His Queen of Clubs (Vegas Underground 6)

“As you wish, Pakhan,” I agree, though. You don’t cross Victor. Not over anything.

Lately I value my life more than I used to.

“You will come to Moscow,” he says and I hear the steel in his voice. I irritated him. Now I will pay. “You will come and bring the girl so I can see this pet you have now. And the orphan you brought home from Chicago. Then we will discuss your future.”

Blyat.

“As you wish.”

“Tomorrow,” he says firmly.

“We’ll be there tomorrow.” I end the call and close my eyes.

“What is it?” Alessia asks.

When I don’t answer, Mika does. “He has to go somewhere.”

“We have to,” I correct. Damn. I don’t want to bring either of them anywhere near Victor. I didn’t want responsibility for Mika. Not to begin with. But now that he’s been my ward for these few months, the idea of turning him over to anyone else makes me uneasy. And Victor will want to throw him into the lowest ranks of the bratva. Teach him to steal, murder and lie. Just like he did to me. I now wish I’d spent more time teaching Mika to hack. Then I could make Victor believe he’s most useful with me.

“Tonight we fly to Moscow.”

Alessia perks up. Whether it’s because she sees travel as a better opportunity to escape me or because she’s sick of being cooped up in my estate, I can’t say.

“Let’s go,” I say tersely, lifting my chin toward the door. I have bigger problems now than whether my bride gets upset by Russian orphans.

I called ahead, so I ask for the director, who bends over backwards to accommodate us. She leads us down a dank corridor to a large room filled with twenty cribs. And one rocking chair.

One empty rocking chair.

Babies are crying and the room smells like urine. Two hassled workers carry babies from a washroom back to their cribs.

The director points at one of the babies newly deposited in the crib. “This one is clean.” She picks up the crying infant and hands it—I can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl—to Alessia. Taking a bottle from the crib, the director hands it over as well.

The look on Mika’s face is pure horror.

Alessia, too, looks shocked.

“This was bad idea,” I say out loud. “Come, we go now.” My accent is thicker because I got tense.

“No, wait!” Alessia is bouncing up and down making shushing sounds. “I want to stay. You guys can go. Come back for me in a couple hours.”

Like hell.

I give her the stink eye to show her I don’t trust her alone for a second, but she’s gazing into the baby’s face speaking in sweet baby-talk tones. The baby quiets and coos back.

“Want some milk?” she asks it, backing into the rocking chair and bringing the bottle to the baby’s lips. “Are you hungry, angel?”

It’s hard to believe she’s considering escape at this moment. She’s totally wrapped up in that baby.

I glance at my phone. I have arrangements to make for our flight and lodging tonight in Moscow. “You stay. Make sure she doesn’t try to leave,” I tell Mika in Russian.

He wrinkles his nose, but nods in agreement. I forget he’s already been on the bottom of the bratva. He may not have killed yet, but he’s certainly known violence.

I squeeze his shoulder.

No way I’m letting Victor take the kid.

And I’ll die before I let him separate me from Alessia.

Alessia

I’m trying not to cry because I know it will distress Vlad.

The orphanage breaks my heart. Of course it does. These babies don’t get enough love or attention or time out of their cribs. At least they seem clean and fed and relatively healthy.

The workers eye me nervously, like I’m a government inspector here to give out demerits, but that’s understandable. I’m an American, brought in by a dangerous bratva member. I’m sure they don’t know what to make of the whole thing. I feed the baby in my arms. I don’t want to put her down, but there are other crying babies who need attention, so I spread a blanket on the floor and put the baby on it.

One of the workers points at it and then the crib where the baby came from.

“I know,” I answer in English, even though they won’t understand a word. “But babies need time out of cribs, too.” Not that the concrete floor is such a treat.

I pick up another baby, soaked in urine and feces. I guess they don’t use diapers here. They just let them soil the clothes and then change them. I follow the workers to the washroom where they are stripping and washing the babies in giant sinks. They aren’t cruel. They coo and sing to them in Russian as they work. But there’s just too many babies and not enough workers to go around.