But now that Naomi had crashed into my life, I could sympathize with the bastard.
There could only be one reason that he would want to talk with me, and I wasn’t going to like the conversation.
Blood in the water, and now the circling sharks are about to take the first bite.
Krasnaya had somehow gotten to him, or could this be Hampton and the FBI? I guessed it didn’t matter. He was joining the war, and my shit had just gotten a hell of a lot worse.
So, I pressed the answer button and held the cell phone up to my ear. “Fuck off, Marchetti. I don’t want to know.”
“Gavril?”
I froze for an altogether different reason, not quite believing what I was hearing. “Naomi?” I croaked, dropping the bottle and ignoring it as it shattered on the terrace.
“Oh God, it is you,” she breathed into the phone, each word like a stamp on my already tortured heart. “Thank God. I wasn’t sure if this was the right number, but he had it written down and I had to try.”
“Naomi,” I forced out. “Where are you?” I was going to gut Marchetti for having anything to do with her disappearance. He had gotten involved on the wrong end of the war.
“I’m at Roman’s house,” she said, her voice taking on a teary edge, and my stomach fell out of my fucking body at the sound. “Gavril, I—”
The phone cut out suddenly, and every fiber in my being quit firing. “Naomi,” I said urgently. “Naomi!”
No answer.
I gritted my teeth. She was alive and in the hands of Roman Marchetti. Moreover, she had called the man by his first name. That was something I couldn’t fathom. How had she ended up in his possession? Who else had benefitted from taking her from me other than Hampton? Maybe they were all in cahoots together, ganging up on me because Marchetti had seen an opening and knew he could take me while I was down.
After all, he had never tried until now.
It didn’t matter. I pulled up Yuri’s number and pressed send, already moving back into the mansion to gather my shit.
“Yeah, pakhan.”
“Get a team together,” I growled as I stalked through the house, my mind moving quicker than my feet. “We are going to pay Roman Marchetti a little visit.”
Yuri let out a low whistle. “Yes, pakhan.”
I ended the call, knowing full well what he was thinking. If I started a war with Marchetti as well, I wasn’t so sure I could win.
Did it matter? He had Naomi, and he was going to understand what it meant that he had taken what was mine.
So, no, it didn’t matter. I was going to make him pay for getting himself involved. He had chosen a side, and it wasn’t mine.