Beside Dinara, tied to an identical chair with a thick fabric gag stifling her cries, is Katya. Tears pour down her face and she’s making these broken sounds coming through the gag.
My vision tunnels. The floor drops out from under me, and it feels like I’m free-falling through a nightmare.
“You wouldn’t…” I seethe. “You wouldn’t hurt your own daughter.”
Ruslan blinks, unfazed. “I won’t be hurting anyone. You will. This is the price of leadership, Kirill. Sacrifice. Duty before love.” He trails a thumb over Katya’s cheek with a tenderness that makes me sick. “One of these women will die tonight by your hand. The choice is yours.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
KIRILL
“You’reout of your fucking mind,” I roar at my father. “You’d watch your own daughter die just to teach me a lesson?”
Ruslan’s nostrils flare, his voice dropping to a quiet hiss. “I’ve sacrificed far more for this family than you can imagine.”
My mother’s sweet face flashes through my mind and something heavy and dark settles in my chest. He actually believes that killing the woman he claimed to love was a noble act of duty instead of the sick betrayal it was.
“Save the lecture on loyalty and sacrifice for someone else. I know how you murdered your own wife.” Surprise bleeds through his expression. “You deprived your children of a mother so you could force a ring onto a woman who faked her death to escape you.”
Katya’s head snaps toward our father, her eyes filled with horror and disgust. I hate that this is how she’s learning the truth, but I can’t hold back now.
Ruslan’s lips curl into something ugly, his careful control finally cracking. “I would’ve ruled half of Russia and all of New York with the Voronins if it weren’t for that stupid bitch.”He gestures sharply at Dinara. “The one whose daughter you married.”
Fuck. How does he know about that?
I have my answer a second later, when Miron steps forward beside my father, arms crossed, wearing the dead-eyed look of a man who sold his soul long ago.
Miron was one of the few men I trusted implicitly. He knew everything. Worse, I put him in charge of finding Dinara’s mother. Promised her she could trust him. The weight of that mistake is a block of cold concrete sitting on my chest.
“Good to know you’re a spineless piece of shit,” I spit at Miron, whose only response is an indifferent glare.
“You could learn a thing or two about loyalty from Miron.” Ruslan rests a hand on his shoulder with something close to affection. “Did you really think a man you recruited from the FSB, from my homeland, wouldn’t be loyal to me first? I told you a long time ago, Kirill—I have eyes and ears everywhere.”
A sick feeling builds under my ribs, but I can’t dwell on past mistakes. The only thing that matters is getting Dinara and Katya out of here alive.
“This is between you and me. Let them go,” I demand through clenched teeth. “String me up, torture me, do whatever you need to, but let them walk out of here.”
Ruslan begins to pace, his boots clicking rhythmically against the concrete.
“You only have yourself to blame. I warned you to stay away, but you married her instead. Even knowing she’s here to tear apart our family.” His expression turns vicious. “I tried to take care of the problem, but you fucked that up again.”
It takes me a moment to understand he’s talking about the attack at Rosa’s. That was him trying to kill Dinara, not the Ghost.
“Why?” I choke out. “Just because you wanted me to marry Varvara? A woman I’d never be happy with.”
“Because of who she is.” He wraps a hand in Dinara’s hair and jerks her head back hard enough to make a choked noise escape despite the fabric gag in her mouth. He stares down at her, his expression vicious. “You’re the spitting image of your mother. Stupid to think you could come to my club and I wouldn’t know exactly who you are.”
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” I growl. Every muscle in my body tightens like a pulled bowstring, ready to snap forward. But I know his men are watching from the shadows, weapons trained on me. One wrong move and everyone in this room dies.
My father laughs. “Or what? What power do you hold over me?”
“Tell me something,” I husk out, buying time, trying to find an angle. “Was the Ghost even real? Or was this whole thing just another one of your games?”
“You think I’d play a game with my business like this? The Morozov alliance would have solved everything. They’re richer than God and willing to give us carte blanche to do whatever we want. They would’ve funded an entire army if you hadn’t put a ring on this Syndicate cunt.”
Dinara squeezes her eyes shut, trying to block out my father’s hateful words.
