9. Kirill
Kirill
Islam the door to my private office in the south residence wing harder than necessary. The glass windows rattle in their frames. I can’t sit. I just stand there, my pulse throbbing.
I can control anything and anyone. Sandrine’s disappearance was a blow that I have pretended to recover from.
I drag in a breath that does nothing to settle the storm building in my heart. The office looks exactly as I left it. The dark wood, the glass doors of the credenza, and all the steel weapons in my open gun case closet speak to who I am. Who I’d become in the last five years.
Now it feels off. Sandrine is finally back, but I don’t feel better. I feel worse.
Drago knocks on the door a moment later and strides inside with my sister, who he lets walk in first. My enforcer is usually all coiled violence, while Ksenia is ruthless with a softer conscience.
They both look at me, waiting for me to say something. These two are going to double-team me to forgive Sandrine. Make peace. Move on. For the sake of the brotherhood.
“Why is she saying she doesn’t remember me?” I don’t bother easing into it.
Or pretend to be strong about this.
Ksenia swallows hard, a concerned look on her face. “She didn’t remember me either.”
The words settle between us. Another tragedy we’re both living through. Like when our mother killed herself.
“But the timing is a blessing,” Ksenia adds, getting herself together after being shaken, talking to Sandrine. “Your queen is home. You can take your place when Papa leaves us.”
Drago exhales slowly. We have more people to kill so I can stand as the only pakhan and lead the American Bratva. And I just threw one big complication at us.
“Sandrine mentioned Lakeshore,” I say, still pacing, unable to stay still. The energy in my body has nowhere to go. “She asked if we were bringing her back to Lakeshore?”
That name even tastes wrong in my mouth, like it should sicken me. She kept saying it over and over.
Drago strokes his chin, his brilliant mind running through this entire city. “There’s Lake Shore Drive.”
“No. She didn’t say it like that. Not Lake Shore. Two words. She said Lakeshore.” This is clawing at me from the inside out, my patience already fraying. “Call the intel team right now. I want everything you can find on the name Jessica Parker and Lakeshore here in Chicago. See what comes up.”
My enforcer reaches for his phone. “Yes, Pakhan.”
He’s been calling me that since the vote a few months ago, the inevitability in his tone getting stronger every day. My father still breathes, but he’s been confined to his bedroom suite in the north wing since his last stroke. Doctors give him a few weeks, a month, maybe.
I am running this Bratva. Nearly all of the brotherhood has accepted this. Only one leader didn’t vote to give me the power. My father’s former enforcer often bristles at my overstepping. I can’t think about how to deal with that right now.
Drago murmurs into his phone, the tone shifting into that clipped, authoritative cadence he uses with our men. They’ll figure it out. They found the auction for the painting.
I turn back to Ksenia. “How was she with you?”
“Confused,” my sister says softly. “Disoriented, but not in a calculated way. Not like someone playing a part.”
My chest tightens at that.
“I don’t think she’s lying, Kirill,” Ksenia continues, stepping closer, her voice more certain. “I know what a liar looks like. We all do. Sandrine…” She shakes her head. “Her eyes were empty. Not cold. Not evasive. Just…empty.”
Vacant. I saw it, too. That wasn’t her. The woman I knew.
“But she left me,” I snap, the anger rising fast and sharp. “She disappeared five years ago. No message, no nothing. You want me to believe she just forgot all of that?”
“What if she didn’t disappear on purpose?” my sister counters, her voice tightening. “What if Thomas did something to her the night she went to see him?”
“He denied knowing where she was to his dying breath,” I mutter.
“He changed her name. We have proof of that,” Ksenia keeps going. “You saw the documents.”
I did. I just don’t know why. My jaw flexes as I turn away, dragging a hand through my hair.
Drago snaps his fingers. “I got something.”
The faint whir of the printer behind him breaks the silence. Pages begin to spill out, one after another, like a relentless confession.
My brother-in-law grabs them from the tray and crosses the office, handing over the stack to me. “Here.”
I take it and squint to make out what I’m looking at. It’s a government reimbursement form.
Patient: Jessica Parker.
The name on the top of the billing form hits me like a punch to the throat.
Lakeshore Neurological Rehabilitation Center - Chicago.
“She was there,” Drago says, jaw tight. “Under the name Jessica Parker.”
I sit, and dig through these records.
“She was in that place for four years?” My eyes move faster now, scanning, devouring all the records. “It’s for fucking wards of the state. Indigens.”
“She was in a private rehab facility called Norridge for a few months before Lakeshore.” Drago drops another document on my desk. “She was sent to that state place from Norridge. The lawyer wasn’t providing for Sandrine after all.”
Was she brainwashed? Was she put somewhere for shock therapy? Was that the extent her father went to?
“I know Norridge. That’s the best place in the state if you have…” I stop and sit down.
My grip tightens on the paper.
“Head trauma,” Drago says the words I can’t. “Neurological damage.”
Just like that Marlowe place.
I dig through the Norridge records, and then I see it: Retrograde amnesia.
Everything in me goes ice cold. I could step into the minus fifteen-degree night and sweat.
I hand the paper to Ksenia, not trusting my voice.
“When did this happen?” she asks, her eyes flicking back up to mine.
“Hospital records show she was admitted with a skull fracture.” I hand that document over, too. “The same night she left me.”
“Oh God,” Ksenia cries out, holding her stomach. “I knew it.”
“But we still don’t know—” My gaze lifts to meet my sister’s. “We don’t know if she planned to leave me and then had an accident.”
The distinction matters. It matters more than anything. Because one version means betrayal. The other…
I don’t finish the thought. I can’t.
Rage inside me snaps instead. It means she was trapped in a world she didn’t know. Against her will. For five years.
The room goes silent. That’s the truth neither of us can prove. And it changes everything.
I exhale slowly, forcing the rage back down, forcing myself to control it.
“Her fucking father didn’t have amnesia.” I shove the stack of files off the desk.
The punches he took. The waterboarding. Carving out his fingernails. He didn’t confess.
God, what Thomas De la Vega went through to keep Sandrine and me apart. It sickens me.
I glance down at the paperwork again, scattered all over my floor. Sandrine’s father’s secrets. Secrets he died to protect.
“Five years!” I roar, the sound tearing out of me, raw and lethal. “Five years and no one figured out she was in a fucking mental hospital?”
I throw a glass paperweight against the wall until it shatters with a severe crack. The desk takes the brunt of my rage next, my hands slamming into the surface hard enough to rattle the wood.
“All this time…” I rage on, my voice dropping, sounding like a cold, dangerous menace. “And she was right here. In my fucking city. Under our noses.”
I take out my knife, and I’m not sure what to cut. My throat maybe.
I start waving it at Drago and Ksenia. “Did either of you know?”
Drago immediately stands in front of my sister. “Give me the knife, Kirill. Of course we didn’t know. Why would we keep her from you?”
I toss the knife on the destroyed desk with a clang, the wreckage of my temper spread around me as I force myself to breathe.
“Something happened to Sandrine,” I admit, my voice more controlled.
“Her medical records confirm she isn’t lying.
She clearly doesn’t know who the hell I am.
” That’s a bitter concession I don’t want to make.
“But that doesn’t change much. She’s back.
She’s my wife. I’m going to take my place as pakhan with her as my queen. ”
“Kirill, if she’s got mental incapacities, we—” Drago shuts up when I give him a death stare.
“Give her whatever she wants. Food. Comfort. Therapy. I will get the truth out of her about why she left me. One way or another. Sandrine is mine,” I say, the decision settling into place with cold clarity.
My phone rings, clattering on the desk. Seeing who it is, I don’t know if I’m overjoyed or furious.
“The God of War is calling,” I announce.
“The rehab place must have reported Sandrine missing,” Drago assumes.
“And the brunette,” I say, watching the phone go dark.
But Ares Zervas calls again.
“Elodie Vale,” Drago corrects.
“Vale.” Thoughts of the brunette cut through the chaos. “Where the hell is she? Zervas will ask about her, too.”
Drago’s expression tightens just slightly. “Nico Scava carried her off.”
“She’s a journalist, you said back there?” I huff out a humorless laugh.
Of all the people to abduct.
“Good luck, Nico,” I say under my breath.
Bye bye, Borgias.
But fuck, this is getting messy.
The phone rings again. The God of War must be livid.
“Now you know how I feel,” I yell at the phone.
“I suggest you speak to him, Kirill,” Drago advises. “He can send men here.”
Good. Let them come.
“Zervas,” I say in a low, deadly voice when I take the call.
“Where is she, Volkov?”
“Home. With me. Where I told you she belongs. I warned you.”
Silence stretches out.
“You’re lucky I’m ten thousand miles away,” he growls.
“No, you’re lucky,” I argue back. “Sandrine is mine.”
“She’s my wife’s sister.”
“And if you want your wife to ever see her sister again, you’re going to have to figure out a way to say you’re sorry to me,” I bite out. “You know where I live, Zervas. The Bratva doesn’t hide. Feel free to show up anytime.”
I end the call and then throw the phone.
“Kirill, Sandrine is in the basement,” Ksenia reminds me. “In a cell.”
I glance at the medical records again. And she’s suffering from severe anxiety.
“Shit,” I say and rush from the office.
Behind steel bars is the woman I risked my life and future to marry. She’s sitting in a cell, suffering from a mental breakdown, and probably thinking that I’m the devil.
I have to change that.