“I just want the name.”
“He’ll kill me if I tell you.”
“I’ll handle it. Whoever it is.”
“It won’t be clean, Tyoma. This is a mess.”
“Valentin. If you don’t tell me, there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
I watched his throat bob. I had him on the hook. I continued speaking.
“I know you don’t want to lead this family. Nor are you ready to settle down. Your Parisian getaways are far too important for that. That all fades away if you give me the name.” His bisexuality doesn’t bother me. It would bother everyone else in the family, though, if he didn’t keep it under wraps.
“Who put you up to it, cousin?”
The answer was blindingly obvious. Denis.
Polina may be deluded enough to think that Vanya will choose her to lead, but Denis has more foresight than that. He knows that their betrayal of my father won’t ever sit right with Babushka.
What he said next chilled me.
“He seemed sure it wouldn’t be you, Tyoma. Very sure. Like he had a plan in place.”
I placed both hands on Valentin’s shoulders. “Do you think he does?”
His eyes flickered to the door, then backto me.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a matter of kill or be killed.”
He nodded.
“You were a part of creating this mess, Valentin. You’ll help me get out of it.”
Valentin has done his part, now it’s time for me to do mine.
The guards are fast asleep from some drugged whiskey he gave them. I stride past them, slumped at the doorway to their wing of the house.
Thank God he’s back on my side. It was scaring me, Valentin acting like he was hungry for power. Not like him at all.Now that I know Denis was involved, it clicks into place.
While Polina outright rejected me from birth, Denis was smarter. He noticed Vanya loved Valentin more than any of the rest of her grandchildren.
While he wasn’t exactly a loving father to Valentin — more like a distant, occasional houseguest — he attended the occasional prize giving. Gave him birthday presents. Shook his hand when he officially joined the Bratva.
I thought Valentin would have been able to see through his power plays, but I guess that familial influence ran deeper than I expected.
The Estate is dark and silent as I make my way through the house. These are the quarters where I lived as a child, under their roof. My mother and my uncle, the man who had no qualms about making a move on Polina the second my father was in the ground.
It’s not unheard of, but it pushed them out of Vanya’s favor. This was all back in the days when everyone had assumed she would giveup the leadership or be forced out in the years after Vassily’s death — but Babushka is more tenacious than that. Her stubborn refusal to give power to Polina and Denis is what turned them into these desperate, craven creatures who are now trying to force others to act as their puppets.
When I pull myself out and focus on my surroundings, something feels off.
I turn on my heel and that’s when I catch it.
A flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, so subtle it almost escaped me.
I walk, then pause suddenly again, turning around faster. I hear the rustling, just a millisecond later than my own footsteps. Still, there’s a noticeable delay.
