We’d searched underground gang’s communications for hours; we’d sifted through security cameras in the club and watched footage in every which way we could.
Rome couldn’t have just disappeared. Something was fucking wrong.
Cade finally found footage through a phone he’d tapped in the club. It was illegal and not something I’d ever repeat, but I wanted to just about die when he told me he’d gotten something.
I almost did die when I saw the recording. We couldn’t identify the person that had drugged Rome or the men who’d dragged him away.
Yet I saw, just like everyone else who watched, that there was a gunshot to his side, I was sure of it. The camera angle only caught him flinching in the slightest, but the way the man held the gun to Rome’s side, it was obvious to me that he’d been wounded.
Drugged and shot.
If he wasn’t dead, he was near to it.
I called everyone. I sent Maksim out looking. I even drove to Ivan’s to find him gone. When I called him, he acted oblivious. His tone gave him away, though. I hung up and told everyone to focus directly on him. Most of the bratva was still inside the club. Most of them hadn’t acted with Ivan. Some had, though.
Some I would have to punish.
Just hours later, my phone rang again, and when I saw Ivan’s name, chills ran down my spine.
“Meet me where we always do, granddaughter. Let’s get this show on the road.”
I hung up on him and moved fast. I held back the Armanellis because it wasn’t their fight. When I got to the meeting place, most of the bratva had arrived. Everyone had been alerted in some way or another.
I may have earned the bratva’s respect or at least convinced them that I was as tied to the Armanellis as I ever would be, but Ivan had to accept that too.
He didn’t want to.
He stood in the center of the facility with all our eyes on him, gun in hand and a beaten and drugged Rome on the floor next to him.
He motioned me forward. I went fast and willingly. My life didn’t matter, but my baby’s and her father’s life did.
He smiled at me like we were a family, like he loved me, like we could make all this work. “Here is your choice. Choose me. Not him.”
He handed me the gun in my silence.
“You don’t pull the trigger, Katalina. You’ll lose the power. You’ll lose everything. This bratva won’t back a weak woman who’s susceptible to her emotions and her sexual drive.” He gripped the gun in my hand and pointed it directly at Rome. Rome swayed as he sat on the floor, his face marred with bruises, with dried blood, with pieces of flesh missing. They’d destroyed him in the past couple of hours.
They’d left him alive for this moment.
For me to end him. To bleed out the man who’d put me on the pedestal and given me the confidence to rule in the first place.
For me to prove to them all where my loyalties lay.
How do you choose between everything you love, everything you want, and everything you’ve dreamed of?
I’d wanted to think a queen wouldn’t have to. I’d wanted to think we had it all lined up. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t like that. During those moments that felt too good to be true, I’d wondered when it would all go to shit. I’d walked on eggshells, looking over my shoulder for the moment that would destroy it all.
It was this moment.
Surrounded by the men I’d tried so hard to lead, I saw it all for what it really was. “You never truly wanted to give up the bratva.”
“I wanted a union of the bratva and the Armanellis.”
“We had one.”
“We had a partnership, not a blood union. And it was a hollow one, filled with idiocies and unnecessary rules. We don’t follow rules. I’m a lion. Not a sheep. And you made me a fool with your spectacle. You showed them you were the whore we always thought you to be.”
No one was there to save us. No one was there to save me.
Was the bratva a family of love or wrath? I had to find a way to make them tap into it.
“You want me to tell you that you are the lion, Ivan? That you’re the king? Why did you bring me in then?” I looked at him one last time, searching for a weakness and praying I’d found it. “Do you remember the year my mother died? Do you remember how?”
He glanced at me with a look of disdain, but I saw the sliver of fear, the slight chance that he’d underestimated me and I pounced on it.
“Tell us how it happened.”
He glanced around with eyes wild and frantic. “It doesn’t matter! They’re gone.”
“You took your own blood, didn’t you?”
“No!” he screeched. “You did! I didn’t kill Dimitri.”
“Are you sure?” I asked again. Because I knew. I’d been in the meetings with him and his doctor. He’d willingly let me listen in. His long-term memory was fading, and even though they’d increased his medication, no one knew how long it would continue to help. I knew that right then, I’d found a weakness.
“Of course I’m sure.”
I turned the gun in my hand, staring down at it as if contemplating his statement. “I wonder, is anyone else here concerned that we’re taking lessons from a man who’s trying to rid himself of his own family and who doesn’t even have his memory?”
A few of the guys looked at one another. I had their attention.
Ivan shook his head. He even chuckled to himself before he said, “You can’t sway the bratva against me, Katalina.”
“Against you? I’ve been ruling. You’ve been retired. Remember? You asked for that. And hasn’t everyone got a bigger cut? Haven’t your families been protected?” I turned to one of the bratva’s members that I knew had been at the club the whole night. “Akim, when was the last kill? Didn’t the Armanellis just save your son’s life and give him money?”
He glanced between Ivan and me. He sighed and shrugged. “Yes.” Quick Russian flew from his lips when one man asked for clarification. Suddenly, that man’s gaze on me changed. The look of disdain grew to one of love.
“And Nico, we just bought your mama a house, no?”
He nodded. “She’s happy.”
“And she’s safe. Safe because of contracts I put in place that are legally binding between some of the biggest players in this country.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ivan lunged at me but I swung my weapon his way so fast, a few of the bratva gasped.
“Don’t come for me unless I ask for you, old man. I’m not in the mood.”
“You threaten me?” He seethed, his lips curling up over his teeth like he wanted to bare them in warning. “You think a gun will protect you from us?”
“From us? You mean from them? The bratva?” I looked at each of the men sitting in their seats. I glanced at Rome and wondered how much time I really had to play this game. He’d fallen onto the cement, blood seeping slowly from his clothes. I didn’t know where from. I didn’t know how long the wounds had been open, and I didn’t know if there was irreparable damage.
“This gun won’t save me.” I suddenly felt numb to it all.
Rome’s breathing was labored. If the hospital couldn’t get to him in time, if they couldn’t heal him, bring back the monster I loved, if I couldn’t share my life with him, then what was it all for anyway?
“Nothing will save me if he’s gone. I’ll burn this whole city down. Do you understand? The father of my child is bleeding out. I won’t stand for that. I’m this empire. I built it through blood, sweat, and tears. Off my own back and on my back, I worked my ass off. I’m the queen of the bratva now. Me. This is power and I’ll reinforce it now in the way you all want to see it done. With fury if I have to. We save my family, my partner, my baby’s father because family is family. The bratva is the bratva. You don’t agree, then you let me crumble and bleed out with him.”
Ivan’s eyes flared like he wasn’t sure of my words.
It didn’t matter. I was sure.
I turned to them all and held up my gun. “If Ivan and you all want me gone, you want to fend for yourself in the dismal place you’ve been all these years, then do it.” I set the gun down on the cement floor. The metal clicked loudly as I let the handle fall. “I won’t fight you. I won’t even beg you. Take my life, shoot me down.”
Ivan eyed me curiously and then his smile came slowly. It crept across his face, centimeter by centimeter, like a bull finally seeing his target and knowing he’d won. “You tried, little girl. You tried. A woman can never rule, though. Had you birthed a boy from real Armanelli blood, maybe your family would have stood a chance.”
“Maybe.” The first shot rang out. I didn’t flinch. “Maybe, but I would have had to sell my pussy for a seat when all I needed to do was rule with it instead. Love conquers evil, you fool.”
Another shot rang out.
His eyes bulged when it registered.
I wasn’t the one bleeding.
He was.
“No…” he whispered, grabbing at his first bullet wound.
I caught him as he was about to fall to his knees and whispered in his ear. “Respect the ones you love and they’ll fight for you, bleed for you, kill for you. You never lived by the Armanellis’ oath but you should have because now even though you bleed, I won’t bleed with you.”
I dropped him to the floor and jumped over him to run to Rome. I yelled out for help to get him in a car.
Maksim felt for a pulse. “Katalina, I don’t feel—”
“Get him to the hospital. Now.” I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t give in.
Not now.
Not when we’d been so close.
That little feeling that something was going to go wrong was roaring now. I wouldn’t let it take over though. Rome had put enough confidence in me to keep me from falling down now. He’d held me up when no one else had. He’d believed when there was no belief left.
I’d do the same for him.
