Chapter 5 – Lev #2
She nodded and got out of the car, closing the door with careful control.
I didn’t watch her walk to her front door, didn’t wait to see her safely inside.
Just pulled out of the driveway and drove toward the only place that made sense anymore—the office, where violence had clear rules and emotions were liabilities that got people killed.
Drew was already there when I arrived, surrounded by photographs and surveillance footage, his usually immaculate appearance slightly rumpled, as if he’d been working all night. He looked up when I walked in, and something in my face must have warned him off any casual greetings.
“The attacker has a tattoo of Saint Michael slaying the devil,” he said without preamble, sliding a photograph across my desk. “Right forearm, custom work. This isn’t some random street punk.”
I stared at the image—a grainy security photo of a man in dark clothing, his face partially obscured, but his ink clearly visible. Saint Michael, wings spread wide, driving a sword through the serpentine form of the devil. Ukrainian prison work, from the look of it. Kozak territory.
“How many people know my father’s schedule?” I asked, settling into my chair and pulling up surveillance files on my computer.
“Inner circle only. Maybe a dozen people total.” Drew moved to look over my shoulder as I scrolled through security footage. “Someone talked, or someone got careless.”
I spent the next several hours diving deep into digital trails—hacking logs, movement patterns, communication records.
Anything that might tell me how the Kozaks had known exactly where my father would be and when.
The work was methodical, precise, the kind of investigation that required complete focus.
It was exactly what I needed to keep from thinking about Trev’s voice on the phone. About Anya calling me a mistake. About the way my entire world had been rewritten in the space of a few hours.
The funeral was scheduled for late afternoon—a traditional Bratva affair with closed caskets and enough security to start a small war.
I arrived early, dressed in the kind of black suit that was practically a uniform in our world, and took my position beside the ornate mahogany casket that held what was left of the only parent I’d ever really known.
They arrived together—a woman with graying auburn hair and eyes the same steel gray as mine, accompanied by a man who looked exactly like me except for the blue eyes that had always been his defining feature.
Twenty-seven years older, carrying themselves with the confidence of people who’d built new lives in a new country, but unmistakably the family I’d mourned for most of my life.
Hannah—my mother—approached first, her face wet with tears and her arms reaching toward me like she expected some kind of emotional reunion.
Behind her, Trev hung back slightly, his cop’s eyes scanning the crowd with the kind of professional awareness that marked him as law enforcement even in civilian clothes.
I stood perfectly still as she wrapped her arms around me, letting her hold me but not returning the embrace.
Her hair smelled like vanilla and foreign shampoo, nothing like the floral scent I remembered from childhood.
She felt smaller than my memories painted her, more fragile, like the years had worn her down to something breakable.
“My boy,” she whispered against my chest, her voice thick with accent and grief. “My beautiful boy. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we left you.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. Every emotion I might have felt was locked behind walls that had taken decades to build, and I wasn’t about to tear them down in front of a crowd of people who would see any vulnerability as weakness.
When she finally pulled back, Trev stepped forward.
For a moment, we just stared at each other—two men who shared everything except the experiences that had shaped them.
He was broader than me, his shoulders carrying the weight of authority and Australian sun.
Clean-shaven where I preferred stubble, his hair shorter, his hands unmarked by gloves or scars.
He looked like the man I might have become if the fire had never happened. If our family had stayed together. If I’d never learned that love was just another word for loss.
“Lev.” He extended a hand, formal and distant, like we were business acquaintances instead of twins who’d once shared dreams and secret languages.
I shook it briefly, feeling the calluses that spoke of different kinds of violence than the ones that marked my own hands. Then I turned back to the casket, dismissing them both with body language that was unmistakable.
The service passed in a blur of Russian prayers and carefully neutral eulogies.
I stood like a statue beside my father’s casket, accepting condolences from men who’d worked with him, feared him, respected him.
When it came time for the final viewing, I approached the open casket and pressed a kiss to his cold forehead—a gesture that was equal parts love and fury.
That’s when I saw it. A button on his coat that didn’t match the others—slightly more ornate, made of what looked like genuine gold instead of the standard brass.
My father had always been paranoid about recording conversations, about having insurance against the people he dealt with.
The button was small enough to hide a camera, sophisticated enough to store hours of footage.
Evidence. Proof. The kind of information that could turn the tide in a war that was just beginning.
I palmed it quickly, my movements hidden by the crowd of mourners pressing close to pay their respects. When I straightened, I saw Anya approaching through the throng of black-clad figures, her face pale but determined.
I turned and walked away before she could reach me.
Outside the chapel, I found Trev and Hannah standing by a black sedan, clearly waiting for direction. They looked lost, displaced, like tourists in a country where they didn’t speak the language.
“Stay at Dad’s mansion,” I told them, my voice carrying the kind of authority that didn’t invite argument. “There’s security, staff. Everything you need.”
Hannah’s face crumpled slightly. “Lev, we should talk. There’s so much to explain, so much—”
“Not today.” I was already moving toward my own car, the camera button burning like a coal in my pocket. “I have work to do.”
Neither of them tried to stop me. Maybe they understood that the man standing in front of them wasn’t the boy they’d left behind.
Maybe they could see that twenty-seven years of believing they were dead had carved something essential out of me, left me with edges sharp enough to cut anyone who got too close.
Including them. Including Anya. Including anyone foolish enough to think that love was stronger than the violence that had shaped me.
I drove home with my hands steady on the wheel and my heart locked behind ice, thinking about hidden cameras and Ukrainian tattoos and the kind of revenge that would make Saint Michael himself proud.
The button in my pocket held secrets, and secrets were the only currency that mattered in a world where everything else could be taken away without warning.
My family was alive, but they were strangers. Anya thought I was a mistake, but she’d given me her innocence anyway. My father was dead, but he’d left me the tools to destroy his killers.
Everything was broken. Everything was wrong. And somewhere in the wreckage of what my life had become, I was going to find the strength to burn it all down and build something new from the ashes.
Starting with whoever had killed my father.