I read until my eyes blur, until my hands ache from gripping paper too tightly.
It’s all there. My father’s legacy written not in blood and territory, but in compromise and collusion. He wasn’t just the monster who built the Sharov name in shadows. He was a collaborator. A man who sat at tables with the very people who called us criminals, who smiled at their wives and shook their hands while burying bodies for them in the dark.
I slam one folder shut, the sound echoing through the concrete chamber. Rage claws through me, burning hot and relentless.
All my life, I thought I understood the weight of what he left me. I thought I carried his sins on my back, thought I’d already inherited the blood and the chains. This is worse.
This means everything I’ve built, every move I’ve made, every life I’ve taken in his shadow—it was all part of something larger. His game.Theirgame.
I stagger back from the cabinet, chest heaving, the papers still spread across the table in front of me.
The Bratva was never just ours. We were a weapon. A mask. A convenient villain to shield the men who pull the strings.
Now Vivienne knows it.
The thought cuts deeper than any truth in those files. She knows, and she put it in my hands. Not as leverage. Not as threat, just as truth.
My father may have destroyed her father, but I’ve given her the power to destroy me.
For the first time in years, I feel unsteady. Not because of enemies outside these walls, but because of the woman whosits at my side, eyes sharper, presence withdrawn, carrying knowledge that could rip us both apart.
I grip the table, forcing the chaos in my chest into silence.
The papers still lie spread across the table when I send for her. My men look at me strangely—summoning Vivienne to the archives is unheard of—but no one questions it. They’ve learned. They know better.
I wait with my hands braced on the steel table, the scattered files glowing beneath the harsh yellow lights. Every page screams betrayal, every line a reminder that the empire I thought I inherited is only a fraction of what really existed.
When she enters, she doesn’t flinch at the cold air or the weight of the room. Her chin is lifted, her expression unreadable. She closes the door quietly behind her and steps closer. Her eyes sweep the documents, pausing only briefly on the ones with her father’s name. Then she looks at me.
I should speak first, but the silence stretches long between us. The kind of silence that would drive weaker people to fill it with excuses or lies.
Finally, I break it. My voice is low, rough. “They killed him to keep their empire clean.”
Her face doesn’t change. No flicker of surprise, no crack in her composure. She already knew. She’s been carrying this weight longer than I have.
“Then either I get my revenge,” she says evenly, “or I burn this empire.”
The words strike through me sharper than any blade. Not because of the threat—they’re familiar; I’ve heard them from countless mouths before, but because she means it.
It isn’t just the Bratva she’s speaking of; it’s all of it. The men in suits, the judges, the ministers, the machine that fed on her father’s corpse and kept on running.
I hold her gaze, steady, refusing to look away. “If you burn it, you burn me.”
Her jaw tightens. “Then maybe you should stand clear.”
The silence between us is thicker than shouting, heavier than the slam of fists or the crack of gunfire.
Beneath it, something stirs. Not hatred. Not yet forgiveness. Something sharper. Alignment.
By the end of the night, I’m pulling new lists from the files, piecing together names, networks, alliances. These won’t be traditional hits, not the kind the Bratva thrives on. A bullet won’t be enough to destroy men like these. They’ve spent decades building shields, layers of immunity, false reputations. They don’t bleed in alleys: they bleed in offices, in courts, in boardrooms.
Dismantling them means stripping them from the inside out.
I spread the documents across the table in a new order, reorganizing what my father left into something else entirely. The records of politicians bought with favors. Judges who buried cases in exchange for silence. Officers who planted evidence, who forged arrests to make the Bratva look guilty while the true architects walked free.
Vivienne circles the table slowly, her eyes sharp, her hands brushing the edges of the papers but never picking them up.
“You’ll need leverage,” she says finally.
