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“I think I’m going to be ill,” I said, before launching myself off of the couch. I hadn’t had a panic attack since I heard the news of my brother's death, but now, I could feel one coming on.
“Don’t be so weak,” my mother spat. “The Blanchi’s are your family’s enemy.”
I whirled around and faced my mother. “I’m a Blanchi now, remember!”
“Keep your voice down!”
I took a deep breath and tried to calm my jangled nerves. Not to please my mother, but because I knew she was right. I needed to keep quiet because the person my mother was casually discussing murdering was in the next room.
“I can’t believe you would do this to me,” I whispered in anger.
“You are a Petrov. It’s about time that you got your hands dirty.”
I shook my head. My mother had always complained that I was too spoiled. She wanted me to have more of a hand in the business. I had always counted myself lucky that the Bratva was sexist as hell, and there was no way my father would let me anywhere near his business. It seems that that was another way in which I had been naive.
“I can’t do what you want,” I said. “Dominic doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t even like being around me.”
My mother got up from her seat. She sauntered towards me, her heels clicking on the expensive hardwood floor.
“Make him like you,” she told me. “Make him burn for you.”
I nearly laughed aloud at her words. She had just been espousing how naive I am, and now, she wanted me to seduce the Don of the Italian mafia. A man who I was sure could have any woman that he wanted.
“You aren’t without your charms,” my mother said, once more brushing a curl from my face. “Men like Blanchi like innocence. They want to ruin it. Own it”
I pricked my now right I worried she was. Her words reminded me of how Dominic had treated me in the car after the frat party.
“He might fuck me,” I said crassly, “but he’ll never trust me.”
“You must make him.”
There was a desperation in my mother that I wasn’t used to seeing.
“Why?” I asked.
Her eyes grew darker, and a look that I hadn’t seen in years passed over her face. “Because he killed your brother.”
I swallowed thickly. My brother had died several years ago. He’d been gunned down in a fire fight over territory.
Even at a young age, his death had felt so meaningless. I couldn’t understand what piece of property was so important that it was worth more than living.
His death had broken my mother.
“You don’t know that Dominic was responsible,” I said. My mouth was so dry that it felt as though the words were stuck.
“I know,” my mother said ominously. “A mother always knows.”
I wanted to tell my mother that I wasn’t going to betray Dominic because of some intuition of hers, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. There was something in her eyes that gave me pause.
She truly believed that Dominic had killed Nikolai. And he might have.
That still didn’t mean that he needed to die. No amount of death was going to bring my brother back to life.
“You are our only hope of getting justice Sasha,” my mother said, and I felt the knife of guilt that she had lobbed at me twist a little deeper. I had loved my brother, but I couldn't ignore that his choice, and the choices of my family had caused his death, not the Blanchi’s.
“Sasha…”
My mother reached out and took my face in her hands. “You aren’t a Blanchi,” she said. “You are a Petrov, and you owe it to your family to right the wrongs that have been done to your people.”
It took everything inside of me not to cringe at her words. My mother sounded manic, like some sort of religious zealot, and I wanted nothing more than to get away from her.
But I had been trained to mind my manners, and my feet remained rooted to the floor.
“Tell me you understand what I am saying to you Sasha,” my mother said. I felt her finger nails digging into my skin, and I knew that she was leaving marks into my face.
“I understand,” I said, spitting the words out.
“Good,” she said, releasing me.
It wasn’t good. I had just agreed to help my mother kill my husband, which was also something that I was not planning to actually do.
