Their Vengeance: Siren's Revenge Book Two

11. Yana

Fyodor”s Rules #37 - Blood doesn’t decide family. Action decides family.

It had been a long time since I’d walked into a room of men who looked so primed for violence. Lukas was on edge, you could tell from the way he paced. His dogs watched him, their bodies tense, ears flicking around and listening for everything. Nikolai”s fangs were obviously on display; his red eye almost glowed with anger. But the biggest concern was Fyodor. His claws were out and his shoulders were hunched. I almost expected him to shift at any moment. It wasn”t often that happened. Fyodor had two shifted forms, and while his wolf got more use, he looked like he was about to launch straight into his werewolf form. It was terrifying. The only times I had ever seen him do it were when he was fighting for his life.

Alexei cracked a joke, but it had done nothing to defuse the tension. Pasha stepped past me and set his laptop on the bench. My first impulse was to go to Fyodor, to see if I could calm him. But first impulses were not always the best thing. With his mood right now, I was as likely to lose a hand as I was to have a calming effect.

Instead, I focused on what I could achieve. Fyodor may have hated it when I used my powers on him, but now was a good time to bend that rule.

“Clearly, we have a lot to discuss. Everyone needs to calm down and then someone needs to explain what everyone is so riled about so we can come up with a plan. Preferably before someone destroys everything in here.” I layered my power on a little thicker than normal, but I knew it was necessary. Not only to penetrate Fyodor”s defenses, but also to get through all the anger in the room.

When Pasha swayed slightly on his feet, I was worried I had overdone it, but then he started typing, and it was like a dam broke. The tension washed away, and everyone took a collective breath and came to the table. My eyes flicked between Nikolai and Fyodor as I waited for one of them to speak. Lukas was beside me—a warm presence I wasn”t yet used to—but I leaned into him slightly, taking his offer of support. It was odd, feeling him leaning back, but not unwelcome.

“Pasha has finally had a little luck following Darya around the city. She”s met with some odd people. But I’ll let him get to why it’s important after we cover the other information. The key players in this plot, as far as we have been able to work out, are Ksenia, Fiorenza, and Polina.” Fyodor tapped the map as he spoke, and I blinked at his words.

His sister? She was one of the few people in the city I knew he’d remained in contact with. She had helped us fake our deaths. Surely, he had to be mistaken. However, when I looked around, expecting someone to argue, Alexei gave me a slight shake of his head. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to start a disagreement when I didn”t have all the information. But I wasn”t looking forward to any more surprises which might come down the pipeline.

“From what Alexei has found out, this all revolves around a prophecy Ksenia was given in return for a favor the Grandmother”s Children did for a Gamayun Scion.” He paused again as we looked at each other in shock. We had an intimate understanding of Russian Scion lineages, as Fyodor had often told stories from his homeland when we were younger. He’d wanted Alexei and Nikolai to know more about the place they and their lineages heralded from.

Gamayun were myth, even by Scion standards.

Gamayun knew everything. All of creation. They spread divine messages and prophecies. They had been rare as hen’s teeth even before the bloodline wars, when a lot of prophetic or oracular lineages had been wiped out. But it wasn”t like there were multiple Gamayun lines. There was a single genetic line, and not every generation even produced a Seer.

Oracles or seers of any type were rare. Now they most often appeared in Olympic lineages, maybe once every three or four generations. Whereas before the bloodline wars, they had been a lineage all to their own. I would have been surprised if anyone without Russian ancestry had even heard of the Gamayun.

“Do we know what prophecy Ksenia was given?” I didn”t know what else I could have asked, so I just tried to keep us on track.

Lukas wasn”t just leaning into me now. He had an arm wrapped around me, and it was probably for the best. He felt like he was holding me up.

Alexei shook his head again. “It took me a lot of time to find out that much. The information you helped me extract led me to it. Unfortunately, I cannot kidnap one of my cousins or sisters and torture them for information, as much as I would like to. It would bring hell down onto our heads. They don”t share with outsiders, so I can”t even confirm that it”s the truth. At the moment, it”s a rumor, but it makes sense.”

My attention turned to Fyodor, my gaze confused. Sure, all the information we got started as rumors. Anything you learned in an interrogation, especially one that was pain motivated like Alexei”s, needed to be corroborated. But Fyodor didn”t typically act on rumors. He liked to be sure of things. Ever the tactician, a planner. Sure, sometimes there wasn”t the luxury of waiting to confirm everything, but if we could avoid acting on incorrect information, we did.

“This fits in line with what I have been able to discover. Polina has been seen less with the Bratva packs over the last few years. None of the packs claim her amongst their members anymore. Rumors have said she has withdrawn from Bratva life and now spends her time with the Grandmother”s Children.”

The Bratva in Chicago had many packs, as there were too many shifters to have a single pack. There was an established hierarchy between the packs, and not all werewolf packs either, although they made up the biggest numbers. The Grandmother”s Children were also technically a part of the Bratva. Mostly when it suited them, it seemed, or if someone external was trying to get between the different factions. But it was always the way—close ranks to outsiders. Even if those factions normally did nothing but fight with each other internally.

“Why would she work with them? That makes no sense. She took us in when all this happened. She helped us when we didn”t have anyone else to turn to. We would have been dead without her aid.” I was glad Pasha was the one who spoke up. I didn”t want to be the only one who asked these questions. The only one who struggled with all of this. Pasha looked like he more than struggled, though. He looked genuinely hurt.

Lukas”s voice came from above my head. “I have been doing a little digging into the hit list. I know it was a long time ago, and we killed off most of our potential leads. But there were some names we didn”t go after, those too caught up with the other families. The people who would have been more trouble than they were worth.”

After Nikolai had told me about it, I had asked Lukas about the night they had taken out all the hitmen in the city. It sounded like a bloodbath, but it made sense there had been people they hadn”t been able to go after.

“Aine owed me a favor. She”s mostly out of that game since she had the twins, so she was happy for me to call it in for something which she didn”t have to leave her home to complete.”

I didn”t know who he was talking about, but it wasn”t a good enough reason to interrupt him.

“She said she never got a list the night we were talking about. And if one had gone out, she definitely would have been someone to receive it.”

Pasha must have seen the confusion on my face. “Aine was an assassin for the Irish. Not just a hitman or hit woman, or whatever you want to call her. She rarely worked in Chicago, although she lives here. Aine did international work mostly. She”s a Sluagh.”

That made me blink in surprise. No wonder she and Lukas did favors for each other. The Sluagh and the Wild Hunt often worked in tandem. Wanting to see Lukas’s expression, I turned and looked at him as he continued.

“I asked around after she told me, sticking to the Irish and the Armenians. None of their contract killers knew anything about a hit list with our names from a decade ago. They knew something must have happened for us to eliminate so many people in one night, and they had heard Fyodor and Yana had been taken out. So they figured it was our way of making a show of force, so none of the families would try to wipe us out, too.”

I blinked, trying to absorb this information, then turned to Fyodor, like he could give me guidance. The only expression on his face was pity, though. “I know none of this makes sense, rybka. I took Polina at her word when she told me there was a hit list. With the explosion at the house, there wasn”t enough time to investigate things properly. I needed to get you to safety. That was my priority.”

I tried not to let his words hurt and make me feel like it was my fault he hadn”t been able to examine things properly. None of this was my fault. Taking the blame for it would only hurt me. Fyodor was my father, and protecting me was part of his role as a parent. He spent a large part of our childhood telling us family protected each other. We were the only ones we could rely on.

Lukas gently urged me to turn all the way, so my back was again pressed to his chest. Greedily, I drank in every moment of the comfort he offered before I spoke. “So what does Fiorenza have to do with all of this? Ksenia has some kind of prophecy, and for some reason we don”t know yet, she brought Polina in on it. So why bring in Fiorenza? She doesn”t care about anything except how things can benefit her.”

I hadn”t been expecting Nikolai to chime in. He was the one trying to tie himself to the Italians—to Fiorenza in particular—but he did. “It makes sense, though. Having two different factions come to us with the news. It helped give everything credibility. Sasha showed up to deliver the news to us, but she knew we wouldn”t believe her. Fiorenza was with her, along with Marja. By going outside of the small circle of people we are related to, we believed them more easily. Marja had no reason to lie to us. If she was still alive, I was sure she”d be furious at this farce.”

Marja had been a no-nonsense woman, especially in the time I had known her. The head of the Bratva women, Fyodor had told me when she had died three years ago. I hadn”t known her particularly well, but I had seen her at the Bratva gatherings we had gone to as children. She wasn”t the type who liked to indulge the social abilities of children, even if they were as refined as mine.

Alexei spoke up. He had been quiet unless a question was directed at him, or there was information only he could add. “All right, we have more information now, and everyone agrees. So we need to come up with a fucking plan.”

He was right.

I looked at Fyodor again. He was always the one with the plan. He stared at the map, like he saw something none of the rest of us could. “We need to get them somewhere we can take them out. It can”t be the forest. It can”t be Italian territory. And it can”t be here.”

Nikolai interrupted, clearing his throat with such a smarmy tone I wanted to throw something at him. “Why can”t it be here? We have a reason to draw almost all of them to the same place, a joint engagement party. It will bring the Italians, and you know the Grandmother”s Children will come to meet Alexei”s fiancée.”

Lukas shook his head, his arm squeezing around me briefly. “If we hit them after they come to one of our gatherings, the blame will fall on us. They”ll say it was a trap. We need to come up with something else.”

However, Fyodor and Alexei both looked thoughtful.

Alexei spoke first. “Ksenia barely comes out of the woods, but she would for this. A chance to ruin my engagement … I think it would be one of the few things which would get her to come to us. It is much safer than going to her.”

Fyodor ran the tip of one claw over the map, not drawing or tracing anything. He was clearly deep in his thoughts. “We could try to do what they did and make it appear like someone else. You’ve been the target of many attacks lately. We could make it look like an attack gone wrong. They are likely the ones attacking you anyway, so it would serve them right. A little poetic justice.”

I watched Pasha”s eyebrow rise, and I didn”t have to be in his mind to know what he was thinking. Fyodor wasn”t one for subterfuge, he liked to be forthright with people. While he had a creative side, he kept it clear of his work and had taught us to always do the same. Emotions clouded things—made it messy—it was when people made mistakes and bad things happened.

“What do we actually want to achieve? Are we taking them out or are we trying to capture them and get some answers? Do we want to know about this prophecy or are we after revenge, because those are two very different plans? Alexei is the best interrogator in the city, but I am not sure even he could break Ksenia. Hell, I”m not sure we could hold the witch safely.”

Pasha made good points, and again, we all turned to Fyodor. It was like this one conversation had brought us all back to our roles as children again, looking to him for guidance. Maybe it was this mindset which had me surprised when it was Lukas”s voice that rang out clearly, full of conviction.

“We kill them all. Who gives a fuck about the prophecy? Whatever it was, it clearly involved splitting us apart, which they achieved. Either the prophecy came true, or it didn”t. If it”s something still to come, I don”t want to fucking know. They will lose anyway. We”re back together. Now we need to let things happen. But remember, ‘Rule eight—Every enemy you leave alive is someone who can kill you later’. At best, these women are plotting against us, at worst, they betrayed us. All of us. So we kill them, and anyone who tries to stop us.”

I didn”t have an argument against what he said. It was true. I had vowed I was coming for the hearts of the people who had betrayed me. Only I had been wrong about whose hearts I should reap.

Nikolai and Alexei nodded, although Alexei looked more manic than the rest of us. His eyes were already alight with the thought of the bloodshed to come.

Fyodor was the last to agree, but with his nod, a collective exhale went through the group. “We have a party to plan. We’ll take them out on their way home. It won”t be easy, but I have faith in you boys. You have done well in my absence.”

Nikolai looked like he might stumble, and I knew exactly how he felt at that moment. Praise from Fyodor was hard won, and even more precious for it. Hopefully, this didn”t turn him into an even more smug bastard.