Marked by His Touch: A Dark Mafia Romance by Raven Reeves

Author:Raven Reeves [Reeves, Raven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Safer Safehouse

This safe house is a gilded cage, like a prison of good intentions—but a prison nonetheless. Alexander hasn’t let me leave since that night, and his concern is like a suffocating blanket that wraps around me, tightening with every passing hour.

I’ve been training, pushing myself to the limit, my muscles screaming in pain at every practice. For the past few weeks, the girls—Zara, Lena, Tatiana, Anna, and a handful of others—have become my family, a band of warriors fighting for the same cause. We’re a team.

Alexander has become a ghost in the house. I’ve moved into the same room as him. He sleeps beside me, but there’s a chasm yawning between us, a chasm that’s as deep as the ocean and cold as the Arctic. He’s quiet at breakfast, his eyes fixed on some distant horizon. He disappears for hours, and I don’t know where he goes or what he’s fighting. He’s drowning in his demons, and his silence, his detachment, is a slow poison.

I haven’t told him what we’re training for. He’ll never let me go.

Zara and I are huddled together in her room. The soft glow of the bedside lamp hits the worn wooden floorboards, making them look like a shimmering lake. The structural plans of the beauty shop and Kitty’s Port Bar are spread out between us, a jumble of lines and ink that holds the promise of taking down Nikolai. Or so I hope.

Anna, the girl in the T-shirt, smuggled the plans inside the ranch to us, using a guard who owed her a favor. She’s got a lot of guts, that girl.

“Zara, I’m not sure this is the best entrance point,” I say, tracing my finger across the faded ink of the plans. The upper right corner has the logo of Port Haven City Hall. “The security at the club will be tight.”

“I think yes, slatka,” Zara says, her Russian accent thick.

“Slatka?” I frown. “Can you just tell me what it means?”

“It means sweetie in Russian,” she says. “We miss internet in here, da?”

“Da, Zara,” I say, my lips curling upwards. “Zara—” I taste the word, “is that even your real name?”

“Da,” Zara says. “Or, like in English, Sarah.”

My heart stutters. Like my Sarah. My mind flees to her meeting with Cole, the unsettling image flashing in my mind. It’s still there, a constant ache, but as long as she’s safe, I’m okay.

The scent of lavender and vanilla hangs in the air, a sweet, almost suffocating aroma that I’ve gotten used to lately after spending hours on end with Zara in here. I try to focus on the plans, but my thoughts drift to Cole, and I wonder what he wants with my other Sarah.

“Okay, so we need to get into the club undetected,” I say, focusing on the plans of Kitty’s Port Bar. “Maybe we can use the back entrance, the one by the loading dock.”

The one I escaped from.

Zara shakes her head. Her long dark hair cascades down her back, framing her sharp features.

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