Chapter Twenty Eight
LYLA VOZNESENSKY
“Lyla!”
I turned at my brother’s loud, excited voice. Lev strode toward me, a laptop bag slung over his right shoulder and a duffel bag dangling from his left hand.
“Lev!” Running the short distance to him, I jumped into his open arms, squeezing him tightly.
A sense of home instantly filled me, and I breathed out a contented sigh. Despite all our differences and disagreements, despite what his presence represented, I was so happy to see my brother. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him.
He was a few years older than me, but the stress and hardship of our teen years had aged him well beyond his years. His hair was light and honey-colored like mine, his eyes a similar color as well. He was only a little bit taller than me, coming in at 6’3, with a strong build and wide shoulders.
Lev laughed, returning my hug before stepping back. He went from being the warm, kindhearted brother who took care of me when there was no one else, to the hard, cruel man hell-bent on revenge in the blink of an eye.
“Did you get the information we need?”
No how are you? or what have you been up to? Just straight down to fucking business. I was compelled to roll my eyes, but refrained. “Yes.” My gaze did a quick sweep of my surroundings. “We should go somewhere more private. We need to talk.”
Lev seemed to finally take in the fact that we were standing in a crowded airport with lots of prying eyes and nosy ears. Given the reach the Bratva possessed, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were having the airports monitored.
Two hulking men appeared behind my brother—part of his security detail, I assumed. He never went anywhere without someone watching his back. “Where are you parked?” he asked.
“Just out front.”
He nodded and began walking toward the exit. I let him lead, even though he had no fucking idea what my car looked like or where exactly it was parked. But Lev loved to lead.
A cold burst of air hit me when we stepped outside. I shivered, pulling my coat tighter around my body. “There,” I said, pointing to the black SUV parked between a taxi and a red sedan.
He made a beeline straight for it. I went to get into the driver’s seat.
“No,” Lev said, opening the back door. “Sit back here with me so we can talk.”
I didn’t want to. The idea of someone I didn’t know driving my car irked me, but I did as my brother asked—no, demanded—getting into the back seat. One of the men who’d accompanied him got behind the wheel while the other jumped into the passenger seat.
“Give Kane your address,” Lev said, eyes plastered to his phone.
I was most certainly not doing that. I would be giving Kane the address to a decoy house I’d rented in preparation for Lev’s visit. There was no way I could take him home to Lukyan. Not until I’d had a chance to explain everything.
I spouted off the address. Kane started the engine and put the address into the navigation before flicking the indicator on and pulling out into the street.
“So where is he?” Lev asked.
“At his father’s compound, like we predicted.”
“And the security measures?”
“Extravagant. There will be no way to infiltrate on our own. We’ll need an in. My cover was blown.”
His brows snapped together. “I only just gave you that identity. How is it blown already?”
I internally winced. I had to choose my words very carefully. Lev couldn’t know how far my obsession truly went. He was liable to have a heart attack if he did.
“One of the maids recognized me.” Plausible. Completely plausible. “I thought it better to leave than risk capture.”
“Smart. Delivering the information about the compound was more important, and crucial to the success of our mission.”
More important than what? My life?
“I’m not sure this is the right course of action anymore, Lev.”
He stiffened, his whole body turning to stone. Confusion streaked through his eyes, replaced quickly with anger. “This is because of that fucking kid, isn’t it?”
“Lukyan isn’t a kid,” I gritted out behind clenched teeth.
“Have you seen the way he acts? ’Cause I’d beg to fucking differ.”
“He’s wild and carefree, exactly like me.”
He shook his head, his frustration mounting. “I knew I should have given you a different job the second I saw how obsessed you got with Lukyan Volkov. I fucking knew it. You’re too easily influenced. You allowed that fucker to manipulate you!”
Lev couldn’t have given me a different job because he had no one else to do the dirty work for him.
No one else he trusted, anyway. The money he’d inherited when he turned eighteen allowed him to hire mercenaries and security guards, but they could only be trusted with his life, never information about his decade-long revenge plan.
“He didn’t manipulate me.” He did. He totally, totally did. It was just completely unintentional on his part. “I fell in love with him and married him.”
“You what?!” Lev roared.
I didn’t flinch under his harsh tone or his fury-heated gaze. He didn’t scare me. Kane’s eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror and then back to the road. His hand moved away from the steering wheel and disappeared around his side.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out he’d just palmed his weapon.
I didn’t move my eyes from Lev’s as I pulled the ring out of my pocket and slid it on my finger. “I married him.”
He seemed utterly gobsmacked. “Why the fuck would you do that?! How the fuck did you do that? You’re telling me you got Lukyan Volkov, the playboy of the Bratva, who’s never been seen with the same woman twice, to agree to marry you?”
“The details of it are not important,” I grumbled. He didn’t need to know the particulars. All that mattered was that we were married. “And I did it because we’re meant to be together.”
“No. You did it because you thought it would save him, and it won’t,” he spat.
My eyes narrowed dangerously. “He’s my husband, Lev.”
“And that means you’ll choose him over me? Is that what you’re saying? Your own fucking brother?”
I said nothing. The truth of it was, I could never hurt my brother, but I could never allow something to happen to Lukyan either.
“Your problem is with Dimitri. Not his children.”
Lev punched the seat in front of him. “When are you going to learn?! Everyone knows hurting his children is hurting him. It has always been our plan to kill them all. Wait for the best opportunity to kidnap Dimitri, use him as bait to pull all his children in, and then when they come to rescue him, we kill them all in front of him. Make him fucking watch as we cut them up piece by piece. It will absolutely destroy him, having to watch them all die for his sins. You can’t just decide to pull out now. I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it?” I repeated, aghast.
Lev was older. Bigger. Stronger. But he wasn’t better. I knew that, and, more importantly, he knew that. Some people were born to give the kill orders, and others were born to implement them. Born to take lives.
Lev was the former; I was the latter. He couldn’t beat me, no matter how hard he tried.
Seething anger flared across his face before he was able to mask it.
“I would never force you to do something you don’t want to do,” he tried to clarify, though his words came out rough and strained.
“But you can’t just back out on me now. Not after all the work we’ve put into getting here.
Dimitri deserves to suffer. I want to make him suffer.
I want to make him bleed and cry for what he did to me—us. ”
The image of Papa D crying wasn’t really one I could conjure. It was hard to imagine. But I knew if there was one thing in the world capable of making the Bratva Butcher cry, it would be the deaths of his children.
“I just don’t see the point anymore,” I said honestly. “It’s been ten years, Lev, and whether you want to admit it or not, Dad kinda deserved it for what he did to Yekaterina Volkova—”
He slapped me across the face. The shock of it froze me solid.
Lev had never struck me before, not even when I’d accidentally snipped the top of his ear off when I tried to cut his hair when we were kids.
He’d even lied to our father about what happened, saying he’d done it himself to save me from his wrath.
It wasn’t until this moment that I realized he was no longer that brother. Our parents’ deaths had changed him. Molded him into the man sitting in front of me. Someone who once used to protect me, but would now strike me in anger.
“I don’t care how long it’s fucking been,” Lev growled out. “I’m going to make him feel every ounce of pain he’s caused me.”
He’d finally said me, not us. My cheek felt hot, and I knew if I looked in the mirror, I’d see his handprint clear on my skin.
“Then you’ll have to do it on your own. I want no part in it.” I kept my head high, even knowing he could possibly strike me again. He needed to see I wouldn’t be intimidated into changing my mind.
Lev must have realized that because he completely switched tactics, going from outraged to sad. “You’ve been with me every step of the way. You can’t just abandon me like this. I need you, Laylay.”
Now he was laying on the guilt. Does he really think I am that fucking stupid? He only called me that when he was trying to manipulate me into doing something I didn’t want to do.
Kane pulled over, having finally reached our destination, stopping in front of a bunch of apartment complexes. The engine turned off. Silence filled the car.
“Give us a minute, please,” I asked Kane and the other man.
Neither moved.
I should have known they wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t pay their checks, after all.
I looked at Lev. He held my gaze for a moment before moving it to Kane and flicking his head to the side.
Kane and the other man got out of the car.