Page 4 of Fractured Ties

How someone as wonderful, sweet, and adoring as his mother had fallen for a man like Vadim Boykov was a mystery. Ana couldn’t have not known Vadim was a philanderer with a half of a dozen paid mistresses on call—serial, really. Like it was a disease the man couldn’t keep contained. And yet, Ana had never said a thing, nor spoken out against her husband to her three children. Kolya only remembered his mother loving Vadim and keeping his house like a queen should.

Now, though, Kolya barely felt anything at all when he walked in on one of these scenes. He saw them for what they were—another way for his father to show off and extend his power by way of controlling his men in an unusual way.

Look too long at the girls, and a man might lose an eye.

Touch one, and well, maybe you didn’t need that hand after all.

Konstantin, on the other hand, was still young enough—or maybe he just hadn’t gotten desensitized yet to all of this—that these shows were not as easy for him to swallow like they were for Kolya. Under his breath, in Russian, he said to Kolya, “If this isn’t some kind of shit. He’s got other rooms in here. They could be elsewhere.”

They could.

Vadim wouldn’t let them, though.

Kolya’s lips twitched with a grin that came out more like a sneer. Probably the closest thing to a smile that he could manage, honestly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d genuinely smiled because something had truly amused him or made him happy.

Unless he was beating the hell out of someone.

Or killing them.

That usually made Kolya happy.

“Relax,” Kolya returned to Konstantin at the same quiet level. “Stop letting it piss you off when you know that’s something he can—”

“Do you have something to share with the rest of the class, Kolya?”

Kolya’s gaze drifted lazily to the man across the room. A good twenty feet from where the women were still pretending like the sheer curtains were doing anything to hide the fact they were still resting on that goddamn bed. Vadim stood next to the windows, haloed in the ray of color the inverted ceiling lights provided over the heavy, dark drapes.

As usual, Vadim kept hold of a glass of vodka that might as well have been his third hand. A man could almost guess by the way Vadim was holding the glass if things would end well for him in a meeting with the man.

Tonight, Vadim kept a light grip on the glass, which meant two things. One, he was pissed, and two, the glass could fly into any man’s face, should he be brave enough to challenge the man—even without meaning to.

Perfect.

It was only when Vadim kept a tight hold on his glass of vodka that a person should feel safe. It was for only that reason that Kolya decided to tread carefully with his father right then.

He still had a phantom burn in his left eyebrow from the last glass that shattered in his face. It’d taken ten stitches from one of their paid doctors to keep it closed, made more difficult by the fact that Kolya’s face was constantly set into some kind of variation of a scowl or frown. It was never relaxed enough not to strain or pull on the stitches.

“Well?” Vadim demanded. “I know you can speak, yes? I taught you how.”

Actually, his mother probably had.

Kolya didn’t correct him.

“I was telling Konstantin that the rug could use a clean.”

Vadim’s gaze drifted to Konstantin who only shrugged as if to neither confirm, nor deny, and then back to Kolya just as fast. “Hmm.”

Once his father’s gaze was off him again, Kolya relaxed slightly. Not a whole lot, though. Just being within a visual distance of his father kept him teetering on a very dangerous edge. That’s what Vadim wanted—that’s what he liked.

Kolya was not an exception to the rule, but rather, an example of it.

Vadim muttered something low to the man in the corner of the room who was using the wall as a leaning post—the only other man besides Kolya, Konstantin, and his father’s Sovietnik, Grisha. Anatoly, the bull who had come to drag Kolya out of bed this meeting, was busy glancing at something on his phone, but still seemed to hear whatever it was Vadim said to him.

“Nyet, not yet, boss,” Anatoly said.

Vadim scowled. “Blyad. The suka seems determined to test my very gracious patience, no?”

Anatoly only shrugged in response.