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For a twenty-year-old, Roman’s power was terrifyingly lethal. He’d always been bigger than most kids his age, but witnessing his strength firsthand, seeing the absolute force behind it, made me shrink into myself.

I felt small. I felt weak. I felt worthless.

“You!” He turned to me. His roar so loud I heard my unconscious excuse of progenitor whimper. “Since. When?” He asked, glaring at me. “Sergei.” He barked.

“Ever since I moved out.” I blurted out.

“T-two years?” He was too stunned that I allowed it to go on for so long. “He’s been coming here and hurting you for—” his breathing growing erratic, he had to take a few deep breaths before he spoke.

He could even murder me with the amount of rage that was pumping through his veins.

“We are family, dammit.” He eyed me warily before walking in my direction, as if he was going to hit me and I braced myself for it.

But instead, he wrapped his arms around me. “You aren’t supposed to go through shit alone.” I was just about to push him away when I heard my father’s groan.

He opened his eyes, an unfamiliar terrified look etched on his face upon finding us standing tall in front of him. It pissed me off to see that the source of his fear wasn’t me.

He should fear me.

Roman raised his hand and slapped my father across his cheek. “I thought I told you to stay away from Sergei.” And he punched him with all his might.

The Bratva leader, Vasily Zaytsev was being beaten by a twenty-year-old.

“I thought I said, I’d chop your limbs off.” Roman punched him again.

And again.

And again, until my father was more blood than skin.

“Do you not love your hand, Vasily?” Roman’s voice was eerily calm as he twisted Vasily’s hand at an unnatural angle.

Vasily’s scream ripped through the room, louder than the crack of the whip against my back. Louder than his laughter that echoed through these walls every time I bled on this very floor.

My father was on the verge of losing consciousness when I found my voice to speak.

“You know where is mama.” It wasn’t a question, the desperation in my voice made the half-dead man chuckle and then wheeze as Roman kicked him.

“Polina?” He showed his bloody grin, trying to laugh again but stopping shortly. “Oh! No. You don’t remember?”

“D-don’t remember what?” My body went rigid, like every nerve was trying to tear itself free and run.

“You don’t remember attending your mother’s funeral?” He rasped, dragging in air. “The pitiful looks? Oh! She died.”

“You are a man now?” He speaks, the belt wrapping itself around his fist with ease. “Dating now?” His chuckles grate on my nerves and I clench my fists. “Three years away from me, and you’ve become a man now?”

Roman informed me earlier that his father and Vasily were going to smuggle arms from Moscow to America.

My father was again dipping his toes in dangerous water, after barely escaping death three years ago.

It wasn’t my doing last time.

This time, it will be.

“A shipment is already scheduled; the cargo ships will be heading to the states within weeks.” He leans by the table, beckoning me with his finger but I stay rooted to my place. “I want you to take charge of it.”

“I’m not interested in your business.” I speak in the perfect British accent, polished enough to erase every trace of the terrified Russian boy I once was.

He needs to understand that I’m neither a Bratva heir nor one of his pawns. I serve one purpose only.