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“That’s because I’m not a man in love. At least not with you.”
She went pale, but then her face turned red. “You agreed to love and honor me—”
“I did not,” I murmured, shifting to find a more comfortable position, and looking deceptively calm.
“You agreed to forsake all others—”
“Wrong again.”
“And you said you’d love and cherish me,” she finished, ignoring what I’d said completely.
Leaning forward to flick my ash into the large marble ashtray on the coffee table, I shot her a smile.
“I didn’t do any of that. I said I took you to be my wife, and that was only because your father wanted an alliance with mine. I clearly outlined it all to you the day before, even going as far as to tell you I was in love with someone else—a love that wouldn’t ever die, if I remember the precise verbiage I used correctly. And I gave you the opportunity to turn away. You did not.”
Looking at her dad, she whined, “Papa, do something.”
“Look, Fedorov,” Makar snapped, making a huge mistake.
“Zatkni past’,” Dad growled, the tone of his voice as he told Azarov to shut his mouth chilling even to me.
“Let us not forget that you benefited through the marriage more than we did. And let us not forget that I have earned the position of Pakhan many times over through the blood of my enemies. You don’t want to become one of them, Makar, trust me.”
What he didn’t realize was—he already was one. Fucking fool.
“My apologies, Pakhan,” Makar stuttered, swallowing uncomfortably. “I’m just frustrated for my daughter, and the way she’s being treated—”
“The way she’s being treated?” Dad snorted, looking over at me. “She agreed to a loveless marriage, and she was given fair warning about that and still went ahead with it. She also lives in a grand house and lives a life where she wants for nothing. So how can you imply she’s being mistreated?”
“Your son is having affairs, my men have confirmed it,” Makar snapped, glaring over at me.
Shrugging my shoulders, I stubbed the cigarette out now. “Most men have affairs. In fact, most of them have mistresses in apartments all over the place.”
“A different flavor each day,” Dmitri chuckled, leaning forward to stub his cigarette out, too.
“No one treats my daughter that way,” Makar hissed, finally losing it. “Not even a high and mighty Vor of the Fedorov Bratva.”
With the implied threat hanging in the air, the energy in the room changed immediately.
“Leave,” Dad ordered Donna, not taking his eyes off Makar.
“But what about—”
“Fucking leave,” he roared, just as the door to the room opened, and Zoran entered.
Still not heeding the order, Donna remained where she was. I could feel her staring at me as I watched my second whisper something in Dad’s ear that turned the energy in the room from pissed to electric.
Dad’s head turned slowly back in their direction, the only tell for what was going through him the subtle flaring of his nostrils.
“You know, twenty-five years ago, my wife was gunned down as she got out of the car to collect Taras from school. He was four years old, and every day he’d run out of the building toward her, excited to see her like he hadn’t seen her for months instead of hours. She’d pick him up and hold him close, the hours feeling like months to her. On that day, she’d just started to bend down when a bullet went into the back of her head, killing her instantly.”
Why he was retelling the story to Azarov, I didn’t know, but whatever he’d just been told had necessitated it.
“Later on, I was told about how Taras had tried to wake her up, thinking it was a new game, even though her blood was in a pool under her head. For years he woke up screaming for her, reliving that moment and the specks of brain on him from it. Do you picture that, Donna? Your mother’s brains on you?”
Donna swallowed audibly and shook her head. She’d lost her mom when she was thirteen, and had been told that she’d run away with another man to start a new family.
The truth of it was, the man sitting beside her had ordered the hit when he’d knocked a nineteen-year-old supermodel up. And her mother’s body was probably at the bottom of a lake.
“We got the fuck who did it,” Dad told her, “but we never got the cunt who ordered it.” She jerked as he said the word cunt, but that was it. “Tell me, Donna, have you ever heard of someone with the last name Ribeiro?”
Her jaw twitched slightly, but that was the only visible reaction. “No.”
“Hmm,” Dad hummed, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “What about a gang called Los Segadores?”
“What’s this all about, Bogdan?” her father interrupted, attempting to hide his true feelings with confusion.
