Page 63 of Trapped By the Bratva
She said she wanted a family, but she was so damn young. What if she’d be happier going back to school and getting her degree, now that money and work hours wouldn’t be an issue?
And then Mila’s comment about wanting to hire her. Would Hannah prefer to work with Emily and Alana, and the other young ones, as my need for help with rehab exercises faded?
I’m doing it again.I furrowed my brow, annoyed with myself and how easy it was to drift to the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind.
My brothers were noticing too, and I hated that they might be judging me for being so distant. I wasn’t participating in the conversation, but then again, they were well aware of what I felt and thought about going after Erik Avilov.
“I know you’d like to be there,” Alek said with a sober glance at me, “but I think it would be best if Ivan and Maxim handle the Kastava soldier.”
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t evenbethere?”
“No.” Nik shook his head. “You’d get too mad. You’d distract from the interrogation.”
He had a point, but this was the first actual connection we could form with Avilov. One of our soldiers had captured a Kastava who had likely been involved with transporting me to the warehouse where Avilov beat and tortured me. We found this Kastava just yesterday, and I would bet all I had that whatever he could tell us would get us that much closer to finding the new Avilov leader.
“I won’t change my mind about this.” Alek folded his hands together on the table. “The Feds aren’t coming along on this.We’ll interview this soldier, and we can relay the information to the Feds.”
“But it sounds like Freeman wants a first-hand account,” Maxim argued.
“No.” Alek shook his head. “I would consider recording it and sending it to him, but that agent isn’t welcome to sit in on it.”
I huffed a dark laugh.Yeah, because our methods of getting those fuckers to talk aren’t pretty.
Torturing this Kastava wouldn’t make a dent in my need to pay back Erik Avilov for what he did to me. He was my sole target, and all the others would remain useful as nothing but pawns.
“We can share select information with Freeman,” Alek said, “but we’re not letting any agents or cops be present during it. We need to keep the Feds further from us than that.” He stood. “Collaborating with them on this one-time basis is manageable, but we’re operating independently at the heart of it all.”
“We don’t need to kill Avilov,” Nik added.
I nearly gave myself whiplash in turning to glower at him.
“The Feds can have him,” Maxim said.
“The fuck they can,” I growled.
Alek held his hand up to silence us all. “They can. We don’t need to enter in a long, drawn-out ordeal with the Avilovs. We only need to end the Kastavas.”
Of course, you’d say that.He had a personal interest in killing Sergei Kastava, his father-in-law. He wanted the man eliminated so he couldn’t insist on having Mila returned to him.
But I’m suddenly ridiculous to want to kill Erik Avilov myself? My personal matter doesn’t bear any warrant?
“Kill all the Kastavas you find,” I said. “I’d like to see them all rot in hell. But I will argue with every one of you who wants to bring the Feds in and hand over Avilov to them. Wedoneed to be the ones to finish him.”
Ineed to be the one to kill him.
If I didn’t, I’d never get closure, and right now, it was looking like I’d found my reason to want it. With Hannah and any family I could give her.
She represented the rest of my life, but I had to wrap up the loose ends of the trauma and pain of my past first.
21
HANNAH
Ispent the entire day helping with the newborns. It was a very different mentality to shift to from working with Dmitri. Handling fussy babies required a specific sort of patience. And they’d try to make me lose it anyway.
“Is it colic?” Amy asked as she fussed with her pumps.
“I think they’re just hungry,” Nadia said as she held Sophia and swayed with her. She caught my gaze and shrugged. “I mean, I’m not an expert. But she keeps nuzzling my arm.”
