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“The Bratva took my boy—Leonid—into its ranks,” she explains. Her expression droops as she stares at the table. “Gave him his tattoos. Promised him stars. Until he died in service of the Bratva.”
I frown sympathetically. “Viktoria…”
She waves away my concerned tone. “It was so long ago.”
“Why in the world would you stick around if they took your child?”
“It is my duty to serve the Bratva.”
I rub my forehead. These people are so brainwashed sometimes. “What’s worth sticking around for when that happened to you?”
“Pavel,” she states plainly. “He was so close to Leonid when they were growing up. Inseparable.” She gives me a motherly look. It’s one of the warmest expressions I’ve ever seen her wear.
And then it starts to make sense.
“You care about Pavel.”
“He grieved as much as me when Leonid died,” she whispers. “And for that. I stayed.”
I try to swallow everything she’s telling me, but it’s a lot. “Pavel is so cruel. I imagine losing his friend made him shove everything down.”
“He feels more than you think, Liya. He feels more thananyonethinks. He just doesn’t show it. He’s forgotten how.”
My brain reviews the things I requested of Pavel.
And how he gave them to me without asking for anything in return.
But maybe he does show it.
“Listen,krolik, alliances come and go. Passion burns bright and then fades. But in the end?” She gives me a hard expression, one molded by the fierce love of a parent. “In the end, it is the love between a mother and child that will endure forever.”
Her words slice right through me. My stomach flips, the teacup in front of me seeming far too heavy to lift without possibly dropping it. I’m rubbing my hands together beneath the table in an effort to keep myself from shivering right through the floor.
I want that love.
I crave it more than I crave water.
It’s what I could have here. And Viktoria is telling me that. She’s basically giving me the opportunity on a gold platter.
“I just…” I choke on a sob, closing my eyes for a second while trying not to picture the awful things Viktoria probably had to deal with.
Did she get used like me? Threatened like me?Fuckedlike me?
I blink away the thought and force a smile. “I guess I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t hate this place, you know?”
“I tried for years to hate the Bratva, but…” She traces the lid of her cup. “I couldn’t do it, out of love for my boy.”
A love that endures forever.
I sit with Viktoria for a long time, absorbing her silence, the finality of her last statement. I want to ask about her husband and who set up her bullshit marriage, but I don’t. The wounds that showed up on her face while she told her story frightened me, and I don’t want her to have to relive any of that tale.
Ever again.
Slowly but surely, with enough time passing, the wounds close and recede. Viktoria returns, cold eyes and stern features right where they always are, dead set on the box between us.
“Is your bladder full yet?” she asks. Her voice leaves no trace of the emotions she displayed while talking about her son. “Drink more,krolik.”
I smile weakly. “Thank you.”
