“Everyone knew they werevory v zakone, even before we became what we are. His grandfather spent time in a Siberian prison, met and married a woman up there, and returned to make a fortune any way he could. That man’s cruelty and mercilessness are legendary. You didnotcross Konstantin Konstantinovich, or his son.”
“Or his grandson?”
“Dmitri was always different, and his father hated it. His mother wasn’t able to have any more children after Dmitri, and his father drove her away for the shame of it.”
His mother left him, just like mine left me.
“His father couldn’t abide having a child who had a heart. He tried to beat it out of him, drive him out of it?—”
“Drive him out of it?”
Pavel gives me a look that I can’t quite interpret, but I also don’t think I want to. Not when I know his grandfather and father were notoriously ruthless Russian mobsters with terrible reputations. I’m not sure I ever want to know the horrible things his father did to toughen his son up.
“Did it—” I start, but don’t finish.
“To a point, yes.” Pavel shrugs. “And for the better. You cannot bepakhanof abratva, you cannot bevory v zakone, if you are soft. You do things that kill your soul piece by piece. That is part of our life in the brotherhood.”
“But—” I urge, wanting, noneeding, to understand the man I’m tying my life to.
“He learned,” Pavel replies. He pauses, his eyes moving to the ceiling for a moment, as if thinking over his next words. “But even though he sometimes thinks he has no heart, that it shriveled up and died as his father wished, that’s not entirely true.”
“I know; I’ve seen it.” My reply is quiet, and I realize I’m waiting for confirmation that I’m not imagining things. I let out the breath I was holding when Pavel nods.
“Da.”
It’s the only confirmation I need.
“Lauren softened him.”
“What happened after—” I start to ask.
“He lost himself entirely. Almost didn’t come back. His father and grandfather would have been proud of what he became during that time. Many people paid in blood.” Pavel shakes his head, his eyes far away, remembering another time, another place, his blue eyes turning cold.
I don’t ask anything else. I don’t want to know. I’ve seen the terrifying side of Dmitri, but to know the possibility ofsomething worse prowling there somewhere deep in his darkest shadows scares the living daylights out of me.
“That wasn’t the real Dmitri, though.” Pavel’s voice breaks through my spiraling anxieties. “That was grief-induced madness, as such a loss would drive anyone to.”
I can’t argue with that. Grief does terrible things. Although my mother didn’t die, my father still fell apart when she left.
“He is a goodpakhan, a strongpakhan. He does not hesitate to do what must be done. But only to a point; he will not go to those places his grandfather and father did, where others go.
Pavel’s attention is pointed, and the face that pops up in my head is Andrey. I’m pretty sure that guy’s soul isn’t just damaged or dark—it’s missing entirely.
So he might do evil things, but Dmitri is not an evil man. If I want to stay with him, I will have to choose between the light and the gray space that lies between that and darkness. There is no other way—either I accept that, accept that it will always have a place in my life if I stay with Dmitri—or face a world without him in it.
A world I don’t want to be in.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Pavel nods.
We have to figure out who this damn mole is before they do more damage.
The next suspect is a tech from IT. A glance at his personnel file reveals a transfer within the department three months ago, long before any of this mess started. “He’s clean,” Pavel says, andI don’t disagree. Our pool narrows, and my pulse quickens on the edge of anticipation. We’re close now, closer than we’ve ever been.
A name pops up that gets our attention: Mark Palmer. He’s one of my paralegals. He’s diligent, but a little too eager, a little too quick to volunteer for late hours and document runs. He always seems to know when I’m coming or going, which at first I thought was simply being helpful and earning brownie points, but now the shadow of a hunch grows. Pavel leans back, rubs his temples, and murmurs, “We need to talk to him.”
I hold Pavel’s gaze. “I agree, but I have to be the one to talk with him. We don’t want to scare him away before we can catch him in the act. We’ll slip him some bad information so we can follow it.”
