15. Kirill
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KIRILL
V olkov’s study was eerily quiet as he closed the door behind us. Or maybe it only felt that way to me.
I was dimly aware of father and son arguing, but I couldn’t focus on anything but how time seemed to have crawled to a standstill. In my periphery, Volkov moved to stand beside his desk with Yarik nipping at his heels, his hands gesturing wildly in the moonlight. The latter slanted through parted drapes and illuminated the otherwise dark room. It washed over me, too. Made it impossible to hide in the shadows the way I had for years now.
I wouldn’t let this happen.
I couldn’t ?—
Volkov was still going off, saying what, I didn’t know. No matter how hard I tried to break through the chains of panic, I felt stuck, paralyzed, unable to draw even the slightest bit of oxygen into my screaming lungs. Time trudged on—left me locked inside that old warehouse in Moscow, my clothes, hands, hair all covered in death. It didn’t matter that I’d scrubbed myself raw after—the betrayal still stained my soul.
And now my boss wanted me to . . .
On a ragged breath, I squeezed my eyes shut. No. No way would I ever hurt Yarik the way I’d hurt Sergerov. Not to teach him a lesson. Not even to save my own life. Fuck that.
Yarik was shouting. His panic was the only thing that could supersede my own, and I fumbled with the Bad Things Box inside my head, cracking open the heavy lid and shoving a dead Pavel Sergerov back inside where he belonged. Shoved all my fear in there, too, because I couldn’t watch Yarik’s back if I was too busy watching my own.
“I’m not doing it,” he told Volkov fiercely. “Go ahead and ambush me like you did at dinner every day for the rest of my life—doesn’t matter to me. I’m not marrying Giulia Accardi. I’m not marrying anyone .”
Petr’s nostrils flared. “You have a duty to this family.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
“Why? Because you need more heirs to continue this trainwreck of a family? Because this is what the Bratva does?” Like the impulsive fool he’d been since childhood, Yarik didn’t bend—or break. Just lifted his chin and stared his father down. “I don’t need the Bratva. I don’t need you .”
“But he does.”
You’d think that with all the strict firearm laws in the UK, it’d be impossible to get away with running an entire criminal enterprise based on manufacturing and selling weapons, but the rules never seemed to apply to Volkov or to his family. And I wasn’t a member of the family .
The gun Volkov pulled out and aimed at my face hammered that point home for good.
I dragged in a shaky, uneven breath.
“I brought him into this house because you begged me.” Volkov didn’t look my way, the whole of his attention rooted on his son. “I gave him structure. I gave him purpose. And while you, my own flesh and blood, might think that you are better off without me, Kirill here knows that isn’t true for himself. Without me, he would be no one. Nameless. Alone in the world. Rubbish tossed aside, unwanted.”
Unwanted.
My chest burned. My fingers curled—but there was nothing to hold onto. Nothing tangible, anyway. Just the familiar gut punch of agony. For all his faults, Volkov wasn’t lying, not about me. I was no one without the Bratva. Nameless. Alone in the world. Rubbish tossed aside, unwanted by the same people—whoever they were—who should have loved me unconditionally.
I was the boy who’d washed up on the River Thames.
Some part of me was still that boy, stupid and endlessly na?ve, despite the fact that it hadn’t taken me all that long to accept that my entire existence was apparently forgettable. No one had searched for me. No one had hunted me down, feverish with worry that I might be forever lost to them. Even paying for bloodwork recently had, to the geneticist’s surprise, revealed no trace of a family who might claim me as their own. I’d learned that I was Irish and Japanese. Beyond that, I could have been anyone.
My throat closed up as the ugly truth seeped into my bones.
I was unwanted .
“I can kill him just as easily as I can let him live,” Volkov told his son without even a trace of inflection. “The choice is yours.”
Yarik glanced at me. Hope burned in his gaze. “We can leave. Right now, I mean. Just walk out and never look back.”
We’d be killed before we even reached the property line. Hadn’t he warned me of that when we were kids? And maybe it was selfish of me, but I’d rather him be alive and miserable than happy and dead. Dead was permanent. Dead was forever. Dead wasn’t an option.
I turned to my pakhan . “Punish me instead.”
“Kirill,” Yarik burst out, “no. Don’t?—”
“You’re angry that Yaroslav embarrassed you in front of Accardi. And you’re angry with me, too, because we both know that I spent years going behind your back every chance I got, always looking for a way out. You’re offended by my presence. That I spat on your hospitality. It doesn’t matter that I’ve done everything you’ve asked for the better part of five years. Judgment has already been passed, and I failed. Am I right?”
Those cold blue eyes turned glacial. “ Da .”
“Then take it out on me.”
“No.” A hand wrapped around my bicep and tugged me backward, putting me behind a body larger than my own but still lanky with youth. I managed to right my equilibrium and lunge forward, putting us shoulder-to-shoulder, just as Yarik growled, “ Don’t touch him .”
For a moment, Volkov only stared at his son.
And then he cut him down, the way only he could, right there at the knees: “The irony, Yaroslav, that you’d risk your own life to protect someone who has been a better son to me, and to this family, than you ever have.” Before either of us could recover from that emotional blow, he stepped close and pressed the gun to Yarik’s temple. “Shirt, off. Then get the rope.”
All color drained from my best friend’s face.
What did that mean, get the rope? Why was?—?
Like he couldn’t bear the thought of my eyes on him, Yarik twisted away. Wordlessly, he ripped the tails of his dress shirt from his waistband before attacking the buttons with what I could only imagine were trembling fingers. Even his shoulders trembled. Meanwhile, Volkov never lowered the gun from his son’s head.
At Volkov’s dinner table, no one was allowed a firearm aside from the pakhan . His rule. One that we all made sure to obey. Not a problem, usually, but that meant I was currently unarmed. If I stepped out of line, Petr would pull the trigger. Even if he didn’t, I’d bet that his bodyguards were already in the hall, just waiting for the signal to bust down the door.
We’d be dead in a heartbeat, me and Yarik.
No do-overs.
No second chances.
The fucking end.
With my heart pounding erratically, I watched Yarik shrug out of his shirt and toss it aside. It fluttered to the floor like a white flag of surrender. I couldn’t say the last time that I’d seen my best friend shirtless, if I ever had at all. Our world was one of death and violence; in battle, you never removed your armor.
Until now.
Shimmering moonlight ghosted over his pale white skin, revealing a web of textured scarring that crisscrossed over the broad expanse of his back. There were hundreds. Too many to count. Where the scars overlapped, the flesh was thick and almost grotesquely uneven, a sharp contrast to the thin, spidery lines hidden like wraiths near his waist.
His back was a map of horrors.
Horrors that rippled with the movement of his arm, and it was only then that I tore my gaze away long enough to see him reach for a length of rope that hung from a silver hook on the wall. Immediately, I zeroed in on the messy patchwork of paint beneath it. As if . . . as if the hook had been adjusted over the years to match the height of a growing boy.
I swayed on my feet.
I might have said his name then, whispered it, even, but when Yarik turned back around, he kept his gaze fixed on the floor. It was, I thought with a surge of terror, the first time in all the years I’d known him that he’d actively avoided making eye contact with me.
With his head bowed, he handed the rope to his father, who?—
No.
No bloody way.
“You asked me to punish you instead,” Volkov said as I physically recoiled from his outstretched hand. “So, I will. This is to be your punishment.”
The terror in my blood sprouted wings of fury. “Kill me, then. Because I won’t?—”
“Stand your ground, and I’ll pull the trigger.”
“You wouldn’t.” My mouth went bone dry as I shot a startled glance toward Yarik. “You said it yourself—he’s your heir.”
“I have another.”
Wait. He couldn’t mean . . . “ Nina ?”
“There’d be pushback, I’m sure. A girl in charge?” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “But maybe it’s time for a change, especially if my own son can’t handle the responsibilities that come with his position. If that’s the case, then I’m only expediting the future because no one will respect a pakhan who puts himself above his men.” His finger settled on the trigger. “Take the rope, Kirill, for his sake, if not your own. I won’t tell you again.”
There was no love lost between father and son. Everyone knew they hated each other, but I hadn’t thought it would ever get this far—that Petr Volkov would rather murder his own kid than let him stand on his own two feet away from the Bratva and its old-school expectations.
Stupid. Endlessly na?ve. Because I should have known.
Volkov was a coldblooded monster; he’d destroy his own family without a second thought and then make up for the loss by marrying someone else, knocking her up, and producing a second batch of offspring. Or a third. Or however long it took him to populate his line with a string of obedient heirs. Heirs like picture-perfect Giulia Accardi who knew her place.
Yarik rasped out my name.
It was my turn to avoid his gaze. My turn to reach for the rope and wrap its length around my fist. I had a momentary, impossible fantasy of using it as a noose on Volkov, but even if I managed to pull it off, we’d never get past the guards at the door. The window wasn’t an option, either, not when the study was on the second floor.
Better alive and miserable than happy and dead.
“Against the wall.” My voice was low, rough with purpose. I hadn’t cried in years, but I would now if I let myself. Already, I could feel tears burning the backs of my eyes. When Yarik didn’t move, I felt myself crack in two. “Fucking now , Yaroslav.”
I put my hand on his back, right over all those old scars, and pushed him toward the wall. He stumbled. Peered back at me with a bewildered look on his face like he wasn’t sure how he’d found himself in the middle of a waking nightmare and didn’t know how to get himself out of it.
We were both in that nightmare.
Both drowning. Both screaming to wake up, wake up, wake up .
Tremors shook me to my core as I cut my gaze away and used my body to corner his. He was bigger than me, had always been bigger than me, and it said a lot about his current state of mind that he let me push him around, backing him up against the wall until the only way out was through me. The air between us crackled with renewed tension, and still, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, not even when I grabbed his wrists, looped the rope around them both, and cinched the knot tight.
He said my name again. Panicked. Desperate.
I didn’t need to see his expression to know what he wanted, which fate he’d prefer.
“No.” My soul screamed the word even though it fell as a whisper from my lips. “No, Yarik.”
“Kiryusha, please.”
“ No ,” I snarled. I won’t let you go .
Better alive and miserable than happy and dead.
Wrapping a hand around his linked wrists, I dragged them above his head and looped the rope over the hook. The same place where he’d been beaten by his monster of a father for fuck knows how long. The same place where I was about to . . .
“Don’t move,” I warned shakily.
He ducked his head, forcing me finally to look him in the eye. I hated him for it. Hated myself even more because I looked, and I looked, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away, no matter how hard I tried. This was my penance. My punishment. Holding his stormy blue gaze, knowing that I was about to ruin him—ruin us ?—
Because I was the selfish one.
If Yarik was gone, then I’d truly be alone. I couldn’t let that happen even if that meant he hated me for the rest of our lives.
I took a step back.
And then I took another and another.
Each one widened the gap between us, taking me farther away. It felt like a new beginning, but one where the storybook starts on the second page because the first has been torn out. There was a past there, an origin, but it was lost, destined to be forgotten. From this day forward, this moment would always exist between us, and our lives would be forever rewritten.
There was Before. There was After.
My heart lay shattered somewhere in between.
Volkov said, “Your belt,” and that was all the direction I needed. With slow, shaking fingers, I unbuckled my belt and slid the leather through the loops of my black trousers. I did everything I could to ignore the way Yarik kept looking back at me with quick, hopeful glances like he was waiting for me to shout, “Gotcha!” as if this was some sort of awful joke.
But when I gripped the leather tighter and told him to face the wall, harsh reality stole across his features in a windfall of shock and fury and complete, utter betrayal. Something crumbled inside him, then. I saw it clear as day as though the moon weren’t the one to bear witness to my selfishness but the sun instead in all its bright, burning glory.
Shoulders collapsing, Yarik turned away. Presented me with all those scars.
All that horror.
I was sick to my stomach. Any second now, what little I’d had to eat at dinner was going to come right back up. Then a noise came from outside the study, a reminder, as if I really needed one, that we weren’t alone. Might never be alone again if Yarik hated me as much as I knew he would after we were done.
Better alive and miserable than happy and dead.
“We’ll start with twenty,” Volkov announced, “and then we’ll go from there.”
The study was as silent as a graveyard. I could feel my pulse hammering away. Could hear Yarik’s shallow panting. Behind me, a creak of a floorboard indicated Volkov moving, and then there was pressure at the back of my skull. I didn’t need to look to know what he’d done. He had me at gunpoint.
“Stop procrastinating,” he warned.
I would never forgive myself for this. And Yarik would never forgive me either.
I struck him.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
He shot up onto the tips of his toes, trying to angle himself away from the crack of the belt, but even so, he didn’t make a sound. Not a whimper. Not a cry. He took every lashing, withstood all the pain, as though he’d rather die than give his father the satisfaction of knowing that he’d won.
By the time we reached twenty, Volkov was seething with rage.
“Another ten,” he snapped furiously, but thirty lashes didn’t break his son .
Neither did forty.
Or fifty.
His legs gave out at fifty-two, the rope snapping taut as Yarik slumped over. Like a marionette doll with snipped strings, his head lolled forward on his shoulders and his knees thumped against the wall, the dead weight of his body swaying under his restrained wrists. He didn’t make a sound.
I stumbled backward, my dominant arm falling limp against my side. Panting, my lips parted but nothing came out.
I did this ? —
—To you.
Oh, fuck. Yarik, I did this to you .
Seeing all that chaotic brilliance burned down to the wick? There was a scream inside my chest. A silent, anguished roar that I wrangled into submission long enough to bite off, “He’s done.”
“ Nyet . He’s done when I say he is done.” Volkov snatched the belt away as if he meant to continue, and I threw myself in his path. He searched my face for half a second, looking for God knows what, and then he spat at my feet like I was an embarrassment to him. “Move aside. Now.”
“He’s done ,” I growled.
Volkov’s blue eyes glittered dangerously. “You are walking a very fine line, Kirill.”
“Then kill me. Because we both know that if I step aside, you won’t stop until he’s dead.” I held his narrowed gaze, refusing to back down. “But what will that say to the rest of your soldiers? That their pakhan was so blinded by rage, he murdered his own child? What hope do they have if you won’t show your own flesh and blood any mercy?”
It was stupid, playing my cards this way. Questioning a mafia boss’s decisions? He’d either put a bullet in my brain or have one of his bodyguards do it for him. Either way, I clearly had a death wish—but I was in too deep to back off.
“You’ve built an empire. Men who would die for you. Enemies who hear your name and scatter like rats. But if you kill Yaroslav, that will be your legacy. No longer the great Petr Volkov but just a weak, little man who couldn’t handle some teenage rebellion.”
Under his heavy, scrutinizing stare, I felt terribly exposed. Like he could see all the ways that I’d willingly sacrifice myself for Yarik even though he’d spent years warning me to stay away from his son. I used to think it was because he wanted to crush any trace of boyhood worship from Yarik’s soul. Now I wasn’t so sure. The way he was studying me . . . like I’d managed to please him, of all things, made me think that I was dead wrong.
That it wasn’t his own son he’d been trying to crush all along but me .
I thought back to Moscow when Artem had taken the bloody blade from my hand and told me to remember what happened to traitors. I thought of every single time Volkov made me sit in his study as he poked and prodded at the black hole that was my memories. Had he even wanted me to remember? Or had he been secretly overjoyed to find himself a soldier whose loyalty could be forever manipulated to suit his needs?
Without Yarik, without Pavel Sergerov, who did I have left?
No one but him .
My breathing turned shallow as it registered—really, truly registered —just how badly I’d fucked up. I’d played right into his hand. Turned my back on Yarik because I’d been blind to the truth. Every other soldier in the Volkov syndicate had a past; they bled for Petr, sure, and would certainly suffer if they crossed him, but they still had families and loved ones who owned pieces of their heart.
Volkov wanted me alone—hostile like the dogs he kept chained to his property, loyal to no one but the hand that kept them fed.
Stupid. Endlessly na?ve. When would I learn? Would I ever?
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I didn’t know what to do or say, just stood there in a pool of moonlight as Volkov gave me a slow, delighted smile that felt like a thousand spiders crawling down my spine. “You will meet me here first thing in the morning,” he said, and then he was carelessly throwing the door open hard enough that it banged against the wall. He didn’t look back at Yarik on his way out, but I did.
He was all I could see.
It wasn’t until I knelt by his side and gently turned his face toward my own, ready to beg for his forgiveness, that I realized two things—his face was marked by a river of silent tears, and Petr Volkov had left before he could see that his heir, the prince to his criminal empire, was unconscious.