Chapter 34
EVGENY
“Iwant answers. Now.”
For once, the old man’s watery gray eyes fix on the window, on the hazy day outside, instead of glaring back at me. He’s not demanding respect or admonishing me for talking to him like a child instead of the honored vor he is.
For three weeks, I’ve racked my mind, my memory, my soul trying to understand why Vasya betrayed me. Why he killed Eva’s brother. Why he crashed his car into hers when that impact could have killed her.
We’ve been like brothers since we were kids, both caught up in our grief, both without anyone in the world except each other. Over time, as I took my position and Vasya his, our closeness frayed at the edges. But he still knew so many of my secrets, knew a part of me no one else did.
It’s tearing me apart, and I have to understand. But he’s gone to ground, disappeared, and neither Dmitri nor the rest of my men can find him.
Out of respect for my past with Vasya, I had kept the secret between us, waiting until I could find and question him before I decided on his punishment.
If everyone had known of his betrayal, death would have followed very soon, and before he breathed his last, I had to understand why he betrayed me.
Not just the Bratva, but me. This was about me. I knew that down to my core.
“Ivan.”
He doesn’t respond to the sharpness in my voice, so I do something I never thought I would. I’m desperate.
“Ivan, please. My brother has betrayed me, and I don’t understand why.” I’m appalled at the emotion in my voice. It feels like someone ripped my heart out, like I’ve lost another family member. “Ivan, help me understand why Vasya has done what he’s done.”
Silence falls in the room, broken only by the faint noise in the hallway outside, the nurses and other residents passing. Dmitri meets my eyes, then shakes his head, but this old man is my last hope to figure out this puzzle, and from his reaction, he feels like the last piece.
“Ivan.” I switch to Russian. “Please, I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Tell me what I need to know. Why did Vasya betray me? What is he planning to do? You know he killed Eva’s brother, yes? That he tried to kill Eva and the twins, too?”
Ivan turns suddenly, gray eyes wide. “He tried to kill Eva?”
“He was the one who hit her car. We have video, photos, and paint transfer on his car that matched hers when the police found it abandoned several miles away.”
The old man pales, then drops his face into his hands, a low moan escaping him. When he looks up, misery deepens the wrinkles on his face. He looks truly old and broken.
“I should have taken care of this long ago. Told you long ago.” His voice is as thin and watery as his eyes.
“Taken care of what? Told us what?” Dmitri asks, far kinder than I am, as my hands curl into fists at my sides.
Another betrayal? Another secret?
“Ev, the night your mother died,” The night I was burned so badly I had to stay in the hospital for six months, his pause says. “The night your mother died, the fire was no accident.”
Dmitri’s sharp intake of breath mirrors the shock ripping through me.
“Did someone kill her?” I demand, stepping toward the old man and realizing I have nowhere else to go. Instead, I pace the small space. What the hell does this have to do with Vasya?
“You have to understand, Evgeny, your father took in Vasya’s father when he was running from the Motherland.
He gave him a place in the Bratva, eventually made him his second-in-command.
And then your father found out Vasya’s father was plotting to overthrow him and take over as pakhan.
After everything your father did for him. ”
“H-he what?” I choke, coming to a sudden halt.
Vasya’s father had been like an uncle to me, just as Ivan had taken the place of a grandfather in my life, even a father after my mother died.
“He was planning to kill your father and take over the Kucherov Bratva. Your father had evidence, proof. And you remember your father, but more importantly his anger.”
I do. All too well. I still carry physical scars beyond my burns as reminders.
“Your father wanted to make it look like an accident or an assassination attempt that killed the wrong person. Vasya’s father had sympathizers, and the last thing he wanted to do was create a martyr to his cause.”
Ivan’s words settle into a terrible, horrifying understanding inside me, heavy and cold.
“Tell me my father didn’t set that fire,” I beg. I feel like a boy again, staring at the roaring flames as my world crashes around me.
Vasya and his parents lived in the other wing of the house, given his status within the Bratva.
A fire would look at best like a freak accident and, at worst, like an assassination attempt on my father.
If any of Vasya’s father’s supporters suspected anything, they couldn’t prove it without first divulging the betrayal and theirs, as well.
Ivan’s eyes flick away, and Dmitri curses. I can’t drum up a single word. A single thought. A single breath.
“You weren’t supposed to be there, you or your mother. You were supposed to be away, visiting your mother’s family, but you and she both came down with something, and you both came home early. By the time your father found out…”
“Did you light the fire?” My voice is tight with barely contained rage.
“I did not know you were there, Evgeny!” Ivan bursts out, the words rough with emotion and regret, with the confession he can finally make after all these decades. “I did not know you were there. I wish to God I had known. But we didn’t have phones as we do now, and your mother, she did not…”
The old man puts a shaking hand to his ashen-gray face.
“His heart,” Dmitri starts, but I silence him with a single, vicious look.
Ivan finally takes a deep breath, sits up as tall as his bent spine allows, and looks me in the eye. “No. No, it was my fault, Evgeny. I lit the fire that burned down your house, killed Vasya’s parents and your mother, and left you with your scars.”
“And Vasya found out.”
It’s a statement, not a question. This is all Vasya taking revenge for something that happened decades ago when we were children, something I had nothing to do with.
But I know all too well the desire for revenge can twist a man’s mind.
“How did he find out? What is he planning?” When Ivan doesn’t answer me fast enough, I lean forward, a hand on each chair arm, until we’re face-to-face. “What is Vasya planning, Ivan?”
“I don’t know.” The old vor’s chin lifts. “He did not tell me. I haven’t seen him in weeks. If I had known he was planning any of this, I would have told you.”
I turn on my heel and leave before Ivan can say more. Dmitri’s footsteps fall in behind me.
The car ride is silent as death, the mood inside matching the dark, heavy sky hanging over Los Angeles and shrouding the tops of the tallest buildings in clouds.
It starts to rain when we’re near home, a fitting match to the churning thoughts in my head.
The only coherent thought I have, the one to which I cling, keeps me from tumbling down that dark hole.
Knowing Eva is waiting for me at home, and the thought of holding her, breathing in her scent, of knowing she and our children are safe in my arms.
Dmitri curses. Loudly. “Fuck!”
He hands me his phone before I can even ask. I stare at the headline, trying to make sense of the words for a long moment.
Alleged Mob Boss Found Dead.
The photo, a mug shot of Andrei Tsepov, overlays a blurry, shrouded body.
“Tsepov is dead.” Dmitri scans the article. “Shot through the back of his head, executed. The article says a rival organization is most likely responsible.”
“It wasn’t any of our fucking guys,” I bark.
“Of course not.” Dmitri seems offended by the suggestion. “No one wants the turf war to explode like that. All our guys know your orders not to touch Tsepov until you can get to him.”
None of my loyal men, no, but…
“We need to get home.”
Dmitri shoots me an odd look, confused by my sudden, unusual panic.
“Now!” I snap, and the SUV picks up speed as the driver takes the twisting, turning Palos Verdes roads.
Dread builds in the pit of my stomach, growing worse as I call first Eva, then one of the guards at home, and get no answer both times.
A third call to Eva’s phone goes to voicemail again, and I curse, smashing the phone against the dashboard.
The driver needs no further signal to push the SUV faster.
Around the last curve, I realize we’re too late.
Bright, flickering yellow and orange light bounces off the low clouds, glimmering in the sheets of rain on the windshield. I barely wait for Dmitri to stop or for the gate to roll open before I’m out of the car and running down the driveway, heedless of the driving rain soaking me to the bone.
A conflagration is consuming my estate, my home, my sanctuary, with flames licking the sky.
And Eva is inside.