Chapter 28 - Alexei
Istand in that empty street for eighteen minutes after her SUV disappears. Counting each one. The drive back to the compound stretches like a wound.
The compound looks wrong without her in it.
I drive through the gates with blood drying under my fingernails, the empty passenger seat mocking me. The leather still holds the ghost of her warmth from thirty minutes ago, when she chose her brothers over me. Again.
Chaos greets me inside. Men choosing sides in the aftermath of civil war, some loyal to me, others to what the bratva should be.
I walk through it like I'm already dead, giving orders I don't hear myself speak.
Boris needs medical attention. Pavel's crew requires new assignments.
The warehouse needs cleaning before dawn.
None of it matters.
My quarters loom at the end of the hallway. I stop at the threshold, unable to enter, unable to turn away. Her scent drifts out, that floral perfume mixed with something uniquely hers. The sheets we tangled in so recently still carry the impression of her body.
I pour vodka with hands that won't stop shaking. The glass sits untouched on the side table while I stand frozen in the doorway. She left me. After I killed for her at that warehouse. After I chose her over my own blood.
The bracelet halves weigh heavy in my pocket. I pull them out, studying the tarnished silver in the lamplight. Two halves of one heart. Hers and… Christ, it has to be Mikhail's. What else would send her running from the lakehouse like her world had shattered?
She found these in his room. Found something that broke her so completely she couldn't even look at me. And now she's gone, taking her secrets with her, leaving me with nothing but questions and the taste of her absence.
My mother is gone. Mikhail's been gone for eleven years. All I have left is a dead man's secrets and two halves of a broken heart.
Viktor's study hasn't been touched since he died. The door creaks open, releasing the smell of dust and leather and Cuban cigars. I've avoided this room, this shrine to my father's particular brand of cruelty.
Tonight I have nothing left to avoid.
His desk sits like a monument to organized evil.
Every paper in its place, every file labeled with his precise handwriting.
I've never gone through them. Couldn't face what brutalities might be documented there.
But she ran from something in Mikhail's room, something connected to these bracelet halves, and if answers exist anywhere, they're here.
I start with the obvious files. Enemies. Allies. Territory disputes. Nothing about the Rosettis I don't already know. My hands leave bloody fingerprints on manila folders, marking my father's legacy with evidence of tonight's violence.
The locked drawer mocks me from beneath the desktop. Of course there's a locked drawer. Viktor always did love his secrets. I grab a letter opener and pry until the wood splinters, until the lock gives way with a crack that sounds like bones breaking.
Inside: a folder. Unmarked. Thick enough to hold years of secrets.
The first photo stops my breath. Mikhail in a garden, young and alive and smiling at someone outside the frame. The date in the corner: eleven years ago, three months before the massacre. I flip to the next photo and my blood turns to ice.
A girl. Blonde. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Laughing at something Mikhail's saying, her hand touching his arm with easy intimacy.
Sofia.
My hands tremble as I spread the surveillance photos across Viktor's desk. Dozens of them. Mikhail and Sofia meeting in secret gardens, holding hands, him teaching her something from a book. In one, she's wearing half a heart on a chain around her neck.
I grab the next document, searching for proof that this is some mistake.
The memo is typed on Viktor's personal letterhead, dated two days before the massacre:
"M has become compromised. Emotional attachment to Rosetti girl presents operational liability.
Options: (1) Eliminate the girl. (2) Redirect M's loyalty through traditional methods.
(3) Allow situation to resolve naturally.
Recommendation: Option 3. M will likely attend meeting to warn the Rosettis.
Acceptable collateral for larger operational success. "
My vision tunnels as I read 'acceptable collateral.' The words blur, refocus, blur again. A metallic taste floods my mouth, rage so pure it has flavor.
Acceptable collateral. My brother. My father wrote those words about his own son.
The security logs are next, Viktor's handwriting in the margins.
"Ordered perimeter team to stand down 20:00-02:00.
M departed 20:42." Blood from my cut knuckles drips onto the memo, marking Viktor's calculation with tonight's violence.
They could have stopped him. Could have kept him from walking into that slaughter. Viktor chose to let him go.
My hands shake so violently I can barely turn the pages.
Cold sweat makes my shirt stick to my back as each document builds the truth like a tower of bones.
Viktor tracking Mikhail's movements. Viktor reading intercepted letters where Mikhail wrote about warning the Rosetti family.
Viktor calculating the probability of his son's death and finding it acceptable.
The letter is at the bottom, never sent, in Viktor's handwriting. The paper trembles in my grip, crackling as my fist tightens:
"Alexei, If you're reading this, I'm dead and you've found what I kept hidden.
Yes, I knew about Mikhail and the girl. Yes, I let him go that night.
He was weak, sentimental, unfit to lead the bratva into the future.
You were always the stronger one, the one who could do what needed to be done.
Mikhail's death made you pakhan. It hardened you into the weapon our family needed.
Every great leader is forged in loss. Consider his sacrifice my final gift to you. You're welcome. V"
You're welcome.
For letting my brother die. For orchestrating his death. For using his blood to shape me into this.
The scream tears from my throat before I know it's coming, animal, wordless, eleven years of grief redirecting into rage. I grab Viktor's desk and throw it against the wall. Papers explode across the room like white birds fleeing. The wood splinters, drawers spilling secrets across Persian rugs.
I destroy everything I can reach. The leather chair goes through the window. Books rain from shelves like judgment. Every photo, every memory, every trace of Viktor's existence gets torn apart by my hands.
The acrid smell of my own sweat mixes with the dust. Papers tear under my fingers, the sound like fingers down a chalkboard, like promises dying.
When the rage finally empties out, I'm on my knees in the wreckage, still holding that letter.
She kept Mikhail's secret to protect him from Viktor, the very monster who was planning his death anyway. Christ. She was trying to save him from the father who'd already written him off as acceptable losses.
My phone is in my hand before I even think about it.
"Alexei?" Katya's voice from Moscow. "What's wrong? Why are you calling so late?"
"He killed Misha."
Silence. Then: "What?"
I tell her everything. The photos. The memo calling our brother acceptable collateral. The security logs showing that Viktor let him walk to his death. The letter thanking me for becoming the monster our father always wanted.
Katya's crying by the time I finish, that awful sound of learning your whole life was built on lies.
"You're lying. Tell me you're lying, Alexei."
"I have his letter. In his handwriting. He wrote 'You're welcome,' Katya. Like Misha's death was a gift."
Long pause. Just her breathing, ragged and broken. Then: "I'm glad Mama died not knowing. It would have killed her all over again."
"Burn it," Katya says, voice hard as Moscow winter. "Burn word that bastard wrote. Burn his study to the ground if you have to."
So I do. The fireplace roars as I feed it years of lies. The photos curl and blacken, the acrid smell of burning chemicals filling the room. I keep just the evidence. Everything else curls into smoke.
Dawn breaks through the windows, painting the ruined study in shades of gold and shadow. I stand in the ashes of my father's secrets, truth eating through me like acid.
Viktor orchestrated all of it: Mikhail's death, my transformation into pakhan, Sofia’s destruction. Even from the grave, that bastard was still pulling our strings.
My woman is out there drowning in guilt for my father's sins. She's mine to protect, mine to heal, and I let her walk away thinking she's poison when she was just a girl trying to save the boy she loved.
Even now, destroyed by truth, I track her phantom scent like an addict. The need to find her burns through everything else: the rage, the grief, the horrible understanding of what my father was.
The admission hits me as I stand in the wreckage: I love her. Not just want her, not just need her. Love her with the kind of desperation that makes men burn down worlds. And she's out there thinking she deserves all the pain the universe can deliver.
Viktor took my brother. He won't take my woman too.
I leave Viktor's ghost in the ashes where it belongs.
But I'm alive. She's alive. And I'll burn down heaven and hell before I let his poison destroy her for one more day.
I'll carve the truth into anyone who tries to stop me from reaching her.
I love her. She's going to know the truth. And then, God help me, I'm never letting her go again.