Page 103 of The Bratva Betrayal

My eyes narrow. “That’s what you want to focus on? Not the fact that you’ll be a dead man if you don’t get out of town?”

He grunts. “Will I be able to come back?”

I stand there, thinking about the apartment he’s lived in for two years and the thousand small things I’ve done so quietly he never had to notice them being done.

I think about his split nose, a bruise blooming across a face that didn’t deserve it, the three million dollars in debt, a gun underneath Cady Gallagher’s chin and everything that came after.

I think about how much I’m going to miss my brother.

Then I think about how he could possibly grow up from this.

“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth. “I’ll contact you when you can.”

“How?”

“Easy. Just don’t get yourself killed.”

And then I walk out of my place, knowing it’s the last time I will see my brother.

24

Artem

Colin Gallagher’s office smells like whiskey and old money.

His men are everywhere, stationed at the door, along the walls, and flanking his desk. A dozen at least, big, watchful, and Irish as fuck, which means they’re holding their tempers behind their teeth and waiting to see which way this goes.

I counted them on the way in and noted the ones closest to the exits. Their hands were already too near their waists, and the two by the window looked like they’d been doing this long enough to be patient and wait for me to make a bad move.

Colin sits behind his desk, silver-haired and sharp-eyed. He looks at me the way powerful men look at each other when they’re deciding how much respect the situation requires.

He agreed to see me.

Curiosity is more dangerous than courage, and Colin Gallagher strikes me as a man who doesn’t leave a question unanswered. Good or bad, he’d rather know what’s coming.

“Makarov, please sit.” He gestures to the chair across from his desk. I sit because it’ll make him more comfortable with what I came to say. “Drink?”

He’s already reaching for the decanter, Irish hospitality running on reflex.

“No.”

He pours one for himself and looks at me with the same blue eyes that all three of his children inherited.

“My brother is gone,” I tell him. “He left this morning. He won’t be coming back.”

Colin sets down his glass, interested. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“The arrangement is broken. The marriage isn’t happening.”

He goes still as he decides whether to play this strategically or let his anger show.

“Do you understand,” he says slowly, “what that arrangement represented? The alliance between our families. The protection it offered. The agreement that Benedikt Volkov sanctioned. Do you have any idea what you’ve walked in here and broken this morning?”

“Yes.”

His eyes narrow. “And you don’t care?”

“I care about what’s relevant. The arrangement stopped being relevant when your future son-in-law put a gun under your daughter’s chin.”