I sighed as I leaned on the chair in my office. My stay here in New York extended for a whole month.

When we first came here it was supposed to be only a day or two stays. But instead, there happened a complication and we need to stay longer.

And under a complication, I mean on that pieces of shit. Fucking Aleksei and his little banda. They are back again.

They tried to steal one of our armory shipments from Italy. Tried. They didn't succeed in their task.

And that I can only thank Marino. He was there already waiting for the shipment to come along with Moreno when they decided to attack. Most of them got away and the ones that didn't were killed.

The knocking on the door snapped my attention at the entrance "Come in." I muttered and watched as Dante entered in.

"Ciao." He greeted me while walking towards my desk and taking a seat in a chair in front. "Ciao? What brought you here?" I asked not knowing what would he do here.

"What? I can't see my brother anymore?" He said making me snort at him. Lifting an eyebrow at him asking him mutely 'Really?' On which he just smiled innocently and shook his head.

"Okay, okay, Fabio called all of us to come to your office." "Why?" I asked dumbfounded about this meeting.

He shrugged his shoulders "I don't know. Something about Russians as far as I know." "Oh, okay then. When will they be here?"

He looked at his watch then back at me. "Around fifteen minutes, they shouldn't take longer than that." I nodded my head in acknowledgment and took one of the files from the table to go through it.

The silence fell over us as I listed through it, but it didn't last long because Dante decided to break it. "Did you talk with Antea today?" He asked making me smile.

Ever since they left Italy we would speak over the phone on daily basis. We would or speak over phonecall or I would call her on a video call so Emiliano could see her and speak to her.

I swear she gets more and more beautiful over every video call we had. We spoke over a video call while she was cooking so I saw her baby bump which got bigger than the last time I saw her.

"We texted each other this morning but I didn't call her. I will probably call her when I'm with Emiliano so he can see her." I said with a big grin.

He chuckled at me "You fell too deep for her." "I did." I said not missing a beat. "You didn't tell her still, did you? About you two?"

Shaking my head slowly my smile flattened "No, I didn't. I'm trying to tell her that.. but.. umm, slowly.. I don't want to scare her away. I thought about telling her when we go visit them next week."

"Oh, so is it definitely that we are going next week?" He asked making me nod at him.

"Yeah, I will finish all my job here till the end of this week, so we could leave on Monday maybe even this Sunday.." I trailed of uncertainly about the day we will go.

"Great. I was talking with Daniel-" he started but I cut him off. "Everything good between you two? You won't do any shit to make Antea cry like last time?" I asked warily wanting to know how will this trip go.

"Mhmm." He hummed. "He got time to.. let's say go through all what we told him and now he's.. ahh, how do I explain.." "With words?" I raised a brow at him.

"No shit. What I wanted to say is we are okay. He is not really into letting his little sister be with you, but if she went through all that to be in a relationship with you and is pregnant with you.. he doesn't anything to say against that. It's her decision. And about us, ehh.. we are.. he is kind of, let's say carefully about stuff we tell him and he tells us."

He said making me nod "That's understandable. Do you think that he would be capable of going against us?"

"No, he would never do something like that." Dante said in an instant. "Oh, by the way, did you know that he didn't know how old you actually are?" He added making me rose my eyebrows in surprise.

"Really? What did he think, how old was I?" "He thought that you are 23 maximally 24. So just to let you know that that's one of the reasons for his dislikes towards you."

"That I'm older than Antea?" I asked. "Yep. You are seven years older than her." He said making me scrunch my eyebrows.

"When you say it that way it sounds bad.." I trailed off turning towards the door when there was a knock on them. "Come in." I called out.

Moreno, Marino, and Fabio entered the office with serious looks on their faces. "Ciao." I greeted them as they took a seat on a couch in front.

"Ciao. I called all of you to show you something." Fabio said as he stood up and came to stand next to me. "Can I use your computer?" "Sure." I said as I stood up "About what is this?"

"That attack on our shipment from other day. I found something.." he said and clicked a couple of times "Just a second till I connected this to the bigger screen.. okay here it is." He exclaimed and we turned to look at the bigger screen on the wall.

There was camera footage from what I could say was a place where our shipment needed to be exchanged.

"This is footage from the left side of our place. And as you see there are.. umm, Russians that need to take the shipment from us."

I looked better at the footage and frowned. The guys that were to steal from us didn't look older than eighteen. "This are kids." I exclaimed as I turned to look at Fabio in confusion.

Seeing me Fabio nodded "Yeah, that was what is weird. And also they weren't as.." he shakes his hand from side to side ".. capable of killing as his regular men." "So they are new?" Moreno chipped in.

"Possibly, but you know Aleksei. He wouldn't accept new people in unless if he doesn't have any more of his own. This brings me to the conclusion that he didn't even want to steal the shipment. I mean if he wanted he would send some of his highly trained men, not kids."

"So what would be the real reason then? One of his games or.." I muttered while running a hand through my hair pulling at the edges.

"Umm, that could be one of his games or he wanted to get rid of those kids or... I don't know. That is what I don't understand." Fabio said frustrated.

"Maybe he wanted to send a message?" Dante sighed. "Or some kind of diversion?" Marino said but that sounded like a question.

"What kind of diversion?" Moreno asked his brother as he looked at him. Moreno was about to answer his questions but stopped.

A ringing on my phone made me snap my attention from the guys to it. Everybody stopped speaking as I looked at the phone.

My frown deepened as I looked at the screen, guys must notice that because Moreno chipped in.

"You are not going to answer that?" He asked curiously on which I nodded my head.

"I will, it's just.. its unknown number." I said as I took the phone in my hands. "Put it on the speaker." Moreno mumbled and I nodded putting on speaker after I answered the call as he said.

After a couple of silent moments, an all-to-known voice boomed through the speaker making me clench my fists in rage.

"Zdraste Xavier. I didn't hear a long time from you." Aleksei said, "But then again I could see that you had a lot of things to do." He said and I could hear the smile in his voice. ("Hello..")

My blood runs cold on his next words "How is that bitch of yours? Pregnancy suits her, doesn't it?"

"What do you want?" I hissed not being able to hold my temper anymore.

A fucker chuckled like I said something funny "Oh, boy, what would I want? Nothing. I just wanted to hear you.." he said mockingly. "You know I must admit, with no joke, you are one lucky son of a bitch. The girl is really a catch." He said and the line went dead, but not for a long as a message came not long after.

Looking at the phone I saw that message is from the same unknown number. Taking a deep breath to calm my racing heart I opened the message.

The ground under my feet shook and I got a sick feeling of dread in my stomach as I looked a the pictures that were rapidly coming.

Every single one of them was of Antea. Of her cooking, cleaning, walking. In some of them, she was with Daniel, in some with red hair girl, but in mostly alone.