Mafia Princess by Kennedy Slope

Chapter Twenty-Six

Iwas scared in a way that I hadn’t been since I was a kid, and I started to understand the nature of the family I had been born into.

“She’s probably just somewhere with her nose buried in a book,” Marco said to me. I had arrived at the school as quickly as I could, but sometimes living in Manhattan kept me from being able to get around as efficiently as I wanted to.

“She wouldn’t just disappear,” I told him. Something in my gut was telling me that Sasha was in danger.

“You’ve never studied with her,” Marco muttered. I knew that he was trying to get me to feel better, but it wasn’t working. When one of the men I had tailed Sasha, picked up her phone, I knew that she was in danger.

“Fuck,” I yelled, slamming my hands down on the steering wheel.

Marco cast a side glance at me, but he thankfully, didn’t say anything. It was almost ten o’clock at night, and Sasha shouldn't have even been at the library to begin with. I’d allowed my desire for revenge to put one of the only two people I cared about in danger.

“We’ll find her.” I ignored Marcus’ words as I pulled open the door and stepped out to meet Sasha’s guards. I wanted to put a bullet between their heads, and from the way they were fidgeting, I was sure that they knew they were screwed.

“You both better start talking before I make what happened to Lorenzo look like child’s play.” Their Adam's apples bobbed up and down.

“You told us to keep our distance.” It was the wrong thing to say, and his partner knew it.

He held his hands up. “We had eyes on her. She went to the stacks to get a book.”

“And you didn’t follow?” Marco growled.

“We did! She was talking to some girl. The aisles are tight, and we didn’t want her spotting us.

“What did the girl look like?” I asked.

“Tall, thin.”

“Blonde.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. After a second of scrolling, I found what I was looking for.

“This here?” I asked, shoving the phone in their faces.

They both nodded, and I cursed under my breath.

“What is it?” Marco asked.

This situation was getting worse and worse by the second. Not only was my wife missing, but now, I had to tell my brother that I had been outsourcing his job.

“That’s Anastasia Ivanov. She’s the daughter of one of Katarina Petrov’s father’s enforcers.”

The men raised a brow, but I could see their bodies physically relaxed. It was clear that they thought that they were off the hook. That Sasha was safe because it was the Petrov’s who had her.

But she wasn’t safe.

“Gather her things,” I ordered. “Scour every inch of this campus. If she left anything behind, I want to know about it.”

The men nodded swiftly. I was sure that they were eager to prove themselves, which was the only reason that they were still alive.

“Where are we going?” Marco asked, as he slid back into the car. “And are you going to tell me why the fuck you have information about this woman? Because I sure as hell didn’t get it for you.”

I sighed as I turned the car back on. “We are going to the Petrov’s. I have a feeling that Katarina Petrov might know where the hell my wife is.”

* * *

“What are you doing here at this hour?” Isaac asked me and Marco.

By the time we got to the Petrov’s home, it was nearly midnight. I was surprised that they had let us in, but I wasn’t going to question it. I had told myself that I would shoot my way into the house if I needed to. Marco hadn’t been too happy about that plan, but I was determined to confront the person I was sure was playing every single one of us against each other.

“I wanted to speak with your wife,” I said.

Isaac raised a brow, clearly confused. “She’s sleeping,” he told me.

“I’m up,” Katarina said as she entered the room. Marco and I shared a look between the two of us. Neither had heard Katarina walking into the room.

Isaac too looked surprised to see her wife, especially since she was fully dressed while he was in a robe. I knew that their marriage was one of convenience, but I hadn’t realized that they didn’t sleep in the same room together. It was clear that was the case.

“Is everything alright? Is Sasha okay?”

It didn’t escape me that Isaac always asked about Sasha. He’d been willing to cede territory to me, precious docks, to ensure her safety. Katarina was the opposite. She’d played the role of concerned mother at the hospital, but it had been difficult for her to keep it up.

Now, she wasn’t even bothering.

“Sasha’s missing,” I said. I felt my panic rising, but I reminded myself that I was likely with someone in this room. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in the house.

“How could she be missing?” Isaac howled.

“You tell me.”

He slammed his hands down on the table. “Why the hell would I kidnap my own daughter.”

“I didn’t say it was you,” I told him before I turned my attention to Katarina. “We’ve been sitting around looking for ways to kill one another when you’ve been picking us off one-by-one this whole time.” I shook my head as I thought about it. I had started to suspect Katarina at the hospital, especially when Sasha told me more about her mother.

I couldn’t imagine that a proud woman like Katarina would be happy that she was expected to be subservient to a man, especially one who usurped her. I hadn’t been sure, so I’d hired someone to poke around. I didn’t want the Blanchi name attached to anything, which is why I kept Marco out of it.

Katarina’s face didn’t change. She didn’t appear scared or concerned about the information I was hinting at.

But Isaac looked concerned.

“Katarina, if you know something…” Isaac’s voice was stern. I wondered if he expected her to cower in front of him, but he was going to be sorely mistaken. Katarina didn’t appear concerned at all. In fact, there was a little bit of smugness on her face.

“I don’t know what he is implying,” she said.

I snorted. I was trying to keep calm, but in the back of my mind, I couldn’t forget that Sasha was somewhere, and I knew that she hadn’t gone there of her own accord. I also knew that Katarina didn’t seem to care so much about her daughter, so if Isaac didn’t know where she was…

“I’m implying that you’ve been the one making the hits against both sides,” I said.

Isaac’s eyes widened.

“You thought we were the ones targeting your men,” Marco said. He was starting to put together what I had told him in the car about Katarina.

“How do you know about that?”

“You didn’t think we were the ones behind it?” Marco asked.

Isaac looked at Marco as if he had grown a second head. “Of course, I thought it was you, but I needed proof. I couldn’t push Sasha away even further if I were to retaliate. Whatever you think of me, I would never put my daughter in danger.”

I was frustrated. I didn’t care who was doing what. I needed to know where Sasha was, and what had happened to her. With every minute that passed, I knew that I was getting further and further away from Sasha.

“Where is she?” I asked, turning my attention to Katarina. I was sure that she was enjoying all the discord that she had sowed. I just didn’t understand why she would bring Sasha into it. Did she envision her only remaining child to be the one who would carry the mantle of the Bratva?

“Why are you so certain that Sasha didn’t just leave you? After all, we’ve heard that you threatened death upon all of the Bratva for what happened to your warehouse,” she said. “Sasha didn’t want to marry you. She cried and begged us to call off the wedding until the moment you took her as your wife.”

I gnashed my teeth together. “Sasha wouldn’t have left without saying something to me.”

“You two haven’t been sleeping in the same room together,” Katarina snapped back. “I don’t think that things are as stable as you think.”

Marco and I shared a quick look. “How the fuck do you know what’s going on in my house?” I asked. I hated that I had just confirmed that Sasha, and I were having problems.

“My daughter and I are very close,” she sneered.

“Bullshit.” I knew that Sasha couldn’t stand her mother. The difference was that Sasha was too kind to tell her mother that. I’d watched her in the hospital grin and bear things. “Sasha barely tolerates you. Can’t blame her. If my own mother was like you, I would have put a bullet in her brain.”

My own mother was a saint.

Katarina jumped up from the table. The icy facade was fading, and I realized that Katarina Petrov was an angry woman.

“If I was your mother, I would have made sure you were dead before you even crawled out of my womb.”

I didn’t react to her words. They couldn’t harm me. Her family had already taken my mother.

“Sit down, Katarina,” Isaac ordered his wife.

She didn’t sit. I didn’t think she would. Instead, she turned to Isaac, sneering at him. “You are weak,” she said, spit flying from her mouth. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Isaac stood up and grabbed her by the arm. “I told you to sit!”

For the first time, I saw Isaac as the Pakhan and not a middle-aged father who he often portrayed.

“What have you done with Sasha?” he asked, shaking her. Katarina’s head went back and forth, and I feared that it would snap off her neck.

She was laughing maniacally, and I was starting to wonder if she’d lost her mind. The last thing any of us needed was an insane Russian woman around.

“Isaac…” I cautioned. I wanted to question Katarina on where she’d stashed my wife, and I feared Isaac hurting her before she could speak.

“You’ve been a thorn in my side since the day I married you,” he growled.

Katarina snorted. “You’d be nothing without me. Nothing.”

“Your father didn’t hand over the Bratva because he knew that your greed would destroy us,” Isaac hissed. He had moved one of his hands around Katarina’s throat, and I knew he was squeezing from the way that her hands went to his.

“Where is my daughter?” Isaac howled.

I stood up, opened my mouth to remind Isaac that she couldn’t speak if he was squeezing the life out of her, but I didn’t get the chance to say anything.

A bullet ripped through Isaac’s head, splattering blood, bone, and brain matter across the room.

“Get down,” Marco yelled. I felt my brother tackle me to the ground as the entire room was lit up with bullets.

“Fuck,” I muttered. Our guns had been confiscated at the door, and we’d been searched thoroughly, so I knew neither myself nor my brother had a weapon on us. Wood, cushions, and glass were raining down upon us.

“Who the fuck is shooting at us?” Marco hollered over the machine gun fire. “Where are the Bratva guards?”

I had no idea, but as I hunkered down I worried that Marco and I weren’t going to make it out of here. I’d never feared death. I’d faced it more than once, but this time, I knew that if I died, Sasha was going to be at the mercy of her mother, who had clearly lost her mind.

But just as quickly as the room had been shot to hell, the shooting stopped. Marco and I looked at one another, both surprised.

“Reload?” he asked.

I shrugged. Whoever was shooting could be lulling us out. The precision of their shot to Isaac’s head wasn’t some random nut. That was an assassin level shot.

“We are sitting ducks,” I said. “Either they kill us, or when Isaac’s men get themselves together, they’ll do it.”

Marco cursed under his breath. “Are you sure Sasha is worth all of this?” he asked me.

I glared at him. If he hadn’t been my brother, I would have left him here to die for disrespecting my wife.

“On the count of three,” Marco said.

I nodded and braced myself. I was making it out of there. Sasha was depending on it.

“Three,” Marco yelled, and we both jumped to our feet ready to take on whatever was coming for us.

But looking around, it was quiet. Almost eerily so.

“What the fuck?” Marco asked.

I said nothing. I was too busy assessing the room. I had expected to see someone with a gun pointed at me, but there was no one. Isaac’s body was on the ground, and the entire room was ripped to pieces. If the room wasn’t splattered with brain matter, it would look like a tornado ran through.

“Katarina is missing,” I said. I looked around the room looking to see if she’d taken cover somewhere. But there was no sign of her.

“She planned this,” Marco muttered.

I shook my head. “I think she’s been planning something like this for a long time, and she was just waiting for the right time.” I wondered how long Katarina had been laying waste to the Bratva.

Marco ran a hand through his hair as he assessed the room. “What now?”

I could hear sirens in the background. “We need to go,” I told him. Normally, I would have had a team come in and wipe the room, but there was no time. The police were going to be here any moment. My fingerprints and Marco’ were all over the place, and there was a dead body on the floor, and probably more around the property.

“Sasha’s still out there,” Marco said.

“I’m aware.” I did a quick look around, but I knew that I wasn’t going to find anything. The only person who knew where Sasha was her mother. “Let’s go.” My stomach clenched as we climbed through the busted out window. This house was my only connection to my wife.

I’m going to find you, I thought. And though I wasn’t a religious man, I prayed that Sasha heard me wherever she was.