“I’m your blood! We are family, Carina. But you let these people get in your head or something. They tricked you into siding withthem? Overme? Your family?” He pounded his fist on his chest for emphasis. “Me, your brother!”
“I know damn well who you are and I know even more who I wished you could be. You haven’t been a loyal leader to the Cartel that our father left us. You dismissed me and removed me just so you wouldn’t have to hear how poorly you were messing it up.”
He growled again as he paced. “Shut up! Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shook my head, sad for him now.
“You are so stupid and useless that you couldletthese motherfuckers set a trap for me last night? And not want to do anything to help me?”
“Why would I?” I retorted.
In this specific moment, the full and brutal realization of his priorities shone clearly as the truth.
He valued his own power, his own warped idea of survival and success, over my life.
He always had.
He always would.
This was also the exact moment that my common sense and profound loyalty would snap into place in my heart and soul, in my mind. I was a Volkov, the family he wanted to criticize and hate.
Our parents hadn’t taught us to hold that bias. He’d formed that himself. All on his own.
“Why would you?” he screamed back. “Because I’m your brother. You are a Garcia?—”
“I am a Volkov,” I corrected sharply.
A cruel bark of laughter twisted up his face, revealing him as the maniacal and selfish fool he was. “Oh, is that how this is going to be? You want to toss away the fact that you were Miguel Garcia’s daughter and now call yourself a Volkov?” He held his hands up, mocking me. “Sure. Go ahead, bitch. Be a traitor. Choose your Volkov overblood.”
I fisted my hands as I lowered them, unsure whether I could refrain from attacking him. Only my concern about my baby stopped me. My love for my child burned hotter than my fury for him, but I let him hear the heat of my ire. “It wasyourdecision to marry me off to him!”
Guilt slapped me in the face as soon as the words came out.
It was a sharp rebuke, but also something that sounded like a bad confession. I regretted my wording instantly, worrying that Maksim would certainly hear me and think that I regretted our union. That I didn’t care for being forced into becoming his wife.
I only wanted to throw it into Arturo’s face that it washisrash and impulsive idea to make this happen. It was his decision that got me into this position at all.
“I am no traitor. You arranged me to marry, all so you could get rid of me.”
He scowled, pacing again.
“Iamchoosing blood. Iamchoosing to fight and stand with my family.Myblood,” I stated, pointing at myself. “Myflesh and blood.Mychild that I will raise and share with my husband. I’velost faith in the man who was supposed to act like my brother a long time ago.”
With that final word, that declaration of loyalty that would be the final nail in the coffin for him, I turned and strode back into my home, leaving him out here to face his fate.
One he’d earned himself.
One my parents would’ve been ashamed of.
35
MAKSIM
Standing off to the side in the great room that overlooked the area where Carina met with Arturo, I watched it all. Alexei stood with me, just having happened to be coming over seconds after the Cartel boss arrived. He hadn’t hesitated to get the intel from the guards at the gate and rushed in to offer me backup.
“They held the men he’d brought with him,” Alexei said next to me.
“Bringing anyone was sentencing them to death,” I muttered, letting my hatred of this asshole seep deep into my bones.
