Pyotr doesn’t push further, but Aleksei hangs back. Drako took us in, has given us a good life, and made sure no one found out about what I did, but none of that would matter to Aleksei. He would kill Drako in a heartbeat to protect me.
After a tense stand-off and a nod from me, Aleksei reluctantly pulls on his T-shirt and leaves with Pyotr.
“Your brotherwould make a shit soldier,” Drako says as he lowers his massive bulk onto the stool X just vacated and examines the bratva mark on my chest. Pulling on fresh gloves, he picks up the tattoo machine. “Too defiant.”
“A good soldier is not one who follows orders blindly, but one who knows when not to.”
“That’s a very idealistic viewpoint that has led to the downfall of many empires.”
“Many of those empires needed to fall. History has shown us that.”
He positions my arm on the pad and spreads my fingers, the buzz of the machine echoing off the walls as he continues where X left off on the letter A on my thumb. “I knew an angel once.”
In the bratva, there is no expectation of privacy, even with family. Hidden cameras and microphones are everywhere. How long had he been watching and listening?
“Your mother,” he says, and my eyes fly to his face.
“You knew her?”
“I was in love with her.”
His words go off like a grenade being tossed in the room.
Switching to my forefinger, he makes the first line for the letter N. “Your mother and I were friends as children. She wasmy first love. And my first heartbreak. Nina was a beautiful soul. Like the sun—brilliant and bright and spectacular. I regret every day that I didn’t fight harder for her. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife. I love the life we have built and the son we share. But there will always be this ‘what if’ that hangs over my head when it comes to what could have been between us. Maybe that is why I have always looked at you as the son she and I would have had if things were different.”
Astounded by his confession, I utter, “But Aleksei…”
His pale green eyes meet mine. “Is nothing like you. The same face, yes, but not the same heart or strength. Those qualities Nina only gifted to you.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just sit there, lost in his “what ifs” as he finishes the last letter of ANGEL. There is so much I don’t know about Mama and what her life was like when she was younger. She never talked about it or about her parents, and I never bothered to find out because the loss of her remains too painful to want to dig up the memories of her past.
“I’m glad she got to experience happiness and love. At least once.” Because fuck knows, she didn’t get either with Nikolai Stepanoff.
Drako applies ointment to each finger and wraps each one with a derma cover. “Aoife was murdered.”
Another grenade, this one leaving shrapnel embedded deep. It’s been almost eight years, and yet the wound her death left carved into my heart never healed and is still bleeding. “I don’t understand. You said she died in a car accident. A drunk driver.”
“There was no car accident.”
“But…” My mind has trouble grasping what this means. I jerk back. “Youliedto me?”
Drako’s large, scarred hands grab the sides of my grief-stricken face, forcing me to look at him, but I can’t. “Newinformation has come to light from a source I trust. The story about the accident was a lie to cover up what really happened.”
“Who killed her?” I demand to know, rage exploding like a firestorm, obliterating everything in its path.
Drako’s countenance hardens. Before me now is not the man who has been a surrogate father to Aleksei and me, but the head of the bratva. “Francesco Amato ordered her death. He found out where they were in Ireland and sent his men, then burned the house with their bodies inside.”
He says it so matter-of-factly. Clinically. With no emotion. Like he reciting verbatim from a book.
I blink, blink again, as the cruel truth of Aoife’s death sinks in, and grief curdles into something twisted and dark. I have mourned that lie for four-fifths of a decade. Choked on it every night when I’d wake up gasping from the nightmare of Aoife trapped under twisted metal and broken glass. None of it was true. Aoife was murdered. Francesco took her from me. He hurt my mother in the most savage way. I’m going to take immense pleasure in reciprocating all the pain he has caused. A quick death would be too merciful. He deserves to suffer the same way Aoife and my mother suffered.
And once I have takeneverythingfrom him, I’m going to fucking kill him.
Eleven
The Present
Bookmarkingthe page with the black satin ribbon attached to the inner spine, I round the counter island and wrap myself around Aleksander, not able to stop the flood of emotion pouring from my eyes and soaking into his shirt.
