Chapter 10
Memories mock me here.Despite the certain misery, I’m helpless to stay away. A full year, exactly three hundred and sixty-five days since I brought my goddaughter, Nikoletta, here and crossed every line existing between us.
When my every vow to her, to her family, and to God shattered and rained down in jagged pieces at our feet in the shadow of her virgin blood streaking my cock.
My gaze follows the same path hers did that day, sweeping up the parade of colors casting a glow through the stained glass windows. Rich smoke lingers in the air from the last mass. Warmth, hope, forgiveness live here—but not for me. Inside, my soul has plummeted into a deep freeze impossible to shake.
Fragments of memories, regrets, and wishful thinking whisper through the still air. Shadows flicker and dance where row after row of candles burn. My gaze lands on the altar, where I held her as a baby—where I took her virginity when she was barely a woman. I haven’t let myself touch the marble since that evening… when I took her, when I broke her—and she ran under a hail of gunfire and her brother, Vlad’s, maniacal laughter.
Vanished.
And in three hundred and sixty-five days, absolutely no trace of her exists.
Tonight I can’t avoid the altar. My desperate heart rules, making it impossible to keep my feet rooted to the spot. Despite any remnants of our encounter having been washed away long ago, I need to touch the place where my oaths died, where I took someone precious who was never meant to belong to me.
The cross looms heavier with every step I take down the center aisle. All evidence of the violent shootout that day gone, taken care of by a heavy donation to the church. Just one more way Nikolaj has earned respect and increased his edge in the war for New York City against his father and brother, the ruler and successor of the Romanoff Bratva respectively.
Maksim, once my best friend, and for a brief time my competition in matters of the heart, slowly slipped into madness, a kind of madness Vlad, the legitimate, yet deranged heir stoked and manipulated. Over time, Maksim Romanoff, a name that instilled respect and fear, transitioned into uncertainty and terror.
His kingdom cracked and twisted into something unpredictable and venomous with each passing day. Vlad slowly taking the helm only guaranteed the Romanoff empire will feed on itself and destroy everything in its path until it plummet straight to hell.
Generations of power and wealth I helped nurture for the past thirty years, pissed away by a psychopath.
I promised Nikolaj I will help him build an army and take control. If we fail, my purpose will become singular.
Protect Nikoletta from Vlad’s wrath.
Regret haunts me. The crushing guilt for all the time I spent protecting her and completely missed how she had been tortured right under my nose by her own brother. She’ll never be locked in the dark by him or with him again. He’ll never again touch her, abuse her, violate her.
If that means destroying the world in the process, so be it. If I die protecting her, I’ll take his deranged soul with me.
I falter on the second step, my gaze catching on the leather book lying there. The air lodges in my lungs. My eyes roam the well-worn leather. A sense of dread consumes me from every direction until my gut hollows out and the hair on my neck stands up. I spin on my heel, scanning the sacred space with a shrewd eye, searching for the slightest movement.
The silence has a heartbeat, or maybe that is mine. Tingling skitters up my spine, my senses telling me someone watches from the shadows.
Or perhaps that is my own guilt.
Swinging my gaze back to the altar, I shoot up the rest of the steps and advance on the hand-tooled journal, embossed with an N in the center and a little bee in the corner.
Nikoletta’s journal.
The journal her father found that had him sending her away from me. The pages where she confessed her fantasies of us while I was oblivious to the changes in her young, innocent heart for me.
Dropping my palms to the cool granite, I hang my head and squeeze my eyes shut.
Vlad.
This gesture has his name written all over it. He knows I’ll never be able to walk away and leave it here. He knows if I possess it, I will eventually crack it open. I will fight it, but right about the point I teeter on the edge of madness, I’ll devour her words as though they are the only way to thaw my frozen world.
Skilled in torment, he counts on his prey to succumb to their hearts. For love—an emotion he’ll never been capable of—to make them weak.
My gaze catches on the corner of an envelope tucked just inside the cover. I slide it out to find my name in Vlad’s handwriting scrawled across the front in jet-black ink.
I let out a slew of Russian curses and tear the envelope open.
Konstantin, Konstantin, Konstantin…
I hear his mocking voice in my head with every repetition of my name. I can’t wait to kill him. Slowly. Painfully. Life gradually slipping from his evil eyes.
My father charged me with destroying this journal, but where would the fun be in that? Oh no… I decided I’d much rather hold on to the steamy little piece of Nikoletta until it could prove useful. What better time than when you’re cracking under the pressure of not finding her.
She’s cunning. I’ll give her that. You’ve slaughtered hundreds in your search and still, a year later, nothing. No signs of her anywhere.
My little brother must have so many regrets about choosing you to be by his side. The formidable Konstantin Malikov, reduced to an unruly liability. Taken down by pussy. I used to think of you as a challenge, but now I’ve crossed you off my list, because why bother…
You’re doing a stellar job of destroying yourself.
-V
I slam my clenched fists on the altar, a deep roar of despair tearing from my chest. With a glare up at the cross looming over my head, I snatch the journal and eat up the distance, striding for the catacombs.
Straight to the crypt where my honor died exactly one year ago.