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TATUM
Iwas prepared to die.
In the afterlife, because there sure as hell wasn’t a heaven for me, I’d miss my loved ones. I’d miss Clara. There were so many things I missed about her. Holding her. Telling her I loved her, that she’d given my world a new meaning, more than I thought possible. I wanted to marry her, breed her, rule beside her. If I’d lived another life, had another kind of father, it might have been possible. My stomach clenched into a tight ball, the pain of my sacrifices slicing through me. Clara had been the hardest loss, but did I have a choice?
If I had, I wouldn’t be lying on my belly on the asphalt-covered rooftop of a brownstone, sniper in hand, peering through the scope aimed at the entrance of the building across the street. The cold early-December morning seeped into my bones. The sun rose behind me, but it had little warmth to give.
Suddenly, shadows fell on either side of me. Instantly, I rolled to my back, rifle up, swinging it back and forth to the two men looming above me.
Luca and Nicu.
They stood still, with their arms crossed over their chest.
“Fuck, if it’s that easy to creep up on you, it’s a good thing we showed up. Right, Nicu?” Luca tilted his head to the left and threw his younger brother a little smirk.
Squinting up at them in the brittle winter sun, I asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”
He cocked his head, arched a brow in the way only Luca could, and retorted, “If you think we’d let you die, then you never knew us.”
Nicu dropped to a crouch beside me.
“Besides, what’s Clara going to do without your ass? She’s a hellcat, that one. Without you to control her, she’ll go back to being a pain in my ass.”
My heart thumped hard against my ribcage. These men. My brothers. I didn’t deserve them, but I was hella grateful to see them. I might very well have a chance at life.
“What about Alex? He know you’re here?” I asked.
Nicu shook his head. “Best not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”
Fuck, I felt the stab in my heart. It shouldn’t have hurt. It was expected, except it did hurt. More proof Alex had repudiated me forever. At least, these two men were my true brothers. They wouldn’t let me die an ignoble death, even if it got them into trouble. Assuming we survived this mess, we’d never fight on the same side again. Hell, we might never see each other again, but at least I knew they were my brothers in arms. Brothers of my heart.
“Please, motherfucker,” said Luca. “Cat may have reformed me in some ways, but I’m still the black sheep. I do what the fuck I want to do, regardless of the consequences.”
He turned to me, his normally silver eyes a flat, gunmetal gray, and said, “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. You saved me the day you found me in that closet. Before that, he was determined to kill me. Slowly, but surely, he would’ve succeeded. You thwarted him when you discovered me. And knowing I always had a place to escape to helped me survive the rest of it.”
He spoke the truth. Luca spent half his childhood at my house. Got along with my father better than I did. The man must’ve looked like a saint to Luca.
As if reading my mind, which knowing Luca wasn’t a far-off possibility, he continued, “Your father was a dirty bastard, but I’ll always be grateful to him for opening his house to me and for killing Mihail. He might’ve been dirty, but he wasn’t a monster.”
He paused, his gaze far off into the distance, past the roofs of the buildings across the street, past everything. “Alex’s hands are tied, and he’s hurt by your betrayal, but you know how he is. Rules are rules. Everything is either black or white. My truth is different, Tatum. Your father saved me by killing my father because eventually, I would’ve had to off him myself.”
“Not only are you my brother, but you saved Luca,” piped in Nicu. “I’m not about to repay you by letting you die for your father’s sins. I understand why you kept his secret, and considering the secrets our father kept from us, I don’t fault you, Tatum.”
“You can never be seen with me again if we get out of this alive,” I declared.
What they were doing for me, defying their sef, was too much as it was.
“Let’s get through this first, shall we,” Luca quipped.
I looked around me. “How did you find me?”
The roofs on this side of the street covered the entire row of houses in Brighton Beach, the Bratva enclave on the Brooklyn seaside. I’d broken into a building half a block down, come up the roof, propped the door open as an escape route, and made my way over the roofs of half a dozen buildings to stand on the one facing Ivanov’s girl’s apartment, where he slept most nights. My plan had been to shoot him as he left his girlfriend’s apartment for the armored car idling on the curb, waiting for him. Wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.
Nicu chuckled. “You’re a fool if you think it was hard for us to follow you. We know you, know how you think.” He gave a little shrug. “Followed you from your mother’s house. When we saw you break into the building down the block, we figured out what you were up to.”
I handed Nicu the sniper. “Glad you’re here. You’re the best in the family. If anyone can clip the bastard, it’s you.”
Giving a little snort, he pushed my rifle away and lifted the Striker 40 grenade launcher in his hand, a personal favorite of Nicu’s.
