18. Yarik
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
YARIK
I n the Bratva, it was common for a brigadier to pick his own foot soldiers—men you trusted to have your back when shit went sideways and all you had were your wits to save you.
My father either hadn’t gotten the memo, or he’d decided that the best way to deal with an unruly heir was to publicly humiliate him so thoroughly that he never questioned his place within the syndicate’s social hierarchy again.
I questioned everything.
Daily.
With my back pressed against the wall of my father’s study, I breathed in slowly through my nose, never taking my eyes off my sperm donor. He sat at his oversized desk like a tyrant: loafers planted on the floor; thick, ring-clad fingers clasped over a still-flat stomach; the expensive watch on his wrist glinting under the overhead light. Petr Volkov exuded power every second of the day. If he’d ever approached the world differently, I couldn’t remember it. And even if he had, what did it matter? All he wanted was to strip away what was left of my pride until there was nothing left.
He wanted me begging.
Wanted me throwing a bloody fit, like a toddler with a tantrum.
Wasn’t going to happen, not even if the red-headed bloke occupying the chair across from him kept darting wary looks in my direction. Looks that said he was fully aware that nothing about this meeting was remotely normal, and he wasn’t about to become fodder in a war that didn’t involve him.
Couldn’t blame him, really. I was tired of fighting this battle, too.
Too bad Father wasn’t willing to put down his sword.
“My son is reckless,” he clipped out. “Impulsive. He was expelled from every boarding school in the country, and against all hope to the contrary, age hasn’t managed to do him any favors. He is worse now.”
Worse . Right. Because I’d had the gall to refuse signing anything that would have bound me to Giulia Accardi for the rest of my miserable fucking life.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard, the delicate skin broke. As the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth, I knotted my trembling hands into even tighter fists at the base of my spine. Notched my chin high, too, doing my best to look unbothered.
Try harder.
Don’t let him see. Don’t let anyone see that you’re ? —
It wasn’t getting any easier. I’d thought it might. Call me delusional, an emotional wreck, a disappointment, whatever, but every time I crossed the threshold of Father’s study, I found myself hoping that these visits, which had increased in frequency over the last six months, might soften the edges of the memories that continued to stalk my dreams. Exposure therapy, I heard it called.
Yeah. Well.
One visit, two visits, a hundred. Didn’t fucking matter. My reaction to these four walls was as visceral today as it had been that night when I’d stood with my wrists bound above my head while the boy I loved whipped my back raw.
Now he’s gone.
He’s been gone.
And you know he isn’t coming back.
Something hot and sickly twisted in my gut. Desolation probably. My new constant companion. Another abscess that would never heal because every time I picked at the scab, all I did was reopen the wound and feel ten times worse afterward.
I wasn’t sleeping. I barely managed to eat.
It was probably a good thing no one but my little sister paid me any bit of attention, and even then, we weren’t all that close. Had never been, really. It was easy to blame my years’ long stint in Moscow, but the reality was, Father had kept us separated from childhood, putting us on two separate paths that never collided. By the time I’d come back from Russia, neither of us had put much energy into building a bond. Nina had her own shit to worry about, never mind taking on the burden of mine.
The war we waged made us solitary creatures.
Which was why Father cherry-picking the men in my unit made me want to scream. It was just another point of leverage to hold over my head. Instead of being loyal to me, my soldiers would be spies for him. Would they report back everything I did, everything I said? The thought of having no privacy at all made my hands shake even more.
I was already living under a microscope .
My new bodyguard, Anton, kept tabs on me. Uncle Igor kept tabs on me. My father’s brigadiers kept tabs on me. I couldn’t even piss without someone standing outside the stall. What did they think I’d do? Fucking off myself right over the toilet? Things had been strained before, but these days they were downright unbearable. I was suffocating .
And now my only hope of carving out a slice of purgatory for myself—because no way a place like Heaven could be real, not with what I saw every day—was slim to bloody none.
“I’ve been advised to keep him out of business matters, but . . .” Father drummed a silent beat with his thumbs against his abdomen. He spoke carefully as if picking his way through a landmine that he himself hadn’t staged. “It is my personal opinion that to make such a move would prove detrimental in the long run. It will invite questions. Gossip. No, better to put him in the hands of a trusted few who have the experience to keep him on the straight and narrow, wouldn’t you say, Beck?”
Like many of the soldiers within the Volkov organization, including Kirill, Beck wasn’t Russian. And just like Kirill, Beck had learned to speak the language fluently. It was my father’s preferred form of indoctrination—finding people from all walks of life and then treating them to the same insular form of “brotherhood” that had worked for La Cosa Nostra or the Yakuza, who didn’t allow outsiders within their ranks.
Russian in soul, if not in blood. That was Petr Volkov’s motto.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that Daniel Beck, a freckled Behemoth who’d grown up on a council estate right outside London, replied to my father in perfect Russian: “What if I say no? ”
That caught my attention.
I stared at Beck so hard, I was sure he could feel it, but he didn’t acknowledge me in any way. Instead, he reclined in his chair with the sort of cocky, self-assured confidence that straightened my spine. Was he—there was no way he’d actually?—
“Thing is, Mr. Volkov, I’m not lookin’ to be a glorified nanny.”
Holy. Fuck. Daniel Beck had a death wish.
Into the icy stillness that followed, Father bit off, “Excuse me?”
“A nanny.” Beck rested one ankle on his opposite knee, then settled his hands over his upraised shin. “Someone to wipe your son’s arse, Mr. Volkov. That’s what you’re really after, innit? Want me watching your son’s every move—when he shits, when he fucks, when he’s not being a very good boy. Let me know if I’ve got it wrong.”
Bloody hell, he was absolutely mad.
Certifiably mental .
My gaze pinged back to my father, who looked completely flustered. A vein throbbed in his temple. My stomach flipped. Had he ever been talked to like that? I didn’t think so. Then again, if someone had, they were probably long gone by now. Luckily, while Beck might have a death wish, he wouldn’t end up dead just yet. Too many people knew about this meeting. Just this morning, I’d watched one of Beck’s mates grab him by the shoulder for a friendly, excited shake. No doubt his friends thought he was getting promoted.
To something besides babysitting the boss’s eighteen-year-old son.
Daniel Beck settled deeper into his seat. Over his flat belly, he tangled his fingers together, such a picture- perfect mirror of my father that something terribly giddy flooded my veins.
“I should kill you.” Father’s voice wavered with fury.
“You won’t.”
“The mouth on you.”
Beck smiled. That was it. He just— smiled . Like this was all some big laugh.
I’d never seen my father more agitated in my entire life.
His fists came down like gavels on the desk. “You will apologize.”
“Will I?”
“Yes,” Father bit out from behind gritted teeth. “You will.”
“Nah. Don’t think I will.”
My father’s mouth opened incredulously. And then it snapped shut.
Beck took the opportunity to add, “I’m your last option, ain’t I?” He flicked a dismissive glance in my direction, one that might have had me shifting with embarrassment thirty minutes ago but one that I chose to ignore now because there was magic happening in this room, and I didn’t even care that it was at my expense. I watched Beck’s lips part in another little smile. “In case you ’aven’t noticed, no one is knocking down your door to be wiping your son’s arse, Mr. Volkov.”
Adrenaline swept over my body in a flash of heat, lighting that reckless fire within me that had been battered down to almost nothing in the last six months. It danced and spluttered, begging to be set aflame, and I opened my mouth to feed it oxygen. To let it burn everything within reach, if only to catch a glimmer of my former self.
“How much do you want? ”
At the sound of my voice, Beck’s head snapped my way. “What?”
The surprise on his face said that I’d caught him off guard. I didn’t bother to look at my father. Nor did I bother with stepping forward. I kept my back to the wall, my trembling hands protected at the base of my spine, and repeated, “How much do you want?”
Auburn brows drew together in bewilderment. The slope of his nose was slightly off-center, but I didn’t see a scar or the tell-tale ridge that might indicate the fragile cartilage breaking at some point in the past. His nose was simply crooked. The only imperfection in an otherwise perfectly symmetrical face. I wondered if, in another life, he might have found himself on a runway in Milan or New York or Paris. If he’d spent so long clawing himself out of poverty that I could look at a face as classically handsome as his and only see glimpses of Hell in his hazel-green eyes.
Like the Devil, Daniel Beck caught on quick.
Those hazel eyes flared with delight. “You’ll be a pain in my arse, I’m sure.”
No point in pretending otherwise. “Yes. I will be.”
“I’ll want to kill you.”
“Probably.”
“Maybe you’ll want to kill me.”
The smile I leveled on him was akin to a snake ready to strike. “Never.”
He laughed.
The fucking bastard threw back his head and laughed , and swear to bloody God, Father looked ready to implode. It didn’t deter him. Beck, I mean. He only held my gaze for a beat longer than was socially acceptable, like he was seeing me as more than some pampered, self-absorbed prince, then rose to his feet. The shift in position had him staring down his crooked nose at my father, a fact that he seemed to relish as he announced, “I’ll let your son decide my wage.”
It was an olive branch. An offer of good faith that I wouldn’t fuck him over.
More than that, it was Daniel Beck handing me power on a silver platter. Eighteen years of drawing air into my lungs and I’d never stood a chance of winning even the smallest battles against Petr Volkov. I bled and I bled, and I kept on bleeding until it became something of a miracle that my body continued to fight at all, even when I was gasping and bruised and broken. Just shards of glass littered across a dirty floor. You could piece me back together and still, the reflection that stared back would never be whole.
So maybe I was broken, but for the first time that I could remember, I smiled. For real. The muscles around my mouth ached from disuse. Beck must have recognized something familiar in the awkward gesture because he smiled back. This one, more than any of his others, was real, too. And just as rusty as mine.
Without a word to my father, he moved away from the desk and strode toward me. When he stood a foot away, he bowed his head a little. Russet strands fell across his temple but not before I saw a wicked grin flit across his lips.
“Happy to be of service, my liege.”
Cocky bastard.
My lips twitched.
Then he was gone, leaving Father and I to rot away in the terrible silence that followed. I kept my gaze on the empty doorway. Kept my hands hidden, too, because if he saw any weakness at all, I’d be fucked. There was a creak of wood and then muffled footsteps. They approached. One step, two. Another and another, and then my sperm donor was standing way too close, his breath hot on my chin.
Because I was taller now.
Give me a few years and maybe I’d double his weight, too.
Something about that—knowing my days of appearing young and na?ve were numbered—made me smile. This one was just as real as the one I’d given Beck, but it was also reckless and impulsive and wholly me .
I turned my head just enough to meet eyes the same color blue as my own. “Daniel Beck is perfect, I think. Exactly the sort of soldier I want by my side.” My slow, dark smile ticked wider. “Let me know if you find another just like him, yeah?”
I walked away before my father could get out a word.
Power tasted divine .