“Wake up, Marek. I’m not that late.” Kazmer walked in, closing the door behind him.

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes to watch him sit down on the loveseat on the other side of the room. Of course, Juri was sitting behind his desk, his fingers laced together while his elbows rested on the dark mahogany.

“So right now, we have an Italian princess in our guest bedroom.”

I amended his statement. “An unwanted Italian princess.”

Kazmer snorted. “A dead princess.”

Juri didn’t acknowledge either of us. “I will not have a war with the Italians. The Spaniards are up our butt and from what I understand, they have sided with the Italians. Our mutual understanding with the Colombians isn’t enough to hold them to their word. Not until Damian and Ramona are officially wed.”

We all hummed in agreement.

Lev looked up from his computer. “So, we take an unmarked vehicle, toss her off into the Italian’s territory and let them handle their princess.”

“They will kill her.” Kazmer was looking at me when he said it.

Juri also was watching me. “You don’t agree, Brat?”

My lips pursed in a thin line. “It’s not that I don’t agree. Same as you, I don’t want a war with the Italians. Not yet, anyway. But giving that svoloch what he wants just doesn’t sit well with me.”

Lev chuckled. “Well, that’s true. He’s a bastard and handing her over seems like a wasted opportunity. But again, if we want to avoid a war…”

This is where I’d been running around in my head all last night. There was no actual solution to this issue. Everything ended in her death or war with the Italians. I’d been thinking so hard about it, I’d dreamt of her. Her black eyes piercing into me. Able to see me, read me, tear me down when all I could see back was nothing. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

“Unless…”

I perked up at Juri’s voice as he leaned back in his chair. Bringing up his foot to rest on his other knee, he rubbed his beard with his other hand. His wife loved it, but it was a kept secret between brothers that he hated having any facial hair. Something we were surprised that his wife forced him to do. She was a firestorm, and I had enjoyed watching her break him down to his knees when he first got married.

You could see the wheels turning in his head. Juri would play out every angle, every scenario he could think of, as he decided whether it was worthy to voice. After a few minutes, his eyes settled back on me.

“Are you sure you want to save the zajchik?”

He knew it was me that wanted to save her. My brothers didn’t mind handing her off. They hadn’t seen the broken little girl on the floor of the cell. They hadn’t heard the hollowness of her words when she appraised herself. Looking at them now, they also didn’t feel the emptiness that was in her eyes.

Yes, I wanted to save her. Not just from her father, but from the shadows that clung to her. I was a fixer. It was what I did best; both in the bratva and in my personal life. Broken people were my specialty, where my compassion reigned above all else. It didn’t help that she reminded me of Natasha and that I failed her, just like I failed Aleksei.

“If it does not endanger the family.”

As much as I wanted to help her, I told Kamilia the truth last night. I would not put our family in danger. I’d done enough by bringing her into our home.

“You could marry her.”

The air sucked out of the entire room. Lev looked up from his computer, his mouth hanging open. Kazmer also had a similar look, but he had a hint of disgust behind it.

“She’s nineteen. Marek is turning forty next year. A twenty-year difference? Juri, that’s insane. You can’t be serious.”

Juri shrugged. “It’s not the first. I mean Fernando was seventy when he married that thirty-year-old.”

Lev barked out a laugh. “A gold-digging bitch is what she was.”

“Right, but we know this princess is not. Not only would it save her life, but a marriage would then tie us to the Italians. It would be a slap in the face to Carlo. Suddenly, there would be a tie to us that the other families would acknowledge by blood. While he might not agree and want to kill his daughter, but the other families wouldn’t allow it. Especially if she married into our family.”

Juri wasn’t wrong. It was an actual opportunity to stick it to the svoloch while taking advantage of the situation and forcing the Italians to their knees. On their knees before us was what we had wanted since before our father’s time.

Out of all my siblings, I was the only one unmarried and had no desire to get married or have kids. I worked for my family and for our companies. Long ago, I loved a woman, but she broke my heart, and I had a hard time recovering. By the time I had moved on and the pain was nothing but a scar on my heart, I was too set in my ways to think about opening myself up to someone else. There was never a time I needed to marry, either for me or for the bratva. So, I didn’t. I was also twenty years her senior. She was young and had her whole life…

My thought process stalled, seeing her eyes in my mind again. She didn’t, though. The moment she left this house, she was dead. Hell, she could be dead inside of this house as well. We could just as easily dump her dead as we could alive.

Her youth had been taken from her already. Kamilia had said she had three abortions already. A family that not only didn’t protect her but caused the most damage was sickening to think about. There was nothing left of her except maybe the singular thought of putting a bullet between her father’s eyes. Rosaria had nothing and no one. Marrying me offered her protection and a safe place if she ever believed I wouldn’t hurt her. It also helped that her father would be livid at the connection with us.

“You can’t seriously be thinking about this, Marek. Look, I don’t mean to call you a pervert but if you want someone young, we can get someone from the clubs…” Lev was looking at me half-disbelief and half-shock.

“Would you let me speak with her first, Vor?” I reverted to acknowledging Juri as our head of family.

Not for me, but for the sake of my brothers. If Juri voiced his opinion, it meant that he thought this might benefit our family. I had my own reservations, ones that involved me never being able to love her and feeling as though I would trap her. But if I spoke to her, asked her opinion, I would feel better about it.

Juri nodded. “You have until the end of the day. If you do not come to a conclusion, then we will decide whether we dump her alive or dead in a ditch between our territories.”

Getting up, I could hear my brothers arguing with Juri about the situation, but I didn’t listen to them. They had a harder time understanding that as Vor, we swore our fealty to him. Swore him as our leader and our head. We were family and brothers by blood, but Juri would always be above us.

He could always demand us to take a knee and we would have to bend. Arguing with him was a waste of time and one I didn’t intend to do. If he had ordered me to marry her right there, I would have said yes without a second thought. While this could benefit us, it wasn’t enough in Juri’s mind that it was a definite yes. Which allowed me some wiggle room to speak to Rosaria.

Kamilia was sitting with her when I walked in. They spoke quietly, but it sounded like they were talking about insignificant things like fashion or magazines or something. My sister stood and Rosaria caught my eye. Her face looked better. Less swollen and both her eyes now were open. It still was seriously discolored, but I didn’t feel like wincing every time I looked at her face.

I thought maybe some time talking about dumb girl stuff would have brought some sort of light back into her eyes, but it hadn’t. They were as dull, emotionless, and hollow as they had been. It was a damn mirror of my dream.

“I need to speak with Miss Bernardi. Alone.” I added the last word when my sister opened her mouth. She was too easy to read.

Huffing, she brushed her hand over Rosario’s leg before glaring at me as she walked out. The door slammed shut, and I shook my head.