“We will talk.”
“But first, there’s something you need to know.”
What he told me was all about him paying for the guilt he felt. It would seem karma had brought Rafaela and me together, one of Dante’s friends the reason she’d been attacked. An initiation into a gang that he had wanted nothing to do with. How interesting that everything came full circle.
In addition, the information Madame Dubois had overheard was correct, only the alliance created would be all about family.
With the people I could trust the most.
Trust.
Yes, it could easily be challenged by and because of anyone.
But I knew what made my beautiful little healer tick and that’s all that was important.
* * *
In the darkest of days spent inside the prison, I’d been forced to examine my own worth as well as that to my entire family. As my father’s lieutenant, I’d been the one who’d watched his back, keeping him from harm’s way.
As with all other organizations, there was a hierarchy of people who would do the same. Within the Bratva, oaths taken were for life. There was no quitting once a member. The only way out was death.
Life expectancy was short, expectations for retirement nonexistent. While death was always a sad occasion, when caused by an act of treason, there’d never been any guilt whatsoever.
I’d killed three men who’d betrayed the family and their oath. It was a matter of duty.
To be reborn was something else entirely, an unexpected feeling that had suddenly created a numbness that I hadn’t anticipated.
Had it not been for my lovely traveling companion, I suspect my mood would be much darker. But Rafaela had a way of keeping me in the light, something she excelled at.
Now I sat in my father’s chair, staring out the same window as I’d done on the day of his funeral. While Marta had been surprised to see me, her genuine tears had allowed me to see why my father had clung to her after his heartbreak of losing my mother.
He’d suffered more than he’d let on, doing so in silence and with the use of harsher tactics. Including with me, who he’d silently blamed for her death.
Families were complicated, more so than anyone realized when deciding to get married or have children. I hadn’t completely understood that in almost all of my thirty years on this planet.
Until just recently.
Until her.
The love of my life.
Yes, I’d wanted to own Rafaela, but there’d been more, the need for family. My own. Something I could come home to every night. Maybe because the guilt of losing my mother in the way her death had occurred had permanently scarred me.
Which was why I’d wanted the reunion in his house and in his office.
So here I was, lamenting over the past while planning for a future that had never been intended. I wanted to laugh, to feel enjoyment about getting married. But in doing so, I was just creating another prison for the stunning designer.
Things had to change both in regard to how I thought about family and about business. Maybe my uncle had been right in his determination to make a new life in the United States.
It meant more freedom and not simply from usual Russian tyranny but also from the old ways. If my grandfather or Igor had anything to say about it, the younger Bratva would be wiped off the face of the earth, the old guard taking over.
I was the only dinosaur left, but not because of choice.
Because of imprisonment and the man at the helm who’d been able to do little more than keep his head above water.
That all changed today.
I glanced at the letter from my father’s attorney, fully understanding the reason for an expeditious reading. It had been and still should be considered a warning.
