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My brow rose in surprise. “I would wonder why.”
He chuckled. “Because we are sworn enemies.”
I rolled my eyes as he threw my words back at me.
“Why Leo specifically?” I asked. “My father is the current Pakhan. Wouldn’t it be easier to just take him out?”
“Wanting to give me ideas?”
Though I was pissed at my father, I did not want to give the Blanchis ideas. I loved my father despite how he was treating me, and death could not be reversed. Besides, I truly did not believe that the problem was my father.
The problem was my grandmother. My father was weak in some regards, and he allowed my grandmother too much power.
When I said nothing, Andrea released a small chuckle. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not interested in asking you to help me get rid of your father. To be honest, we don’t need him dead.”
I frowned at that.
“Come on,” Andrea said, reading the look on my face. “You have to know that your father’s power is waning. That’s why he’s stepping down. He’s worried that if he doesn't, the Bratva will turn on him.”
“That would never happen to him.”
“Are you sure?” Andrea asked.
I squirmed in my seat. I did not like the way that Andrea asked me that question. It made me feel as though he knew something that I did not, which made me feel like a moron, and I did not like that feeling.
“So, you want Leo?” I asked, eager to change the subject away from my father’s place in the Bratva. If things were bad, I was not aware of it, but it made an odd kind of sense. My father would not step down just because he no longer desired to be Pakhan.
Andrea nodded at me. “We do,” he said, his tone serious.
“Why?” I might not know everything about the Bratva, but I knew how these things worked. “And don’t lie to me. We both know what something like this would start.”
Sure, the Blanchis wanted to take a run at the heir to the organization. Killing Leo would send a message in this war between the families. A huge one that could not be ignored.
It would also cause retaliation the likes which the Blanchis had never seen before. Killing a Pakhan was a declaration of total war. Not retaliating would not be an option. I knew, and I suspected Andrea did as well, that the rules would go out the window.
“He killed my sister,” he said.
My throat went dry. Leo did not seem like the type to kill a woman, but sometimes, things happened that we could not control. People got in the crossfire.
“One of your men killed my aunt. We both know that things like that happen, even with the rules to avoid family. It’s why I can’t use the bathroom without a bevy of armed guards surrounding me.”
I was trying to lighten the tension that descended on the table, but it was not working. Andrea was frowning so hard that a small wrinkle had developed in the middle of his forehead.
“You are going to have to give me more than that.”
I leaned back, pushing my half-eaten slice away from me. It sounded cold, but in our lives, we learned that life was not sacred. We all learned not to expect to grow old.
“Leo Petrov is a monster,” he said. “My sister was a co-ed at Harvard. She fell for him despite everything that she knew about the Petrov family, and she wanted to run away with him. Instead, he murdered her and left her in a ditch for our family to find. My mother searched for her for days.”
I could feel the grief radiating off of him, but the anger was more powerful. I could understand that to some degree. I did not have any siblings of my own, but I could not imagine what I might feel if something happened to Natasha. She was the closest thing that I had to a sister, and she was sweet enough to be taken in by some handsome asshole.
“What is in it for me if I help you take Leo Petrov out?”
There was a moment of shock on Andrea’s face, and I felt pleasure at the sight of it.
“I hope that you didn’t think that I was just going to stick my neck out because you want revenge for your sister’s death, did you?”
“Kind of,” he said.
