36. Yaromir #2
I step around the desk slowly. My side pulls with every movement, the wound from Dmitri’s bullet still wet beneath the bandage. I ignore it.
“You told me your man followed Anya,” I say. “That he saw her enter the warehouse. That he left because he thought it was a clandestine affair.”
Larisa’s mouth tightens.
“There was no man,” I say.
Her fingers shift on the cane.
Small. Enough.
“It was you.”
She laughs once, dry and cold. “You are tired.”
“Yes.”
“You’re wounded.”
“Yes.”
“And relieved. That’s a dangerous combination.”
“No,” I say. “Dangerous is what happens when people think I’m fucking stupid.” I move closer. “You shot her, didn’t you? When Dmitri wavered, you took the chance.”
“That coward hit another like an idiot and made a run for it,” Larisa says, venom curdling her voice. “I couldn’t let the bitch get away with it. For you to be free, she had to die.”
I almost hit her. But she’s still a woman. I control my anger, focusing on the pieces of story she hasn’t given me yet.
“You watched her leave the house.”
“I wasn’t in your house.”
“No. But you still had eyes here.”
She doesn’t deny it.
“You knew she had received the messages from Sergei’s phone,” I continue. “You knew she would go because she still cared whether her father lived or died. And you knew I would not be home in time to stop her.”
Larisa looks toward the window.
Outside, the estate is black and quiet. My men are still at the hospital. The house feels empty in a way it never has before.
“How did you do it?” I ask.
She looks back at me. “Do what?”
“Bring Dmitri into your fold.”
That gets a reaction.
Not much. A flicker in her eyes. Insult, maybe.
Good.
“He was never in my fold,” she says.
“No?”
“No.”
“Dmitri is not bright enough to come up with all of that by himself,” I say. “I know for a fact he wasn’t working alone.”
“And you thought I helped him?” she scoffs. “You’re truly blind.”
I smile without humor. “You’re giving him too much credit.”
“Dmitri is foolish, not brainless.”
“He’s a spoiled dog that bites because no one trained him properly.”
Her lips press together.
There. She agrees.
I use it.
“You hated him,” I say. “Almost as much as I do.”
“I hated what he represented.”
“My father’s legitimate son.”
“My sister’s replacement,” she snaps. “He and his vile mother both. They never deserved what they got.”
I watch her breathe.
There’s the wound. Old, infected, never cleaned. My mother was not only mine to grieve. Larisa lost her sister and let that loss grow teeth until it needed someone else’s blood to feed on.
“You wanted Dmitri dead,” I say.
“I wanted Kirill to pay.”
“But I wouldn’t go far enough.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
Now the truth has begun to come out of hiding.
“You had his warehouses,” she says. “His men. His routes. His debts. You were choking him slowly.”
“That is how wars are won.”
“That is how cowards pretend patience is strategy.”
I say nothing.
She steps toward me, anger finally breaking through the polish. “He destroyed your mother. He gave Dmitri everything and gave you scraps. You should have burned his house years ago.”
“I built my own.”
“You built around the wound instead of cutting it open.”
“So you decided to do it for me.”
Her breathing changes. She realizes how much she has given me.
Too late.
I lean back against the edge of the desk and let my voice go quieter. “So you found Dmitri.”
“I didn’t find him. He never knew who I am. I presented an opportunity and he took it to feed his bruised ego.”
My hand curls once at my side.
She sees it and smiles faintly. “You know I’m right.”
“Keep talking.”
“He was drunk the first time. Pathetic. Ranting about how she had made him look weak. About how you had stolen what was his.”
“She was never his.”
Larisa ignores that. “He wanted revenge. He wanted proof that she still belonged to him in some way. I gave him an idea.”
“There it is.”
Her chin lifts. “A photograph. Nothing more.”
“You told him a photograph would break me.”
“I told him men believe what their pride fears most.”
“She only went because she’s better than all of us,” I say.
Larisa’s expression turns cold with disgust. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
I stare at her.
She says it like goodness is a disease.
“You watched me fall in love with her,” I say.
For the first time, Larisa goes silent.
I almost laugh. So that’s the part she hates most.
I say it again, because I want to watch her hear it. “You knew before I did.”
Her eyes harden. “You touched her like she mattered,” she says.
“You looked for her when she left a room. You stopped listening when her name was spoken. Men reported to you and your eyes went to the stairs because you expected her to come down.” Her voice is quieter now, more controlled, but the disgust is still there.
“Love makes powerful men stupid in very ordinary ways.”
Larisa saw all of it. And hated her for it.
“You saw me becoming weak,” I say.
“I saw you becoming your mother.”
I step closer again. “My mother was not weak.”
Larisa’s mouth trembles once.
Not with fear. With rage.
“She loved Kirill until there was nothing left of her.”
“No,” I say. “Kirill used her love until it killed her. There’s a difference.”
“A difference that leaves the woman dead either way.”
The room goes quiet.
For the first time tonight, she looks truly angry. “You were going to spare him,” she says.
“My father?”
“You were going to let him rot slowly. Take his men, his money, his influence, but leave him breathing. Leave Dmitri breathing too, perhaps, because your wife would ask you to. Because she would look at you with those soft eyes and you would remember she hates blood when it’s inconvenient.”
“She saved me from going down from a path I could never return from,” I say. “You left her dying, but she came from death to save me. Anya saved me, not you. You wanted me to believe she was dead.”
Larisa doesn’t speak.
“So I would kill Dmitri.”
Silence.
“And Kirill.”
Still silence.
I step closer until only the desk light behind me cuts across her face. “You used my wife as bait to make me destroy the Volkovs.”
Her eyes finally meet mine fully. “Yes.”
The word is soft. Clear. No apology.
There it is. The whole truth.
For a second, all I can hear is my own breathing.
Then she speaks again, faster now, as if confession has freed her from the need for restraint. “You would never have done it for yourself. You should have. God knows you had cause. But you kept building, waiting, calculating.
“You think this was justice?”
“I think it was necessary.”
“She’s pregnant with my child, and you shot them.”
Fear tracks through her face.
“If Anya had died, I would have killed Dmitri. I would have killed Kirill. Then I would have found the truth, and I would have come for you with nothing human left in me,” I continue.
“You think you are human now?”
“I know I am.”
She laughs bitterly. “Because of her.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No shame.
Larisa’s mouth twists. “She has ruined you.”
“No, she saved me,” I say. “And now it’s time for you to go.”
“Yaromir—” Her eyes flash.
“You’ll never come near my family again.”
She stands there, staring at me in disbelief before she comes to a decision and turns to leave. She reaches the door before I speak.
“Stop.”
She stills.
For a second, she doesn’t turn. Her hand remains on the handle, her back straight, her cane planted beside her like pride can hold up what’s left of her.
“You said leave the city,” she says. “I heard you.”
“No,” I say. “You heard the sentence. You haven’t yet understood it.”
She turns slowly. “You intend to make a spectacle of this?”
“I intend to make sure you don’t mistake exile for a suggestion.”
Her mouth tightens. “I am your aunt.”
“You were.”
For years, she has used blood like a shield. My mother’s sister. The woman who kept my mother’s memory alive when my father buried it under shame. The woman who told me stories, who fed my bitterness, who made hatred feel like inheritance.
I press the button under my desk. The door opens less than thirty seconds later.
Two of my men step inside.
I look at Andrei. “Her phones. Her accounts. Her men. Everything is locked before she leaves the grounds.”
Andrei nods. “Already started.”
Larisa’s face narrows. “Already?”
“Yes,” I say. “While you were talking.”
For the first time, real anger breaks through her composure. “You arrogant boy.”
“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”
Her grip tightens on the cane. “You think this proves something? That you can throw me out and become righteous because the little wife cried in your arms?”
I step toward her. Both men tense, but I lift one hand to stop them. “You wanted me to believe love was the thing that destroyed my mother. You were wrong. It was men like my father. Women like you. People who turn pain into permission.”
Her face pales, but her eyes stay hard.
“If you contact Dmitri, Kirill, Sergei, any man still loyal to my father, any woman inside my house, any doctor near my wife, you die.”
Her face turns still.
“If you try to return, you die. If you send flowers, letters, gifts, money, warnings, blessings, curses, or apologies, you die.”
For a moment, she looks like she might say something cruel enough to make me change my mind. Then she looks at my men. She understands. There will be no private exit. No dignified retreat.
Her voice lowers. “Your mother would not have done this to me.”
“No,” I say. “My mother trusted the wrong people too.”
I nod to Andrei. He steps forward. “Larisa Vasilova.”
She recoils slightly from his hand before he touches her. “I can walk,” she snaps.
“Then walk,” I say.
She looks at me one last time. For the first time, there’s something naked in her face. Not regret. Not apology. Something worse for a woman like Larisa.
Loss.
She wanted to be the last voice in my ear. The keeper of my mother’s wound. The one who shaped what I became.
I listen to the sound of her cane fade down the corridor, then the heavier steps of the men beside her. A door opens somewhere below. Voices murmur. Then the front door closes.
The house becomes quiet.