Chapter 10
Ten
Journal Entry
Twenty years old
Tomorrow, I turn twenty-one, a big milestone for most, but for me, it’s just another day closer to securing my place in the Society…so I can destroy it from within.
“Need a break?” X asks me.
“No.” The dimly lit room’s bare walls have nothing for me to focus on, so I concentrate on the sharp, incessant sting of the tattoo needle scoring into my chest. The biting pricks of pain are actually soothing.
X wipes the area he just did, then continues with his work. He’s the only person I’ll let permanently mark me. I have no idea who the other guy is doing Aleksei’s ink, but Pyotr says he’s cool.
I peer down at the symbol that X has been drawing for the last two hours, the black, bloody lines more vibrant compared to the other tattoos that already cover my body.
But this tattoo is special. Not because tomorrow is my and Aleksei’s birthday, but because it’s the mark of the Petrov bratva. I’m now one of them.
Aleksei hisses. “Fuck, that hurts.”
The man doing his ink glances up at him and presses the needle in harder. Aleksei keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t complain anymore.
“I saw two new Ducatis being delivered this morning. I never got a fucking Ducati for my birthday,” Pytor grumbles from his stool across from us.
I miss Mama the most on our birthdays. It’s a hard day for me, and I’d rather spend it alone, but Mrs. Petrov tends to go over-the-top with the birthday party planning, and I don’t have the heart to disappoint her by not showing up.
“For real? Ow! Fuck! Stop doing that!” Aleksei says to the guy, who’s clearly enjoying torturing him.
“Then stop moving, you little shit, unless you want this star to look like an eighty-year-old man’s wanker.”
That’s the first time he’s spoken since we arrived. His accent is definitely British, and I dislike him for that alone because his voice sounds too much like Hendrix Knight’s.
Settling back, a wicked grin curves Aleksei’s mouth. “I’m celebrating the big two-one with my head buried between Sasha’s long legs.”
My brother, the manwhore.
The guy swiftly lifts his tattoo gun when Pyotr punches Aleksei’s shoulder. “That’s my cousin, asshole.”
“Your very sexy cousin.”
“Who you will not kiss, touch, or fuck, unless you want her father butchering your ass into a million pieces.”
“Worth it,” Aleksei replies.
Pyotr taps my shoulder. “Summer vacay is almost over, and we haven’t gone anywhere. I refuse to start my junior year at DF without at least spending a week at the beach before we head back.”
“Beach trip sounds like a fucking good idea to me,” Aleksei pipes in.
I don’t even want to think about Darlington right now. Summer is the only respite I get from seeing Tristan, Constantine, and Hendrix every fucking day when we’re on campus.
X sits up and cracks his neck. “Done.”
Pyotr examines the finished design, then nods his approval. “Awesome job, as always. Thanks, X.”
“Can you do one more?” I ask when he starts to pull off his nitrile gloves.
Aleksei looks at me like I’m insane. “Where the fuck do you think he’s going to put it? Your dick?”
He has a point. I’m practically covered from neck to ankle, my body a canvas of colorful artwork. It’s therapeutic for me. Sitting in this chair is a way to hush the chaotic noise in my brain, even if for only a few hours.
“Where?” X asks.
I hold out my hands. “ANGEL on the left, DEVIL on the right. Serif font.”
“That’s so lame,” my brother says, but X just shrugs and puts on a pair of clean gloves.
The bell above the parlor door chimes, and Drako Petrov enters, his intimidating size and larger-than-life presence making the space suddenly feel smaller.
“I need to speak with Aleksander.”
His stern tone is all it takes to start clearing the room. X and the Brit immediately stop what they’re doing and walk out.
In the eight years since I lost everything, Drako Petrov has been more of a father to me than the man who had raised me.
He treats Aleksei and me no differently than he treats his own son.
While living with the Petrovs, I learned the true meaning of family, and it makes me hate Nikolai Stepanoff even more.
He didn’t know Aleksei and I weren’t really his, and yet, he still treated us like dogs.
The only love he showed us came with bruises and broken bones.
“What’s going on?” Pyotr queries his father.
“You and Aleksei go back to the house.”
Pyotr doesn’t push further, but Aleksei hangs back. Drako took us in, has given us a good life, and made sure no one found out about what I did, but none of that would matter to Aleksei. He would kill Drako in a heartbeat to protect me.
After a tense stand-off and a nod from me, Aleksei reluctantly pulls on his T-shirt and leaves with Pyotr.
“Your brother would make a shit soldier,” Drako says as he lowers his massive bulk onto the stool X just vacated and examines the bratva mark on my chest. Pulling on fresh gloves, he picks up the tattoo machine. “Too defiant.”
“A good soldier is not one who follows orders blindly, but one who knows when not to.”
“That’s a very idealistic viewpoint that has led to the downfall of many empires.”
“Many of those empires needed to fall. History has shown us that.”
He positions my arm on the pad and spreads my fingers, the buzz of the machine echoing off the walls as he continues where X left off on the letter A on my thumb. “I knew an angel once.”
In the bratva, there is no expectation of privacy, even with family. Hidden cameras and microphones are everywhere. How long had he been watching and listening?
“Your mother,” he says, and my eyes fly to his face.
“You knew her?”
“I was in love with her.”
His words go off like a grenade being tossed in the room.
Switching to my forefinger, he makes the first line for the letter N.
“Your mother and I were friends as children. She was my first love. And my first heartbreak. Nina was a beautiful soul. Like the sun—brilliant and bright and spectacular. I regret every day that I didn’t fight harder for her.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife. I love the life we have built and the son we share.
But there will always be this ‘what if’ that hangs over my head when it comes to what could have been between us.
Maybe that is why I have always looked at you as the son she and I would have had if things were different. ”
Astounded by his confession, I utter, “But Aleksei…”
His pale green eyes meet mine. “Is nothing like you. The same face, yes, but not the same heart or strength. Those qualities Nina only gifted to you.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just sit there, lost in his “what ifs” as he finishes the last letter of ANGEL.
There is so much I don’t know about Mama and what her life was like when she was younger.
She never talked about it or about her parents, and I never bothered to find out because the loss of her remains too painful to want to dig up the memories of her past.
“I’m glad she got to experience happiness and love. At least once.” Because fuck knows, she didn’t get either with Nikolai Stepanoff.
Drako applies ointment to each finger and wraps each one with a derma cover. “Aoife was murdered.”
Another grenade, this one leaving shrapnel embedded deep. It’s been almost eight years, and yet the wound her death left carved into my heart never healed and is still bleeding. “I don’t understand. You said she died in a car accident. A drunk driver.”
“There was no car accident.”
“But…” My mind has trouble grasping what this means. I jerk back. “You lied to me?”
Drako’s large, scarred hands grab the sides of my grief-stricken face, forcing me to look at him, but I can’t. “New information has come to light from a source I trust. The story about the accident was a lie to cover up what really happened.”
“Who killed her?” I demand to know, rage exploding like a firestorm, obliterating everything in its path.
Drako’s countenance hardens. Before me now is not the man who has been a surrogate father to Aleksei and me, but the head of the bratva. “Francesco Amato ordered her death. He found out where they were in Ireland and sent his men, then burned the house with their bodies inside.”
He says it so matter-of-factly. Clinically. With no emotion. Like he reciting verbatim from a book.
I blink, blink again, as the cruel truth of Aoife’s death sinks in, and grief curdles into something twisted and dark.
I have mourned that lie for four-fifths of a decade.
Choked on it every night when I’d wake up gasping from the nightmare of Aoife trapped under twisted metal and broken glass.
None of it was true. Aoife was murdered.
Francesco took her from me. He hurt my mother in the most savage way.
I’m going to take immense pleasure in reciprocating all the pain he has caused.
A quick death would be too merciful. He deserves to suffer the same way Aoife and my mother suffered.
And once I have taken everything from him, I’m going to fucking kill him.