla.
“See you in ten,” Priest clips.
I hang up the phone and turn to the wife I didn’t want. “Pack up your overnight bag. We’re headed to the main house.”
Her mouth opens like she’s about to argue, but I cut her off. “Now, or I’ll cuff you to a bed while I’m gone.”
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“To the city. I have a few errands to run. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“But—”
“Just fucking do it, Katya,” I interrupt.
She must realize I’m deadly serious, because she stares at me for a beat and then nods. “I’ll go get my things.”
Chapter 15
SCORPION
Rocco zips expertly through the countryside, taking Priest, Saint, Lucky, and me back into the belly of the beast. It’s rare that all four of us are in the same car at once. But we stayed overnight at Priest’s place for the wedding, and this is the most efficient way to get us to where we need to be—the city where shit has apparently hit the fan over the last few hours.
Priest is on the phone with one of our capos. Lucky is on his laptop, pulling up camera feeds. Saint is firing off text orders on a burner. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what went down.
The last twenty-four hours have been like whiplash on speed. I’ve gotten married to a Bratva princess I was keeping as a prisoner a week ago. I spent the morning trying to distract myself from how fuckable she is before chasing her down the driveway and bandaging her feet, for fuck’s sake.
With a resigned sigh, Priest ends the call. The lines of worry in his face tell me everything I need to know. “The cartel lost three, and they’re not fucking happy about it. The coke is gone, along with all the money. Then there’s our soldiers…”
“They’re all dead?” I press, just to confirm.
“Every fucking one of them.”
“Cazzo.” I pass a hand over my jaw, registering that information. “Four of our crew dead?”
That’s a hell of a lot of guys to go down at one time.
“Five,” Saint says, looking up from his burner. “Pierluca’s oldest boy was there too.”
“He’s still in fucking high school,” Priest says.
Pierluca Notaro has been a capo since our father’s days as don. He’s trustworthy and solid, a family guy with six kids and a wife who’s the quintessential PTO mom. It’s going to break them when they find out their eldest child was killed last night.
“Ricky was a good kid,” I mutter, my throat thick.
Death is a way of life in our world. But it’s not every day that eight people get clipped, including a seventeen-year-old whose life was just beginning.
“This is war,” Priest says with barely leashed rage. “We’re going to hunt down the bastards responsible for this and make them pay.”