The guilt is a living thing inside my chest, clawing at my lungs, making it hard to breathe. Every morning I wake up and for one blissful second, I forget. Then reality crashes down and I remember. Alexei is dead. My baby brother is dead. And it’s my fault.
I should have gone. I should have sent more men with him. I should have suspected something when the Ashfords suggestedneutral territory. Theyneversuggest neutral territory. I should have been more careful, more paranoid, more?—
“You’ll make yourself sick.”
I don’t turn around, but then again, I don’t need to. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
“Uncle Konstantin,” I say flatly. “You’re up early.”
“So are you. Every morning for four days.” His footsteps crunch on the gravel path behind me. “The men are worried.”
I scowl. “The men can mind their own business.”
A Styrofoam cup appears in my peripheral vision, held by a weathered hand. Coffee. Black, from the smell of it. I take it because refusing would be more trouble than it’s worth, and press the warm cup between my palms.
Konstantin settles beside me with a soft grunt. He’s sixty-two, my father’s older brother, and he’s been in this business longer than I’ve been alive. Silver-haired now, but still sharp and still the strategist who’s guided our family through four decades of territorial disputes and power struggles.
He’s also the closest thing I have left to a father.
“You can’t keep doing this, Dimitri,” he says quietly. “Coming here every morning. Torturing yourself. It won’t bring him back.”
“I know that,” I bite out.
Konstantin raises an eyebrow. “Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re trying to will him back from the dead.” He takes a sip from his own coffee. “The business needsyou. Yourmenneed you. This family needs its leader, not a ghost haunting a cemetery.”
I want to snap at him and tell him he has no idea what I’m going through as he didn’t lose a brother so he can’t possibly understand.
But that would be a lie. Konstantin lost my father—his younger brother—fourteen years ago from a heart attack. Konstantin never got to say goodbye.
He understands.
“The Ashfords,” I say instead, redirecting. “What’s the latest?”
Konstantin sighs, recognizing the deflection but allowing it. “They’re fortifying. Called in reinforcements from their East Coast operations. Vincent Ashford knows retaliation is coming and he’s preparing for it.”
“Good. He should be afraid.” The rage that’s been simmering beneath my grief surges to the surface, hot and sharp. “We could hit them now. Tonight. Wipe them out in one coordinated strike. I’ve already drawn up the plans.”
“And start a war that would draw in every family in the region?” Konstantin turns to look at me, his expression grave. “Think, nephew. The Ashfords have alliances. Business partners. Families who owe them favors. You go after them directly, you’re not just fighting Vincent and his brother. You’re fighting half the Eastern seaboard. We’d lose as much as we’d gain—maybe more.”
“I don’t care,” I snarl. “They killed Alexei. They murdered mybrotherand you want me to—what? Just let it go? Pretend it never happened?”
Konstantin shakes his head. “I want you to be smart about this. Your father would have?—”
“Once again, my father isdead,” I cut him off. “As is my brother. So forgive me if I’m not particularly interested in being patient right now.”
We sit in tense silence, the only sound being the morning birds beginning to wake in the trees around us. The sky is lightening at the edges, dawn creeping in whether I want it to or not.
“Vincent Ashford reached out to me,” Konstantin says finally. “Yesterday. With a proposal.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “A proposal? What, is he offering to throw himself off a bridge? Because that’s the only proposal I’m interested in hearing.”
“A peace treaty,” Konstantin says calmly. “Binding. Legally enforceable. A way to prevent the war neither of us can afford.”
I turn to stare at him. “You’re joking.”
“He’s offering his daughter,” Konstantin continues, watching my face carefully. “His oldest, Vera. Twenty-four years old. In marriage. To you.”
For a moment, I can’t process what he’s saying. The words don’t make sense. Then they do, and revulsion hits me hard.
