Page 106 of The Darkness is Calling

All lies.

But I know she could not tell my father the real reason she wanted to leave me.

For now, my plan is to let her calm down while I try to discover who is behind the attack, so I can keep her from becoming their target too.

“What have you found so far?” I ask my brothers, as well as Dima, who joined us during the last hour.

After making sure the girls were safe in Oksana’s apartment, he doubled the security team, spreading our Birds throughout the area. Then he came to us for an urgent meeting.

For now, I am discussing this only with them. First thing tomorrow morning, we will mobilize our forces depending on what I decide.

I know what I want.

Now I have to find the solution to get it.

“The two prisoners are in the nest, but neither is saying a word,” Yar answers in his usual sober tone. “They’re professionals, and they are definitely not Italian.”

“Why you think that?”

“They’re paler,” Sasha answers, laughing, while playing with one of his knives.

“They’re pale because they lost blood,” I tell him, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

He shrugs carelessly. “We just need to make them chirp, and then we’ll know who wins the bet.”

“What bet?”

He looks toward our older brother, and they exchange a secretive glance.

“Yaroslav says they’re Albanian. I say they’re American, and Dima thinks they’re Irish.”

I look at the latter, a little confused. “The Irish are our allies now. What do you have against them? This isn’t the first time you’ve gone after them.”

“They don’t inspire trust,” Dimitri answers in a poetic tone, with his thick, crooked accent.

I know he is hiding something, but it is not important enough for him to tell us.

“I still think some freckled redhead from Ireland broke his heart,” Sasha adds. “He hates them too much.”

“They are ugly and speak as if they have plums in their mouths and sticks up their asses,” he explains, taking a sip from his glass of vodka. “I just don’t like them.”

I shake my head. This is not the time to concern myself with Dimitri’s past loves, but to unravel the mystery affecting my relationship with the only woman I care about.

“The weapons?”

“American.”

I lift an eyebrow and then look at Sasha.

“Did you make the bet with them before or after you found that out?”

“Before, of course. That’s why both of them are sulking, because the information came in afterward.”

“It could just as easily be the Solntsevskaya Bratva, trying to make sure they remove us from the market completely, so we don’t return to Moscow,” I tell them.

But suddenly, I remember a detail that escaped me until now.

“I heard two of them speaking. The ones who put me in the car.”