2. Irina
Chapter 2
Irina
I was a liar.
When my best friend asked me to come visit her in Italy for Christmas, I knew it was my only chance to find what I’d been searching for.
I couldn’t disclose the reason to her and it was eating me alive. She was the only person I’d break myself into pieces for just so I could be the friend she deserved.
In the end, I wondered if she’d hate me or pity me. Both outcomes would surely disintegrate the hollowness inside my chest until I’d been bled dry.
The arch doors swung open, revealing Aurora and her broody bastard husband, Roman Mancini.
“Rina!” Aurora squealed, throwing herself at me in a bear hug.
The wind was knocked out of me as I caught her in my arms. Her cinnamon scent smelled like home, and I couldn’t be happier to be in her presence after months apart .
“I’ve missed you, too.” I chuckled, squeezing her. When we pulled apart, I took her in from head to toe. She looked the same. . . yet different. “There’s something going on with you. What is it?” I demanded.
Aurora’s face twisted in confusion at my abruptness. She regarded me like I was the one who appeared unusual.
“Is it him?” I asked, pointing to the large man behind her. “How is the bastard treating you, anyway?”
Her green eyes widened slightly as she glared at me to shut my mouth.
Roman finally stepped forward, staring at Aurora as he wrapped his arm around her waist possessively. “The bastard is treating her just fine,” he said gruffly.
The last time I talked to Roman was on a video call when I told him I’d hoped his dog learned how to not answer other people’s phone. The dog being the leather wearing giant who I had the misfortune of meeting once. And I hoped to avoid him during my visit.
I smirked at the affection Roman so proudly displayed for my best friend. “I expect nothing less.”
Although Aurora and Roman’s relationship started out rough, it was clear as day the infinite love they held for one another.
An inferior emotion if you asked me.
“Welcome to our home, Irina. I hope your stay is. . . memorable.” Roman assessed me as if he was analyzing me in his head.
Did he think I was a threat? I had given him no reason to believe that, but I guess as a Don, you had to assume the worst in everyone and everything. And considering it was our first time meeting in person, I couldn’t quite blame him.
“Let’s go inside and I can show you around,” Aurora interjected. “Don’t worry about your bags. They’ll be taken to your room.”
Once we entered the house, Roman kissed Aurora’s cheek and parted ways with us.
I stared as she watched her husband walk down the corridor before he disappeared around the corner.
“You really do love him, don’t you?”
She turned back to me, a smile plastered on her glowing face. “What was that?”
“You love him,” I stated.
And in one sentence, she summed up their unconditional tie. “He breathed me back to life.”
“Poetic as ever.”
She smacked my arm playfully. “Oh, shut up. The day someone tames your craziness, I’ll never let you live it down.”
“I don’t see that happening. Ever.”
Their manor was a dream. The décor was warm and inviting, which surprised me. It was luxurious but subtly done with vintage furnishings.
“Your room is here.” Aurora gestured to the black oak door with a Victorian plate knob. “I’ll let you freshen up before dinner.”
With that, she turned on her heel and left the west wing .
My bags were already perched atop the bench at the end of the four-poster bed when I entered the room.
It could’ve been taken as a master bedroom with the huge pane windows and an even larger bathroom.
As I wandered through the space, I noticed the different shades of red on every surface.
A small smile curved my mouth. This had to be Aurora’s doing, her way of making me feel at home.
Guilt bloomed, my chest caving in further remembering the reason for my visit. But this was inevitable.
After washing up with too many bath scents to choose from, I pulled out my phone and clicked the first contact.
“ Printsessa .” My father’s voice filtered through the line.
“ Privet, Papa.”
There was a sort of irony to him calling me princess. I was one, yet I grew up differently than the expectations that would’ve tied me down.
When I was born, my parents hid me from the outside world. I lived in the four walls of our manor, longingly waiting for the day I could go beyond our property border. This was a secret within our inner circle, kept hidden from outsiders.
As daughter of the Pakhan , my father knew that I would be a liability to him. He knew that I’d be used against him if the opportunity arose for his enemies, and he'd rather die than put me in any danger.
He was one of the most ruthless yet loving men I had ever met. He protected me from our world without thinking of the consequences that would’ve happened if I was exposed .
Yet he hadn’t known danger could come in different shapes and sizes.
Whether my father wanted it or not, I’d been exposed to violence since I could remember. I’d seen what happened in the west wing of our house when he held special meetings. I had been given strict instructions not to leave my room when they occurred, but no one ever paid me any attention, let alone the staff. Why would they when my own existence made me feel hollow?
At the age of fifteen, I’d killed someone for the first time. All it took was for a wrong touch from an employee and I hadn’t hesitated to make sure it was their last.
The experience had left me jarred, and I couldn’t grasp onto the reality of what I had done.
My mother had found me in my room, stock-still covered in blood and instead of consoling me as I had expected, she retrieved my father. That’s when my training began.
Furthermore, he had doubled down, decreasing the number of people who were allowed past the property gates, leaving me to wilt in my room with how vacant the house had become.
When I wasn’t training, I would lay in bed, longing to experience more than what I’d been molded to accept.
Even the moments that I’d shared with my parents had felt more of a chore than out of genuine interest. I couldn’t even blame them with how frequently they were away for business. Nonetheless, I’d savored them in hopes of having it forever. But it was short-lived. Time went on and yet I felt stuck .
Days blended and it became harder to live in secrecy. I had been isolated, rotting in the recesses of my mind, and I couldn’t handle the silence—the stillness of it all anymore.
When I experienced my first panic attack, my father was there, defeat and pain written across his face as we both knew I couldn’t continue living the way that I was.
At eighteen, I left home. But I couldn’t escape who I was.
I moved to America and became somewhat of a spy for him, gathering information in secret so he could gain intel on others. And as an attorney, it was easier to do so.
To this day, no one knew that my real last name was Morozov. Not even my best friend.
“Have you settled in at Aurora’s?”
I sighed at the mention of her name. “Yes.”
“What is it, Irina ?” he asked, his tone laced with concern. I could picture him now, seated in his mahogany office and sipping on his vodka.
“I. . . I just feel guilty for lying to her about the reason for my visit.”
I trusted Aurora wholeheartedly, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair to have her keep this from Roman. If he found out, it could lead to an unwanted war, and I couldn’t risk it.
She was the first person I’d ever been comfortable enough to be around when we’d first met. But my true identity was something I’d never shared with her. That was a risk I couldn’t take, especially not after she’d married the Don of the Cosa Nostra.
“You know exactly why they can’t find out your real identity,” he muttered, power ripping from his voice. “And never be ashamed of being my daughter. You are the gem of the Bratva and I won’t let guilt chip away at you. . . or stop you from your mission.”
The same Bratva that hadn’t known of my existence until after I’d left Russia. It was ironic, how I’d been more valuable to them in the end than most of their other members.
I was more than capable of fending for myself. After my father found out I’d killed for the first time, he made sure I was never put in a situation that I couldn’t get out of. He didn’t doubt my skills, but I felt as though sometimes he’d forgotten I was his daughter and not his employee.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Mission? Papa, that mission it to bring my brother home.”
Nicolai Mancini. But I knew that wasn’t his last name. He was a Morozov, heir to the Bratva.
My efforts at finding information about him led to dead ends. It seemed that Roman had made it his mission to conceal everything about Nicolai.
The only reason we found his location was because of my cousin, Viktor, who was tech savvy to no end and our link in keeping our names clean.
“Bring him home, Printsessa.”
My father had an affair while on a business trip to Italy over two decades ago. An affair that gave me a brother I never knew about.
My parents had an odd relationship, fucked up, to say the least. It was a chaotic and an abnormal dynamic, but they were forced to marry for a stronger alliance, so it wasn’t surprising.
They did love one another, though; I knew it when my mother passed away. I saw the way my father mourned her loss. That pain had aged him.
I wasn’t oblivious about the origin of my internal issues. I once embraced hope, I once embraced love, and I once embraced sympathy. I felt it all unconditionally until it grew harder to elicit them.
When you’ve been a slave to your own life, it messes you up. And I think I stopped blaming my parents when the route to self-destruction became mind numbingly peaceful.
The only reason my father had the nerve to seek out Nicolai was because my mother had died three years ago and the shame of bringing in his half Russian bastard son would fall on him alone. And as the Pakhan no one would question him.
“Do you even know what happened to his mother?”
I held my breath as I waited for his answer.
“No, I stopped all contact with her when she fell pregnant.”
My stomach dropped at his words. “And you just forgot them?”
“His mother was a worker for the club I was holding business at. It meant nothing. She refused to stop the pregnancy and. . . ”
“So, you up and left,” I breathed, my heart racing. Shouldn’t that have made me hate my father? It should’ve but I couldn’t hate someone who’d given me his devotion, so what did that make me? “Did my mother know about Nicolai?”
“Of course, she knew. I’m not proud of it, Irina but I had an image to uphold.” The line went silent before he spoke again. “I would’ve terminated the pregnancy whether she had wanted it or not, but she begged me. It was the first and only time I’d ever shown mercy on someone.”
He did have an image to uphold, but that was a horrible thing to have done. I felt sorry for both Nicolai and his mother. It made me wonder what happened to her and how my brother fell under Roman’s protection.
It wasn’t fair to ask Nicolai to take responsibility and become heir to the Bratva eventually, but our worlds had never been fair. They took and took and took.
And Nicolai deserved to know that part of himself whether he wanted to or not.
“I’ll bring him home, but it’ll take time.”
I wanted to create a friendship with my brother first. I missed out on years of knowing him and I would execute that the way I wanted to regardless of what my father said.
He already took him away from me once and I wouldn’t let him do it again.
“I’ll be in touch.”
Sleep wouldn’t come to me. Not when I was jet lagged and had thoughts of my brother roaming around in my mind .
I huffed a sigh as I slipped on my robe and exited my room.
The halls were dimly lit, guiding me down the curved stairway.
I hadn’t been able to explore the entirety of the manor and Aurora had only shown me the important areas of her home.
There were numerous rooms upstairs, and I wondered if one belonged to Nicolai or if he lived elsewhere.
The house was silent except for the crackling of a fireplace.
I hadn’t checked the time before coming down, but I knew it must’ve been late in the night.
As I neared the living room, I heard light whispers and laughter.
Roman and Aurora were nestled together before the fireplace, cocooned with piles of blankets and pillows.
From my position, I could only see Roman’s face, listening intently to something my best friend was saying.
This was the first time I had seen him candid and with the awe filled expression across his face, I knew he loved her as much as the woman in his arms did, if not more.
Aurora huddled closer to him, and he wrapped the blanket around her before looking up to where I stood.
Shit.
I backed away a step, bringing my finger to my lips, telling him to not make my presence known to her.
He raised his brows, a silent question asking me if I was okay.
That made me smile. Not because he was concerned for me but because he knew Aurora would’ve wanted him to ask. By extension of my best friend, I was in good graces with her husband.
I nodded, turning on my heel and leaving them.
I’d once believed in love, but the love that was true wasn’t sunshine and flowers. It was heartbreaking and painful, fear of allowing someone to hold that power over you.
A love that I’d never submit myself to.