A moan caught my attention and I swung around with the weapon in both hands. Bernie was struggling to stand. “Shit, Bernie. Are you alright?”

  “Someone clocked me, boss. But I shot one. There were three men and… I’m sorry, boss. I tried to stop them.” Blood was streaming down his face.

  Horror and terror rushed through me. Fuck.

  Lainey. Nina.

  There was nothing I could do for him. I raced inside, taking the stairs two at a time. First I went to the room I’d shared with Lainey. There was no sign of her or anything amiss. Just the cold, stark emptiness that was already beginning to crowd into my heart.

  Rage replaced everything else.

  Spinning around, I threw myself up the stairs to the third floor. The door was open and as soon as I walked in, I knew exactly what had happened.

  The bed was empty, signs of a struggle evident in small things. The easel kicked over. The teddy bear Nina couldn’t sleep without tossed to the floor.

  Sheets tossed and pushed aside.

  And a chair turned over.

  A deep, icy chill tore through me. My actions perfunctory, I moved toward the easel, picking it up. As pages began to fall forward from the sketchbook with the help of gravity, I noticed the one my daughter had been working on that I’d seen earlier.

  Only I hadn’t seen the note.

  I lifted the sketchpad, gasping for air.

  To my daddy. I love you. Happy birthday.

  As the pad slipped from my fingers, I slowly dropped to the floor.

  And I screamed.

  Las Vegas

  Five days later…

  “We need to keep this between us,” Mikhail said.

  “Agreed,” Kazimir grumbled. “That doesn’t mean I like it.”

  Alexsey huffed. “I spent some quality time with Liam and his men. Two of O’Shaughnessy’s sons were seen in Reno.”

  “Are you saying the man who broke into the guest house was one of the sons?” Kazimir threw out.

  “No confirmation either way.”

  I lifted my head, trying to control my anger. The family meeting had been called after days had passed. That left our resorts and casinos in the hands of our highly paid managers. We were trying to pretend as if it was business as usual.

  A necessary tactic since there were always sharks circling in the waters when a prominent crime syndicate family was in crisis mode.

  “Did you contact the Costas?” my father piped in. I was surprised he was addressing them by their name since he’d been staunchly against the alliance.

  Mikhail nodded. “They’re in the process of determining if the tip Liam received was credible.”

  “You think maybe the sighting was meant to throw our scent.” Everything else had been a goddamn ruse. Why not this handy tip that had come out of nowhere? There was a distinct edge to my voice and Mikhail caught it.

  “You need to get control of yourself.” His voice was low and he tried to remain emotionless, but I was losing the battle so he would as well.

  There was an intense ache behind my eyes. This was getting out of hand and I was losing my shit. Anyone could see that including me.

  I sat back against the couch, fingering the weapon that never left my side. In my other hand was a drink. Yeah, at this point I deserved to have one. “How do you suggest I do that, Mikhail? Huh?”

  I’d been forbidden from going back to my house. Not because it was an active crime scene any longer, but because the house still smelled like Lainey and reminded me of Selena. The majority of my daughter’s things were in her room including fifty unopened birthday presents.

  A birthday that had been interrupted by violence.

  A trip to paradise turning into a nightmare.

  The memories were all there. Nice. Neat. Tidy. And my entire family had labeled me too distraught to return.

  Maybe I was. I laughed softly as I brought the glass to my lips, trying to make sense of anything.

  Vissarian sat down opposite me on the chair, his glare as harsh as everyone else’s had been since my return. Which I barely remembered. If it hadn’t been for Bernie, fuck, I might have walked into the goddamn ocean. He’d picked my ass up, made arrangements with the pilot to get our jet back, and had taken pictures of everything, even dusting for fingerprints so we wouldn’t need to get the police involved.

  It wasn’t their fight.

  Five days had passed without a single word. Not one. No one had any idea who’d kidnapped Lainey and my daughter.

  There were no notes, no threats, and after carefully going over everything there was no forensic evidence. Not a single fingerprint. Even the gun used to kill Tony had been his own. He’d been hit on the head, his gun ripped away, and he’d been shot between the eyes. Evidently they hadn’t expected Bernie to return, the only reason he was alive.

  It pointed to trained assassins, but certainly nothing that would pinpoint the persons responsible. When my brother opened his mouth to say something, I bristled and held up my hand. “Don’t say it, Viss. Don’t you dare say that we’ll find them. What if we don’t? We don’t know a goddamn thing about what happened.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Mikhail interrupted. “We know your instinct about something watching you was correct. We know from Bernie finding the open window that they managed to bypass the security, get into the house, spike the open bottle of wine, your vodka, and even the milk that Nina drank. A powerful sleeping agent, but not deadly. They reengaged the system and walked away waiting for the drug to take effect.”

  I lifted my head, staring at him. I’d never seen him so pale or so distraught. The blatant act had highlighted yet another weakness on his watch.

  He took my silence as an opportunity to continue. “We do know there was a flight that left St. Lucia at midnight.”

  This I hadn’t heard. I jerked up, sloshing the drink and loathing myself for the personal weakness. That was the moment I vowed not to touch anther drop until my girls were returned.

  My girls.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  “Why the fuck am I just hearing this?” I barked out the question, taking long strides toward him.

  Alexsey got in my way before I could do anything rash. “Back down, Sasha. Take a breath.”

  “A breath. I’m supposed to take a breath when Lainey and my daughter are somewhere in this world. God knows where. And with all the technology at our fingertips, the sources worldwide of people, and favors that we can call in from law enforcement agencies both here in the United States and throughout the world, we can’t find a single clue. You bet I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m enraged that my wife’s murder was never solved. Now we have unknown assailants who were in this city, our city, harassing me and everyone in this family to push our buttons. They took a little girl and a woman who wanted nothing to do with this world as what, collateral? A payment for something? An old vendetta? What the hell is going on with the O’Shaughnessys? What? Why don’t you have them locked up somewhere so we can interrogate them? Why?”

  “Because we have no proof they’re involved.” Mikhail chose to answer that one of all the shit I tossed out.

  I stared at him, finally looking away. “Where did the plane go when it left St. Lucia?”

  “We don’t know,” Kazimir answered. “The plane was on route to New York then suddenly disappeared out of the sky.”

  Now I burst into laughter. “Of course it did. Always one step ahead of us.” I grabbed my car keys from the table, heading toward the door. The last place I wanted to be was in Mikhail’s house.

  It certainly didn’t feel like home.

  “Where are you going, son?” my dad asked.

  Stopping short, I knew better than to lash out. They weren’t to blame, although I’d had nagging thoughts for all five days since I’d returned.

  My girls’ disappearance had everything to do with the past.

  I turned sharply, staring at my dad. He’d aged so much since Selena’s death. He’d taken her murder almost as hard as I had, although he’d done his best to remain stoic, the right-hand man of the Dmitriyev Bratva. The man who’d escaped with his brother and their wives in tow, a couple of children tagging along to start a new life. A better life.

  Only bloodshed and violence had followed us and why? Because that’s all my father and uncle had known.

  Maybe we’d cleaned up our act, but deep down inside, we were still the same.

  Monsters.

  “Istoriya boli i skorbi—eto ne konets. Eto tol’ko nachalo. Rukoy krovi budut napisany novyye glavy.” When I repeated the exact same thing to my father, his eyes opened wide and for a split second, I could swear he was embarrassed or ashamed.

  Or guilty.

  “Isn’t that what you said to me all those years ago, Pops? The story of pain and sorrow isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning. There are additional chapters to be written by the hand of blood. Is that right? I am remembering your words correctly. Yes?”

  What I found disturbing was that not only did my father remain silent, but so did my uncle, the man who’d spearheaded the move to America. The man who’d taken control, beaten down the various enemies we’d had over the years, both men building a company from nothing. Rags to riches. We’d gone from murder, drug running, extortion, and blackmail to highly respected members of society, wealthy beyond our means. And completely legit.

  But maybe another Russian saying should be that you could take the gangster out of the man, but not the need for retaliation.

  When the two men looked at each other, I broke out in a cold sweat. They knew something. I pulled out my phone, scrolling to the picture I’d taken of the emblem on the bastard Lainey should have beaten to death. “What is this?”

  I shifted the screen back and forth between my father and uncle.

  Neither one of them offered a single word. But dear God, I’d bet my life that there was recognition in their eyes.

  “Come on. I know you’ve seen this before. From where? The crazy thing is that I have too. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out from where. When. How. But you know. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t recognize it, son.”

  My father had once told me and my brother than one of the greatest attributes was knowing when someone was telling a lie.

  For the first time in my life, my father had lied to me.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the first.

  Maybe it was just one of a string of them.

  “Then answer me this. Why does our uncle Yuri hate us so much? You told us very little months ago.”

  Mikhail narrowed his eyes and I dared him with mine to intervene. We’d never gotten the answer. At least not one that had sat well with us.

  We’d heard there’d been a falling out with the three brothers and that once they’d been close. We’d heard that Uncle Yuri, although I used that term loosely, had blamed them for something that had occurred long before I was born.

  Maybe I hadn’t been listening clearly or paying enough attention because I was born in the United States and had shied away from the family business for as long as possible. Although even that was a lie. I’d been a part of the troublemaking team as a teenager, using our status and dropping my father’s name like a get out of jail free card.

  “Yuri blamed us for losing someone he cared about.” My father’s admittance didn’t hit me nearly as hard as it had Mikhail and Vissarian. I could tell by the looks on their faces they were surprised.

  “What does that mean exactly?” Mikhail asked.

  “He blamed us for the death of a woman he loved.”

  Sighing, I could tell there was more to the story, but I wasn’t certain what if anything it had to do with my wife’s death or this incident.

  “That was a long time ago, Sasha,” Uncle Boris said in such a way I knew he was attempting to shut down the conversation.

  We weren’t getting anywhere just standing here speculating.

  “I’m going to get them back. Whether with your help or without it. I don’t plan on losing someone else I love because of dark secrets held within this family. I love Lainey just like I loved Selena and she was taken from me with no answer as to why. Including from my own family, two men I’ve looked up to my entire life. Now, my little girl who never knew her mother and barely had a father decent enough to be called that is gone. You know what’s worse than that? Just the other night that brave little girl felt close enough to a woman who’d convinced me through her love and her actions that I could shed my guilt and live again to call her Mommy. Do you have any idea what that took for my little girl to feel as if her world wouldn’t be rocked again?”

  The silence in the room was now just unnerving as fuck.

  “Do you? Mommy. She called Lainey Mommy. You should have seen how happy she was on that trip. Happy. I’ve never seen her smile like that in my life and why? Because her father, her fucking useless broken-down father couldn’t protect her mother so she had a chance to get to know her. History will not repeat itself. Not as long as I live. Do you hear me? Do you?”

  I didn’t give them time to answer.

  I was finished with playing this dirty, dangerous game.

  The bastards responsible would have a come to Jesus experience that they’d never forget.

  One they would remember as they rotted in the fires of hell.

  CHAPTER 24

  Sasha

  Fuck.

  Another twenty-four hours. What had I heard through various active kidnapping investigations on television and in general conversation with a few men I’d call buddies who were on the police force? That if the persons weren’t found within twenty-four hours, they were likely dead.

  What struck the family hard was that there was no request for ransom and I took small comfort in the fact that if killing them had been the objective, they would have done so in the house in St. Lucia for me to wake up to.

  That at least gave me some hope.

  I’d tossed around the word for days.

  Then it had been driven into the trash.

  I glanced around the library in my house where I’d returned. Yes, the ache was heightened by being back in the house I had built to share family and love, but so was a sense of belonging. I pulled out my phone, finding the group of pictures I’d taken while on the trip. For the first time, I’d wanted to keep memories of our time together.

  Now I was damn glad I had.

  The house was too quiet, yet every sound I heard coming from either inside or out was exaggerated. The sound of the refrigerator humming slightly when I poured a cup of coffee. The way the vents blew cool air when the air conditioning cycled on. The wind whipping through the trees, limbs lightly tapping against the side of the house.

  Fuck. I was a mess and doing nothing was akin to wallowing in pain.

  I was fed up with waiting. I was tired of sulking and hating. The rage was building to a boiling point and once achieved, there would be no turning back. It was past time for me to take matters into my hands.

  After taking a deep breath, I made a decision. Lainey had been right. I’d stored away every memory of my wife, keeping the legacy of Nina’s mother from her. That wasn’t right and when she returned… when she returned, I would take the time to show my little girl just how special her mother was.

  That started with pictures.

  Where the hell had I stored all the boxes? Ah, yes. In the back of the garage.

  I rolled up my sleeves and headed out the kitchen door, flicking on the light inside the massive space. The dozen or so brown boxes had been placed against the back wall. Thankfully, the oversized garage was air-conditioned because of my expensive collection of cars.

  As if I gave a damn about them.

  I tore through them quickly, bringing in four. One held nothing but photographs, both framed and kept loose in folders. I sat down on the couch, shifting from one to another, taking the time to go down memory lane. With every photograph, I began to see a pattern of happiness, something Selena had brought when I’d been professionally at an all-time high while personally, my life had been in turmoil.

  Nothing had made me happy.

  After her death, I’d retreated into the same darkness that I’d fallen into before, the shadows surrounding me empty pockets that would eventually lead me to hell. When Lainey had come into my life, I hadn’t realized I was close to losing control.

  Until the first smile and the flash in her eyes. She’d brought me back. A strange warmth washed over me as if Selena was looking down on me and giving her blessing. One picture in particular caught my eye. The photograph had been taken during one trip we’d taken to Bermuda, which Selena had loved.

  She was happy, smiling, and the sun was shimmering all around her as if she was an angel. In the gorgeous silver frame, the picture was perfect. For some crazy reason, I had a smile on my face and even jogged up the stairs to Nina’s bedroom, stopping short just inside the doorway.

  I’d placed Nina’s easel in the corner of her room with her sketchpad and the box of paints and artist’s pencils Lainey had purchased for her birthday. The setting was all too surreal.

  Finding courage in the face of madness had never been a problem. Or maybe I’d been fooling myself for a very long time, replacing courage with cynicism and anger. I glanced at the picture in my hand, fingering her face before stepping into the room. Gingerly, I placed the frame on Nina’s nightstand, stroking the edge before backing away. The first of many pictures.

  More created with Lainey.

  That was the way it was going to be.

  My step lighter, I returned to the living room, determined to find joy in continuing going down memory lane.

  Less than thirty minutes later, I noticed a small wooden box in the bottom of the last cardboard one I’d brought in. I couldn’t remember seeing it when I’d packed up everything. Granted, I’d been completely out of my mind, shocked I’d had any order when putting her things away.

  The box wasn’t particularly heavy. A jewelry box. When I tied to open it, I realized it was locked. Staring at the clasp, my initial thought was that I’d been invading Selena’s privacy. That was silly. With my Swiss Army knife in my hand, I used the knife to try to unlock it.