She also had rarely asked me to translate whatever term of endearment I’d used. How strange that I’d never thought her behavior odd. Because she hadn’t given me any reason to question her.
All through the long hours of searching, a horrible nagging thought had dug at the darkest sections of my mind.
What if she’d been playing me the entire time? What if our love hadn’t been real?
Whatever the truth, my instinct told me my past had collided with my hopes for the future.
Or perhaps I should say her past as well.
What I refused to do was to allow anyone to take away the two most important people in my life out of a need for revenge. They could go fuck themselves.
Jaxon had gone through my house, discovering several bugs. In other locations as well. There’d been an entire team sweeping. We had new computers. New emails. Hell, new phones, but I had a terrible feeling the security wouldn’t matter. Whoever was behind this would stop at nothing until they got what they wanted. Lainey and Nina were merely part of the puzzle.
The knock on my door didn’t surprise as much as irritate the hell out of me. I’d noticed Mikhail in being Pakhan had ordered guards to maintain watch over my estate as he likely had for every other family member. Either that or he’d wanted to ensure I didn’t do anything stupid.
I could ignore the intrusion, but I was in the mood for some confrontation. Perhaps that would allow some of the excessiverage to slip away. Clear thinking was exactly what I needed to maintain.
“Sasha.”
Huffing, I glanced from Alessandro to DiAngelo. “Whatever you have to tell me must be important for you to fly down here from Reno.”
They glanced at each other, both looking grim. “Do you have a few minutes?” DiAngelo asked.
I opened the door wide, stepping back. “My place is your place.” That moment I realized I’d trashed the house. Not my typical behavior, but I had no one to answer to.
“You’ve been busy,” Alessandro said, chuckling.
“I’ve been trying to find answers. Make yourself at home. The bar is open. I have coffee.”
DiAngelo pulled a file from the case he’d brought with him. “Your instincts were correct.”
“My instincts. I’m beginning to wonder if I can trust anything about my thoughts or beliefs. Why do you say that?” As soon as he handed me the file, I sat down, shoving shit out of my way on the table.
Alessandro sat on the edge of his seat, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers steepled. “You were right to believe the emblem was a crest. The reason you had trouble finding it was that it was from a prominent family in Moscow who held significant power up until the nineteen seventies. They were wealthy, influential, and considered brutal. By all rights, it’s suggested they were the true Bratva. Their soldiers bore the emblem as a required sign of loyalty.”
“Like the man who attacked me here at the house. So their soldiers still exist.”
DiAngelo nodded. “Yes. Few and far between from what we’ve found, but the lineage has carried on. Rumors on the darkweb are that the family seeks to regain power and have been planning to do so for years.”
“What happened in the seventies?” My hackles were raised, the sense of foreboding keeping me right on the precipice.
“A war unlike Russia had ever seen. Sides were taken, three extremely powerful families taking center stage, all determined to collect and keep power. You know one of them. The Dmitriyev family.”
I snorted as soon as he mentioned my blood. “Yeah, well, Uncle Yuri is a true savage.”
“Both Boris and Ivan were as well, although two and three years younger than Yuri. After the brutal murder of your grandfather, Yuri gained more power than you might have been led to believe,” he continued. “The other two families are the Antonova and the Petrov families, the Petrovs still considered little more than animals to some. However, they gained the ear to the government over the years through extortion and blackmail.”
DiAngelo’s answer was a mere reminder of the stories my father and uncle had told us about how horrific living in Moscow and other parts of Russia had become. The level of violence, murders, and arsons had increased tenfold as various factions had fought to gain power. “What does this have to do with the birth certificate I found?”
“Everything,” Alessandro stated, nodding toward the file. “You should know there’s another dark web only accessible in Russia. We hacked it, but in doing so, it’s entirely likely the various parties in the country realize someone has been looking into a world they want no one else to discover.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I snarled.
“The picture of the man outside your guest house appears to be Lachlan O’Shaughnessy. You wouldn’t know him and his picture has rarely been taken. He’s only twenty-two, butaccording to some, a vile human being. Don’t get too excited about it. If what we found is true, your instinct the Irish family was being used as enforcers could be correct.”
I kept my eyes pinned on his for a few seconds before opening the file. A young woman stared back at me who could have been Selena’s twin. Except it was obvious the photograph had been taken decades before. “Who the hell is this?”
“That’s Katerina Antonova. The family I mentioned and the crest on the square and tattooed on the soldier belongs to them.”
