I knew that he was right, but I also knew that he was about to offer himself up as her personal bodyguard, which I was not about to allow. I didn’t want Alex anywhere near Ivy.
“Don’t be so obstinate,” Dom said. My emotions must have been on my face. “Alex is right.”
“And Ivy isn’t going to want some stranger following around.”
I hated how he was right. Ivy wasn’t Sasha. She hadn’t grown up in this world. She didn’t understand the inherent dangers that we lived with every single day in the same way someone who’d grown up the way we had would.
I gritted my teeth together. “I need to talk to her before we start assigning a bodyguard.” I hoped that she would listen to my explanation. I didn’t want to scare her, but she needed to know what she was dealing with.
Dom nodded. “There’s more that we need to talk about.”
“Great.” I took a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs. I couldn’t imagine what Dom wanted to talk about next. As a husband, he needed to know that I was freaking out right now.
“The Russians are having a party tonight to celebrate the new Pakhan.”
Alex and I shared a look. Neither of us could understand why Dom would care about this. Sasha had made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing to do with her old family and was loyal to the new one.
“We’ve been invited.”
I snorted. “We aren’t going.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement. We didn’t know much about the new Pakhan, but not a single one of us wanted to spend an evening with the Russians.
Dom crossed his arms. “We are going.”
“Come again?” Alex asked. He looked as incredulous as I felt. The Russian’s had killed or harmed all of our parents.
“I’m with Alex,” I told Dom. “And I’m wondering if you’ve lost your mind.” Dom hated the Russians. Even moreso now after what had happened with Sasha’s mother and brother.
Dom leaned against his desk. “We haven’t brokered peace with the new Pakhan.”
I shrugged. “So? Do we need to broker peace with them? They are fractured. We should be picking them off one by one.”
Dom ran a hand through his hair. It was a sign of his frustration. He didn’t know what to do. I could tell. When he was frustrated, but felt as though he was in the right, he got angry.
“I don’t want my daughter to grow up with the stain of this war looming over her.”
That shut both Alex and myself up. Neither of us could argue with Dom’s reasoning. Making sure that his unborn daughter was safe from the largest threat our family had ever faced, was good enough reason for us to attend this ridiculous party.
“We need to go in there with a plan and make sure that we all come out of this place alive.”
I expected Dom to argue with me, but he just nodded. “That’s why I called you both here. They want the three of us to attend, but we aren’t going to just go in and hope for the best. I want to believe that the new Pakhan wants to meet in good faith but considering…”
“Considering that I killed his nephew, you are thinking this might be a good way to trap us.”
Alex nodded. We might not necessarily agree on everything, but we did agree that going into this without keeping our head on straight wasn’t smart.
“Let’s talk logistics,” I said.
Alex nodded. We all crowded around the table looking as we started to discuss the logistics of tonight. For a moment, it felt like old time, and I was able to focus on the task at hand and forget about the other danger looming over Ivy.
But it wasn’t far from my mind. One of the only reasons that I was willing to go to this party was because it could help me solve one of the problems that we had. If I could make sure that the Russian’s weren’t going to retaliate then we might be able to focus on whoever was coming after her next.
At least, that was what I hoped.