She blinks. “Exit wound?”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “No. Shot me twice.”
Her mouth falls open. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
She lowers herself back down beside me, slower this time. “Why?”
My jaw flexes. Above us, the branches shift in the wind. Somewhere deeper in the woods, something small moves through leaves and goes quiet again.
“I was seventeen,” I say. “And stupid enough to think I could fix things by force.”
She turns her face toward me again, listening now without interruption.
“I walked into his office one day without knocking. He was fucking Vera.”
Ayla frowns. “Vera. Your aunt.”
“One and the same.”
She goes very still.
“At first, I thought he was cheating on my mother,” I say. “Thought that was the scandal. Thought I was the one who’d found out something ugly.”
“And?”
“And I told my mother.”
Ayla waits.
“She told me it was fine.”
Ayla turns onto her side fully now, propping her head on her hand. Her expression is somewhere between disgust and disbelief.“Fine?”
“That was the word she used.”
She lets out a dry, stunned breath. “I thought my mother being a mistress was bad.”
“It gets worse.”
Her brows lift.
“I found out it wasn’t an affair. It wasn’t betrayal the way I understood it, anyway. The three of them had been like that for years. My father, my mother, Vera. All together.”
Understanding hits her in pieces. I can see it happen in her face.
“Oh,” she says slowly. Then,“Oh.”
I stare up at the sky. “My father preached loyalty to the Bratva like it was a religion, but he didn’t just preach it—he beat it into me. Blood above all else. No lies. No weakness. No betrayal. He’d beat the shit out of me for less than what he was doing behind closed doors. He made a weapon out of me in the name of loyalty, all while carving exceptions for himself anywhere it suited him. And it wasn’t just that.”
I swallow.
“There were other secrets. Other lies. Corruption. Deals made for himself, not the Bratva. He stood there talking about honor while building everything around his own appetites.”
“And he expected you to live by rules he didn’t.”
“He expected me tobleedfor them.”
