I’d already shown her every heinous side to my nature but here she was, loving me anyway,acceptingme anyway. All while giving me a path to make a righteous kill that’d take out a cunt like the Krestniy Otets with my creations.
Slowly, I dipped my chin and, formally, declared, “The Valentinis will align themselves with the next Krestniy Otets.”
Ilya’s smile would have creeped out the Joker.
I’d take that as a good sign…
FORTY-FIVE
STAN
“What’s in the box?” Kitty inquired, drawing my attention away from a discussion with Ilya and Dmitri about Yuri Dubrov.
With so many killers around the table, every nerve ending in my body should have been on high alert. Instead, I felt like I was among friends.
A battered case had appeared in front of Sofia. Long but wide and thin, the varnished wood held as many scratches as it did figures in the grain. I half-expected it to house a pair of antique flintlocks.
Eyes gleaming, Sofia didn’t answer verbally, just pushed it across the shiny mahogany surface. “We repay our debts in the Dushenka household.”
“Dushenka?” Kitty asked.
“My mother’s line. The only one I willingly embrace. Open it, Stan. You’ll like it.”
I arched a brow at the cloak and daggers then snagged the box and lifted the latch.
Again, expecting an antique gun, what I came across was two gleaming ruby-studded cuffs.
I gaped at them.
Frozen in place.
My heart stalling.
“Has he had a seizure?” Taube muttered.
“I think he’s happy,” Sofia mumbled back.
“When a man finds his legacy at the dinner table, he’s entitled to take a moment,” Ilya drawled lazily.
“I brought them over from my private collection,” Sofia told me with a soft smile. “Their disappearance is one of the reasons why Father is peeved about the circumstances of my death.”
Ilya nodded. “The Krestniy Otets believes the bomb was a distraction for the ‘heist’ going on inside.”
“Yes,” she chirped with a happy wiggle in her seat. “I cleared out the safe and brought everything with me. It was only when I had the contents valued?—”
“Yes, because before that, you were using them to make trades!”
Sofia ignored Taube. “—that I was asked from the fence interested in purchasing them if I knew what they were. I think she might work for you? A woman called Samantha Ravenshaw.” She cleared her throat when I remained silent. “Stan? Are you okay?”
My fingers itched to stroke the lines of the hideous bracelets, but I refrained. Barely. Instead, I grabbed Kitty’s hand. “These are a gift?”
She squeezed my fingers with her own, sensing how important this was to me.
Hell,us.
She was a part of my family now.
Sofia beamed. “They’re what you seek? It isn’t that I didn’t trust Samantha to perform such a transaction, but… I would never have accepted money from you. Not after what you did for me.”
