Trapped with the Mob Boss: A Mafia Romance (Petrov Bratva) by Nicole Fox (best book recommendations txt) 📗

Bella isn’t crying anymore, though her eyes are still glassy. Rather than looking petrified as she did when we arrived, she looks at ease. Maybe a little angry.

“You don’t think he’s guilty of any of these things?” I ask, looking back at the screen and scrolling down the long list of payments he accepted in exchange for sending security codes to government buildings, falsifying voting records, and making his own vote nothing more than an arm of The Society. If he was lying, it was a very elaborate and strange lie. “This is a written confession.”

“I won’t believe it until I hear it from his mouth,” she says firmly. “All of this could be a trick to keep me from looking for him. I don’t know anything about this secret society, but I know my father, and I’m going to do my best to trust the man I knew until he tells me otherwise.”

I want to tell her that she might never get to hear the truth from his mouth, but I decide now isn’t the time. Bella is putting on a strong face, but I can tell she’s exhausted and stressed, and there’s no sense in pushing her when I’m not sure of the truth myself.

Though, unlike Bella, I do have knowledge of The Society. Many important men have stories similar to her father’s. Americans both in the country and abroad have been recruited in the same way, not realizing how deep they’re involved until it’s too late to back out. Her father’s story, while shocking to Bella, is far too common.

“The house seems secure enough,” I say, closing the computer and laying a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t we get a bit of sleep and regroup in the morning?”

Bella takes a deep breath and then stands up, grabs my hand, and pulls me down the hallway towards her bedroom. Without speaking, we arrange the blankets back on her bed, curl up next to one another, and do our best to fall asleep.

Chapter Eighteen

Bella

I know something woke me up as soon as I open my tired, burning eyes. Left to my own devices, I would have slept for hours more. But something pulled me out of my sleep, and it takes me a few seconds to realize it’s the vibration in my pocket.

My phone.

Yuri rolls over and says something to me, but I don’t register it, and I’m so tired, I don’t even look to see who is calling. I just answer the phone and mumble out a “Hello?”

“Bella? Bella!”

Suddenly, it’s like an adrenaline shot has been pumped directly into my heart. I recognize that voice. I would know it anywhere. “Dad?”

Yuri shoots up, eyes wide. “What is it? Who is it?”

“Dad, is that you?”

“Bella, listen,” he says, voice low. “Get out.”

“Dad, where are you?” I ask, my throat constricting with unshed tears. When I drifted off to sleep, the last thing I thought was that I didn’t know if I’d ever speak to him again. But here he is. On the other end of the phone line. I have a million questions. “Tell me where you are and we can—”

“Bella,” he snaps. “Listen to me. You have to get out of the house. Right now.”

Yuri must be able to hear him because he stands up and moves to the window, looking over the backyard for any sign of anything amiss. He turns around and shakes his head. Nothing.

“Why? What is going on? Where are you?”

“Get out right now. There isn’t time for anything else.”

I slide out of bed and stand up, but then a horrible thought hits me. “Is this a trap?”

Yuri moves closer so he can hear the answer, and I know he has the same question. As much as I want to try and trust my dad, now that both mine and Yuri’s lives are at stake, I have to doubt him. I have to ask tough questions.

“No, Bella,” he says, voice soft but urgent. “I know you have no reason to trust me right now, but please, baby girl, get out. Please.”

I can hear the anguish in his voice, the fear and urgency, and some innate part of me—the part of me that still belongs to the little girl he raised—knows he’s telling the truth.

“Okay, Dad. We’re going. We’re leaving now,” I say, grabbing Yuri’s hand and pulling him towards the door. But before we can even open it, the world explodes.

The glass from my bedroom window shatters inwards and the house shakes and sways from the force of the explosion. I drop to my knees instantly, but Yuri grabs my arm and pulls me up. “It came from the front of the house. We have to go out the back.”

I have no idea how he’s able to be so rational moments after an explosion, but I’m grateful for it. The phone is still in my hand, but the call is disconnected. I don’t know if I did it or my dad did, but I shove the phone in my back pocket and help Yuri break out the rest of the glass from my window frame. He leans out the window and then shakes his head.

“We’ll have to climb out onto the roof and then use the wooden overhang to get down to the ground. Can you do it?”

The overhang is nothing more than four wooden posts and horizontal slats across the top, so it doesn’t offer much help in terms of getting down to the ground. “Is there another option?”

Yuri gives me a nervous smile. “Stay here and explode?”

I stretch onto my toes and kiss him before throwing one leg over the windowsill. “Then, I can do it.”

I scramble out onto the roof and dig the toe of my sneaker into the slope while I wait for Yuri to follow me out. As he’s coming through the window, I notice the smoke billowing into my room behind him.

“Yuri,” I said, tipping my head forward, too