Chapter 54
The glow from the full moon has replaced the sunlight that bathed the office when I began my search, marking the passage of time. Now, with only the lamp in the corner of the room, I’m sitting in a dimmed room, surrounded by useless books.
All of them were useless except for the one not even stored on the shelves. The one in my lap. The one that detailed everything. When I assumed they’d be a madman’s ramblings, they turned out to be so much more. They were the emotional descent from who he began as and who I knew him to be.
Every villain has a backstory, and mine was bred from love lost. From a mother who died, to a father who trained him in villainy. A wife who he fell for, despite trying to keep his icy heart in the freezer, to a daughter who shared the wife’s features, and it hurt to care for her. His backstory is a testament to the complexity of human beings.
Not sure how long after I finish reading that the journal falls shut on my lap, like a spell book binding itself with magic after its user got what they needed from its pages.
Papa knew about Serafina. Within the pages are details of an agreement I presume Zeno has no clue about. A marriage contract that signs his sister to another Cosa Nostra capo. The same sister he’s spent years keeping away from mob life, all for her ending to be that of a mafia daughter.
This will kill him. It could spark an internal war within the Cosa Nostra because Zeno would definitely fight to keep Serafina free from a contractual marriage.
I have to tell him.
This isn’t about him and me, or the war I called a ceasefire on. It’s about the sister we share.
I flip the journal back open, going to the first few passages about his family, and Mama. He spoke about her so little throughout my life, but it’s insightful the way his mind crumbled after her death. She was the last straw after his own mother. Then began the slow descent of villainy, the loss of sanity.
And the end of his love for me.
My fingers stroke over the January 20, 1998 passage. I’m utterly in love with her. Never thought such a tiny creature could hold so much power over me.
It’s cruel to think, maybe if Mama didn’t get killed, I might have had a father who cared. He might have been a person who didn’t kidnap and rape his enemy’s wife, ignore his other daughter until she had a use, and sell off my virginity.
I skip forward to that part of the journal, rereading how he left the bedroom where I was tied up, screaming and begging for him to change his mind, while he was crawling back to this room like a coward. I picture him like me, sitting drunk in the middle of the room with the journal in his lap as he recounts his parental failures.
No Pakhan’s soul is ever intact. Mine started to crumble the night I lost Mama. It completely disappeared with Diana’s death.
I wonder the truth behind that statement. If I still have a soul, or if I’m another decade of darkness from losing it? Papa was a man raised by circumstance and heartache. According to these pages, he didn’t start out a monster, so what’s to say I too won’t become like him?
A knock on the door has me jumping, and when it opens, Dimitri slips inside, muttering about darkness before switching on the overhead lights. It washes the office in a brightness that my emotional, drunken stupor isn’t capable of handling, and takes a few blinks to focus on him crossing the room, gaze locked on the book in my hand.
“You found something?”
I clutch it a bit tighter. Maybe it’s silly, but I don’t want him to read it—not all of it anyway. Papa hid this book because he feared others, like his own father and Ivan, getting their hands on it, and I…I don’t know. Despite what he’s done, I feel compelled to continue hiding it. In some fucked up way, it helps me understand him better without rationalizing his actions.
The sight of Dimitri instantly brings back what’s probably the most unexpected entry: July 13, 2014. Unexpected, and sickening…and now it all makes sense.
Why Dimitri despises his father. Why he constantly disappears to Canada.
I’m the selfish bitch who never put it all together. At the time, I was away at boarding school, but when I returned for the summer, the changes in him were obvious. A shadow clung to him, like death personified. In many ways, he reminded me of his father, and I figured he embraced Bratva life after years of resisting it.
Katya Terasov.
“Van, did you hear me?” He nudges my knee with his foot, but all I can do is stare mutely. He looks past my dazed expression to the book in my hand. “What’s that?”
Of course, it’s all about Katya. His high school girlfriend who he claimed time and time again, he’d marry one day. Until that summer, when they broke up. He gave few details, and based on the cloud of despair clinging to him, I didn’t dare ask for any. I had every reason to believe his story.
Never could I have guessed that .
What’s crueller?
Selling your fifteen-year-old daughter’s virginity for political and financial gain, or paying a group of men to kidnap your son and his girlfriend and rape her repeatedly, all to make a point to him about his mandatory enlistment into the Bratva?
“A journal,” I finally manage to answer, flipping it over so he can see the cover. “Papa wrote so much down, starting from his engagement to my mother.”
“Vanessa.” Dimitri’s gruff tone is his version of a hug as he kneels down beside me, reaching for the book, but I clamp down harder on it.
“He loved her, Dimitri. As much as he was capable of loving another person. He loved… me .” My eyes tickle, and it’s only then that I realize it’s with the formation of tears. That I’m crying over the asshole. “He was different then. It was the loss of his own mother, and mine, that made him change.”
I flip open the book, finding the entry about loving me and let him read it. His gaze skims the page quickly before he looks up, his mouth in a downturned smile. “Vanessa, the man who wrote that and the man who you knew aren’t the same.”
“I know it doesn’t change anything but—” But it’s nice knowing I wasn’t hated my entire life. With a shake of my head, I say, “Doesn’t matter, I guess. He also wrote about the war with Zeno’s family. He knew about Serafina’s birth. More than knew, actually.” I recount the marriage deal, and how Papa used another Family within the Cosa Nostra to get ahead of the Mancinis.
When I finish, Dimitri looks contemplative, rubbing the shadow on his chin. “That information could be useful for when you wish to retaliate.”
I rest my hand on his arm, already shaking my head. “War’s over. No more. For Serafina, I’ll tell him.”
He watches me, eyes flicking in the dull overhead lights. “You connected with her.”
Did I? I hardly know her. One conversation doesn’t exactly formulate a connection. I admire her, certainly. “There’s something about her, that’s all. She’s innocent. The product of Papa’s shitty choices. Zeno will do anything to keep her safe, including give himself up.” I pause, knowing my cousin well enough to add, “That doesn’t make her leverage.”
“All right, Vanessa.”
“There’s more,” I tell him, unable to look at him as I flip to the July 13, 2014 entry, and turn the journal around so he can read.
As his eyes pass over the words, they tighten in the corners. His nostrils flare between paced breaths, and his jaw locks. He falls ashy and cold. Some of the soldiers have nicknamed him Death, for the way he can mercilessly reap another’s life, but to me, he’s always been Dimitri. Now…I see it.
“It’s always been about Katya.”
Dimitri jerks away, stalking toward the other side of the room. His hands slide through his hair, fisting the ends, and that’s how he remains. Rigid, arms over his head, trying to block everything out.
I scramble to stand, taking the book with me but not approaching. “I’m sorry. What you two endured?—”
He spins with a snarl, his arms dropping back to his side. “You have no fucking idea what we endured. What she endured. Your papa brushed over it like it was nothing.”
Then tell me.
“She never broke up with you.”
Like my words deflate him, his chest caves in, his shoulders slump, and with a ragged sigh, he replies, “She did. After what happened, she couldn’t do it. Said she needed away from me and the life I’d inevitably lead. Her and her family packed up and moved out of the country.”
Slowly, I pace a few steps closer, like he’s an animal poised to attack. “Canada. And you…visit?” My voice hikes toward the end, phrasing my statement like a question.
“I can’t let her go. Even when I told her I would, I can’t. She has no idea I’m the monster who stalks the shadows when she heads home each night.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a strip of material—a faded, green ribbon. With a desolate look, he explains, “She used to wear this as a bracelet all the time. It was the last thing she gave me. It’s never left my person since.”
My heart shatters for him, and I make it another step, pushing between the weight of his words. I make it the rest of the way and toss the journal to the ground to wrap my arms around Dimitri’s waist, offering him a hug—and understanding. A moment later, his arms band around me and he drops his head onto mine, hiding himself from the journal by our feet.
“Papa didn’t like how much time I spent with Katya,” he murmurs after a moment, his quiet recounting almost drowned out by the aching thumps of my heart. “He ordered me to break up with her. Tried to bribe her as well, though I didn’t know about that until afterwards. When she refused him…” A deep ragged breath blows over my head, and his hold tightens a bit more. “It was the night of our graduation party. Since I was attending school, the deal with your papa was that I be the contact for all the local teenagers to push product to them. I had a drug deal to complete on the outskirts of where the party was. Katya tagged along, even when I insisted she didn’t. The men we were meeting...” Fingers dig painfully into my spine. “They weren’t there for a deal at all.”
“Dimitri—”
“I’ve spent years hunting them down, and I only have one more.”
I pull back to look him in the face, somehow knowing before he even says it. “Your father.”
He nods once, releasing me to brush a hand over his face. “No matter how much trouble he’s caused you, no matter how he betrayed us by working with Mancini, nothing will be more deserving of death than that.”
“He’s yours,” I rush out, suspecting that’s where he’s about to end up. With a hand on his lower arm, I show him what words are not conveying.
“He’s my Boris. Please don’t tell anyone about her.” He tilts his head toward the door. “Not even them. For Katya’s safety.”
“Never,” I vow. “Your secret’s safe.”
With thinly pressed lips, he dips down to pick up the journal and deposits it into my waiting hands. “Been an insightful evening for you. What now? Now that you’ve read through his mind.”
What little he shared anyway. I tuck the book close to my chest and step over the disaster I’ve made in the room. The books were growing dusty from years of being untouched after his death, so they’ll continue to do so from their new place on the floor. Because I have no further reason to visit the past, and this room can be locked up for the rest of my time as a Pakhan.
I swipe my phone from the floor and head for the door. “Now life continues. It only solidified what I knew about Zeno and Serafina. As for the rest, well…who Papa was and who he died as were two very different people. Only one of them raised me, and that’s the man I remember.”
Dimitri steps ahead of me to get the door, and for the last time, I lock it shut behind me.