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

it open to reveal a small dark room. No windows, no light. Just a metal cot in the corner and a pitcher of water with no cup. A prison cell.

The man throws me into the room, and I wince as my knees smack against the cold floor.

“Bella?”

The door slams behind me, and I realize the voice came from in front of me—inside the cell. I scramble to my feel and press myself against the wall. Did they lock me in a room with a crazy person? Is that how they’re going to kill me?

My heart is thundering in my chest, and I look around for anything I could use to defend myself. I’ve just decided the water pitcher, though plastic, could be useful when a shape lifts off the cot and moves to the middle of the floor.

“Bells?”

Bells. My nickname. The one my father gave me as a little girl.

“Dad?”

In an instant, he has his arms around me and everything that has happened in the past few days is forgotten. I don’t think about the financial records I found in his office or the note on his laptop. I just think about the fact that I’m terrified, and now my father is with me. I break down in sobs.

“What are you doing here?” he asks after a while, smoothing down my hair, voice thick with emotion. “What happened?”

I shake my head and pull away to swipe at my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

His blue eyes—the same shade as mine—look down at the floor. “That is a much longer story.”

“You’d be surprised how much of it I know,” I say.

He runs a hand down his stubbled face. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him with even a hint of a beard. Maybe when we went to the lake for a week when I was in middle school? He let it grow out then, but shaved it the day we left. He didn’t want to be caught by any press looking less than his government best.

“I’m sorry you got mixed up in any of this,” he says. “That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid.”

“What is this?” I ask. “What did you get mixed up in? Has all of your time in the Senate been a lie? How much of our stuff was bought with dirty money? How long has this been going on?”

He has enough of a moral compass to look ashamed, and I immediately feel guilty. Though, given what Yuri’s father just did to him, I’m not feeling particularly sympathetic towards criminal fathers at the moment.

“Tell me everything,” I demand, stepping away from him and dropping down on the thin mattress.

And for the next twenty minutes, he does.

My father tells me how he was approached by The Society in college and how he tried to get out of it. He told me how he resisted doing their bidding for a long time, suffering small leaks of his private information to the press and notes left on his car. But then I came along, and The Society knew my name. They knew the name of my nanny and the parks we visited. He couldn’t risk it, so he began feeding them the passwords to government accounts and slipping them spare keys to records rooms. Then The Society wanted him to work for the Petrovs, but keep it a secret. None of the Petrovs could know who he was working for. He didn’t understand what any of it meant, but he was doing his best to find his way in their world so he could protect me and my mom. Then my mom died, and it was just the two of us. He felt even more pressure to take care of me, so he accepted more money. He sold his votes and supported whatever the Petrovs and The Society wanted him to. But recently, he ran into the leader of the Petrov family at the headquarters, and he recognized Ivan as the leader of The Society. Ivan threatened him and sent men to his office to force him out of government and the city, but he felt like this was his out. If he was ever going to escape, knowing Ivan’s true identity would be his ticket. So, he made it look like the house had been ransacked, left a note detailing his crimes, and went into hiding. Once the press got wind of his disappearance, he planned to make a deal with Ivan to keep his identity a secret in exchange for being released from his obligations to the Petrovs and The Society.

“Of course,” he says, shaking his head. “Then, they took you, and being released from my duties to them became the least of my worries.”

His story matches up with everything Yuri and I found at the house and everything we have discovered about Ivan, but part of me still doesn’t want to believe my father could have been lying to me for all those years. That he could have been leading a double life without me realizing it.

“I know I really screwed up, Bella. I’ve known it for a long time, I just didn’t know how to fix it.” He drops down on the cot next to me and hangs his head in his hands. “And now, you are here, and I’m not sure either of us is going to get out.”

“Don’t lose hope,” I say, though the last vestiges of mine are clinging by a thread.

“These Russians are all ruthless,” he snaps. “I’m sure the only reason they’ve kept me alive this long is to torture me with our reunion. To raise my spirits just to kill you in front of me.”

His voice breaks. “I’m sorry, Bells. I’m sorry.”

I reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. My entire life, my dad has always comforted me. It seems strange to be the one comforting him now. “They aren’t all the same.”

He looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

I think about Yuri.