It was a symbiotic relationship. My father, the Russian Wolf, provided the capital and the muscle. Arthur, the respectable British merchant, provided the legitimate ships and the clean flags to move the Bratva’s goods through Europe.
My father made Arthur rich. He treated Arthur like family. He invited him to our table and let him hold his children.
And I remember a little girl running across the lawn. She was about four years old.
Helena.
She was wearing a white lace dress, her hair in ribbons, as she chased a butterfly. She was innocent. Protected. A princess in a castle.
I was thirteen. I watched her from the balcony. I didn't hate her then.
But I hate her now.
Because Arthur Blackwood sold that innocence. He sold the coordinates of our convoy to the Moretti family for a payout. He traded my family’s location for a shipping contract.
My father made the fatal mistake of a King. He forgot that a hungry dog will bite the hand that feeds it if the price is fat.
I don’t pretend my father was a saint. Viktor Morozov was a criminal. He ordered executions. He was a predator who feasted on the weak.
But he had a code.The Vory Code.You don’t betray your own. You don’t touch women and children. You stand by your word, even if it bleeds you.
Arthur Blackwood had no code. He was a civilian who wanted the profits of the wolf without the teeth. And when theItalians offered him a way out, he didn't just leave. He burned the den down with us inside.
I remember that day perfectly. The formation is burned into my nightmares.
The Lead Car: Security. Four men with automatic weapons.
The Middle Car: The Target. My father, my mother, and my little sister, Katya.
The Rear Car: Me.
I was thirteen years old. I had begged to ride with them in the middle car. I wanted to sit with Katya and play cards.
But my father refused."Bratva protocol, Kostya,"he had said, kissing my forehead. "The Heir never travels with the King. If they strike the head, the heart must survive."
It was supposed to be a secure route.
But Arthur didn't stop at selling the coordinates. He sold the formation. He told the Morettis which armored SUV carried my father. He knew my mother and sister were in that car, and he signed their death warrants anyway.
I saw the explosion from fifty yards away.Boom.
The sound hit me first. A physical blow to the chest that knocked the wind out of me.
Even from fifty yards away, inside an armored car, I felt it. A wave of oven-hot air that turned the world orange.
My driver slammed on the brakes. Tires screeched. I was thrown forward against the seatbelt.
Black smoke surged into the gray sky. It smelled of burning rubber, gasoline, and burning meat.
I screamed. I clawed at the door handle, desperate to get out, to run to them. But the security held me back. They locked the doors. They drove me away while I witnessed my life turn to ash out the rear window.
The middle car didn't just catch fire; it disintegrated. My mother and sister died instantly.
My father lingered.
The explosion drove shrapnel into his chest, lodging a piece of jagged steel near his aorta. He survived the transport, but he was shattered. He spent two weeks in a sterile hospital room, hooked up to machines that breathed for him.
I sat by his bed every day, holding his hand.
