I pant, unable to secure a full breath when Rico ignores her pleas and firms the grip on the trigger of his gun even more.
“No!” Oskana shouts. “Have a heart, Rico. You have to understand. I had four late miscarriages. All boys. Then Felicia had you. A son. Vladimir’s firstborn son.”
She shifts her eyes to Vladimir who is still seated at the table, seemingly unmoved by the devastating events happening around him.
“Felicia ruined everything! I wasn’t going to let her take my place as well. I earned it! It belonged to me. I loved you. I still love you! But you only cared about her. Even when she wasn’t with you, I could tell you were thinking about her. If that weren’t bad enough,herson took the titleourson deserves to have. Nikolai deserves to rule the Popov empire. Nikolai deserves—”
“Nikolai is not my son!” Vladimir low tone sends a chill down my spine.
A collective sigh sounds around the room as my eyes rocket to Nikolai. He appears just as unmoved as Vladimir was earlier. Clearly, today is not the first time he’s been confronted with this news. My massively dilated eyes shift back to Vladimir when he stands from his chair and signals for his men to stand down. I inhale my first full breath in over ten minutes when the red dots shimmering on Rico’s chest disappear.
“You knew?” Rico voice is as shocked as his facial expression. My heart starts beating again when he lowers his gun to the side of his body.
Vladimir smiles a vindictive grin before muttering, “Yes.”
A chair scraping across a wooden floor booms into my ears when Nikolai stands abruptly from his chair. “You knew? This whole time you knew?”
Vladimir doesn’t need to answer his questions, the callous grin etched on his face tells the whole story.
“Then why did you pretend I was your son?” My heart squeezes painfully from the hurt projected in Nikolai’s voice.
“Because you were the ultimate pawn,” Vladimir snarls. “My plan was to nurture you into a born killer, then I was going to make you kill your father. It would have been the sweetest revenge for your mother’s betrayal.” Vladimir turns his lifeless eyes to Rico. “But Rico beat you to it.”
Another collective gasp bellows around the room, the majority of it from me. I know Rico was forced to do some terrible things in his life, but hearing it firsthand is still shocking.
Taking advantage of Vladimir’s honesty, Rico questions, “Then why did you sell Isabelle? If you loved my mother so much, why sell her daughter?”
My jaw muscle slackens when Vladimir’s impenetrable mask momentarily slips, exposing a flare of emotion I was certain he didn’t have: remorse.
“Because I couldn’t look at her without seeing your mother’s betrayal,” Vladimir spits out in disgust, his stern mask firmly back in place.
Rico shakes his head. “She never betrayed you! That’s why Col killed her!” he replies, his anger rising. He turns his eyes to Oskana. “Tell him how Col strangled my mother because she refused to give herself to him. Then tell him how you helped Col cover it up.”
Oskana’s throat works hard to swallow, but she doesn’t attempt to refute Rico’s claims.
Fear unlike anything I’ve ever felt blazes through my blood when I catch sight of the threatening glare Vladimir issues Oskana. “You said Felicia betrayed me! You said you saw it with your own two eyes!”
“She played you for a fool,” Rico sneers before drifting his eyes back to Vladimir. “Everything she ever told you was a lie.”
Oskana’s vow of silence continues, proving what Rico is saying is true.
“I did what you asked,” Rico says, speaking to his father. “I brought you the person responsible for killing yourahren. Now you need to keep your side of our agreement.”
Time comes to a standstill when Vladimir and Rico undertake a heart-strangling stare down. It's steaming and full of palpable tension.
The red-hot anger lining Rico’s face softens when Vladimir nods. “One wish,” Vladimir mutters while holding his index finger in the air.
“Let Blaire go,” Rico responds immediately, not even taking a second to deliberate. “Full sanction. She can’t be touched.”
I jump to my feet, my body responding before my brain has the chance to register an objection. I slip my hand into Rico’s sweaty half-clenched fist, and turn my eyes to Vladimir.
“Us. Letusgo. Rico meant to sayus,” I mumble, my shallow words barely heard in a room quieter than a graveyard at midnight.
I tilt into Rico’s side when Vladimir swings his barren eyes to me. “That would be granting two wishes, Kitten, not one. Besides, Rico and I discussed the terms of our arrangement. No mention of his pardon was ever debated.”
Rico’s hand tightened around mine when Vladimir called me “Kitten.” It firms even more when Vladimir paces closer to us, his demeanor frightening, his eyes lifeless.
After he finishes assessing every inch of my face in skin-crawling detail, Vladimir turns his desolate eyes to Rico. “I'll let your kitten go, full sanction, if you agree to the terms we discussed last night. You stop this nonsense of equity and go back to the man you were before yourahrenmisguided you. Become a true Popov. One worthy of the name.” Vladimir’s eyes flick to me for a fleeting second when he sneers, “Ahren.”
