My jaw locks, and I stare at Alex. He heaves a sigh, looking down at my father’s face again. Then he stills. He leans closer, angling my father’s chin away from us, exposing the long, jagged scratches I assume Sera’s nails left in his skin.
Slowly, he straightens. “No one will retaliate against her.”
Fuck.
He watches me silently, waiting for my response. Alex has always had a preternatural way of knowing what is happening without being told, but there’snoway he could know about Sera.
“I understand why you’d want to take the blame for her,” he continues. “Mikhail won’t hurt your mother. Everyone knows how bad it’s gotten—how volatile Sergei has become. There’s been talk before about intervention.”
My stomach twists. He’s right. My mother would survive Mikhail’s wrath. But she would be exiled. She wouldn’t want to live cast out of the only world she’d ever known.
The decision is easy.
“I killed him,” I repeat stonily.
We hold each other’s gaze, both of us knowing what this means.
He can’t stop what’s coming.
But selfishly, I want him beside me when it does.
“Bratan.” The word is rough, torn from him. “You know what will happen.”
I tip my chin up.
“Fuck, Liev.” He drags a hand down his face. A muscle pulses in his cheek. “Give me ten minutes to get dressed. I’ll go with you.”
I nod. Gratitude that I didn’t have to ask lodges like a bullet in my chest.
We wait in Mikhail’s palatial home office, a room that reeks of smoke, leather, and power. Alex hasn’t said a word to me since he emerged from his home dressed in a suit, Madison pale in the doorway behind him. The pinched skin around her eyes and the way she cradled her baby bump gave away that Alex told her what was happening.
I’m glad they have each other, that Alex found the family he’d always wanted. I wish I’d had the chance…
I banish the thought.
No point in regrets now.
When Mikhail storms in, robe cinched tight, he slams the gun already in his hand on his desk before taking a seat in his leather chair.
Alex speaks for me—smooth, measured, deadly calm—spinning a much better story than the few facts I gave him.
Mikhail’s lips part at the news of Sergei’s death. But the emotion shutters quickly. His stony gaze slices to me. Sergei wasn’t just Mikhail’s topvorand uncle. He was Mikhail’s friend.
His loss is both business and personal.
Snatching the gun from his desk, he surges to his feet, pointing it at my head.
I pull in a slow breath and keep my eyes open, meeting Mikhail’s unrelenting dark gaze.
Being the illegitimate son of the last pakhan, Alex avoided the worst of the bratva after he reached twenty-three, and his father assigned him the role as head of all the legal activities that grew the Kovalyov fortune.
I never had that luxury. I was a soldier, an enforcer. I did what I was told without thought as to right or wrong. My loyalty was to the brotherhood. Until tonight, where in one inexplicable moment it had shifted to her.
For those of us deep in the blood-soaked trenches, there would never be a happily ever after.Live by the sword, die by the sword. The adage sounds in my head almost drowning out Alex’s next words.
“You should see the body,” he says coolly.
Mikhail’s finger twitches on the trigger.
