Slipping into the Dark Side (Morozov Mafia)

15. Whose fault is it?

Chapter fifteen

Whose fault is it?

T atianna sat in the chair in front of her father’s desk. Her hair was pinned in a messy bun, and she wore the longest and biggest set of pajamas she could find to help comfort her broken heart. She hugged her legs and fought back tears. No matter how she sat, there was no easing the ache between her legs or the pain in her soul.

Nevsky had his hands on his desk, leaning over the videotape and the letter. Since it was delivered, he had done nothing but stare at it. Tatianna couldn’t handle the humiliation. It was suffocating, but she had to face the aftermath of her actions.

“Was it worth it?” Nevsky finally whispered. He lifted his gaze toward her, but the sight of her pissed him off he flung everything off his desk, making her jump. He rounded the corner and raised his hand to smack her, but Yakov’s warning still played in the back of his mind. Instead, he put a finger in her face. “Stop your fucking tears. Think I don’t know you by now, Tati? Your brother withered away in the room next to you, and you never cried once for him. Not fucking once.”

Tatianna hardened and planted her feet on the floor. She looked up into his face with a sneer on her lips. Her father was so sure of his statement because he didn’t know the nights she didn’t sleep or the food she didn’t eat, but why not just call her a cold bitch? Yakov certainly thought so. All these men thought emotions ruled women, which made it so easy to manipulate them. They set themselves up with their primitive thinking.

“It was worth it,” she bit because she knew he wanted to hear it. But it hadn’t been by a long shot. She was devastated and disgusted with herself, but why not become the whore her father’s believed she was?

Nevsky reached behind him, snatched the lamp off his desk, and threw it across the room. It knocked down the photo of her mother, and the glass cracked and shattered on the wood floor. He was like a gorilla having a temper tantrum. It made him appear so weak.

“You want to keep throwing things, Papa? Or do you want to get back at him?”

He flinched to attack her, a fist now instead, but he yanked himself away at the last moment. “I don’t want to hear from you again. I don’t want to know you exist. I would kick you out, but I can’t, can I? Because you whored yourself to the fucking devil.” Nevsky collapsed in his chair. “Get out.”

Tatianna shoved her way through her siblings. She cursed them for being around, for listening to her shame. None of them would understand what she was going through. They were young and inexperienced, and their innocence annoyed her. She slammed the door to her room, and though she wanted to throw herself down in her bed and cry, she pulled out a folder from under her mattress and slapped it on the desk. In it were dozens of ideas, dozens of terrible thoughts over the years when she wanted to get vengeance on her father for betraying her mother, vengeance on friends that would whisper behind her back, vengeance on a god that stole her siblings.

Tatianna was not going to be steamrolled into submission. She was going to fight back. Yakov picked the wrong woman to mistreat.

“So you went through with it?” Boris sat with his legs thrown over the armrest of the wingback chair, with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, nearly falling asleep. He had just come from an all-night bender and looked like death and smelled like it, Yakov remarked.

“I told you I would,” Yakov replied with a deep sigh, staring at the papers, trying to work, but his eyes were heavy. Sleep was calling, but his dreams as of late were aggravating, full of a woman he hated and a family he was trying to destroy.

“You fucked it up.”

“And how did I do that?” he vaguely wondered, concentrating on the words on the paper with no avail. Boris was like a mosquito, buzzing in his ear, but there was no bug spray to get rid of him.

“You fell for her.”

The words disgusted him.

“You ever think if our fathers weren’t the crazy psychos that they were, we would have been stand-up citizens?”

Yakov gave up, dropping the paper and leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. There was rarely a time that Yakov thought of his father. He knew long ago that if he didn’t shut out all the demons, he’d become a waste of space or kill himself. He learned to accept the bad parts of himself and embrace them. It was the only way to get Yaroslav’s attention, by being more evil than he was.

Did he sometimes want to be someone else?

Who didn’t?

But where did those thoughts get him?

“She failed. And got bit. Whose fault is it really?”

Boris chuckled. He twisted in the chair, putting his feet on the floor, and tried to get the ashes of his cigarette in the ashtray, but he missed by several inches. “No one messes with the Morozovs.”

Yakov heaved up from his chair. “I’m going to shower. See yourself out.”

“I’m gonna pass out on your couch if you don’t mind. The freaking baby won’t stop crying.”

Yakov stared down at the man. “Fatherhood not as wonderful as you thought?”

Boris waved a tired hand. “Just wait. Our sons are going to be best friends, just like us.”

Yakov sneered at the idea. Last week, the thought of having a child didn’t seem as terrible. Tatianna would be beautiful, pregnant. But now, a family caused bitterness on his tongue. Perhaps it wasn’t in the cards for him. He could take one of Luerna’s children as his heir. He would never have to deal with a child’s unconditional love or try to be a father who actually cared.

As he walked to his room, he could hear Lunera’s kids playing in the backroom, but he didn’t want to see her. She was disappointed in him. Luerna truly thought he was falling in love. It was a woman’s simple mindset that made her believe such things. If she was logical, she would have realized what he was doing the whole time. He needed others to believe he was feeling something, so if Tatianna were ever alone with them, they would do nothing but rave about his yearning. Deceiving was one of the main things he was good at. How was it his fault that Tatianna believed in it so easily? She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be desired. Her ego was what destroyed her, not him.

But Yakov wasn’t completely heartless. Nevsky wasn’t allowed to disown her. That should be enough to warrant him some forgiveness.

Not that I need any.

Undressing, he stood in front of the stall, watching the water pour out. Tatianna’s touch still lingered on him. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the way she gripped his cock. But it wasn’t only her touch that he was craving. Her voice, her presence, everything she was, lingered like a ghost that didn’t know it was dead.

With determination, he flung himself into the boiling water and hissed as it burned his skin. It was better to get her off, to pretend she never was. He had burned that bridge for more than one reason. He knew what she could have been. And weaknesses were not tolerated in the Morozov family.