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“Where is Valen?” she asked. Her accent was thick but, where ours was Scottish, hers was all Russian.
I stepped forward. “Who are you?” I asked, not believing for a second she could be who I thought she was.
She gave me a cocky smirk the likes of which rivalled mine. “Can a woman not check up on her little brother now?”
“Valentina,” Da said carefully.
“Otets,” she replied just as carefully. “Is this how you welcome your daughter home?”
“This is how we welcome intruders to our home,” Da told her, his weapon not lowered.
Valentina didn’t seem to care she had three Kincaids training a gun on her, and mine was still in my hand.
“Net,” she said with a nod. “This is how you welcome women into your home.”
“State your business,” Kane said, closing the distance between them and holding his gun right in her face.
She seemed to find him amusing. “I should have brought my white flag,da?” She knocked Kane’s gun aside, then her eyes narrowed on his arm.
She grabbed Kane by that arm and looked down at the tattoo on it. “I’d heard stories about you, Kincaid,” she said to our father, her voice implying she didn’t think much about the reality behind those stories. “They say loyalty to the Family is first. Even over blood.” She left the ‘I’m clear evidence of this’ hanging. “Why then have you allowed your son to pledge to the Black Bloods?” she demanded, throwing – actually fucking throwing – Kane to the ground at our father’s feet.
Da frowned down at Kane. “The Black Bloods, Kane?”
Trust the older generation not to notice the meaning of the tatts of the younger, but even I hadn’t pieced together that Kane’s new tatt had ties to the Black Bloods. The Black Bloods were usually most recognisable by their jackets. A small faction of Nameless try-hards from all Families who liked to get together to drink and fuck and complain about their bosses; they were too hard on them, they weren’t hard enough on them, didn’t matter. We’d had a few run-ins with them over the year and they were a nuisance more than they were an actual threat.
“It’s just a bit of fun,” Kane laughed.
Da rolled his eyes at him. “A bit of fun, Kane? Fucking hell. You’re off running around with those idiots when we need you here? I will deal with you later. Valen, find your sister a room.”
“Am I a guest or prisoner,otets?”
“Until your motives can be cleared with the Motherland, that remains to be seen.” Da kicked his head at me to tell me to go and I ushered Valentina out.
“The men call themselves stronger and yet all I see here is a little boy obeying the demands of his father,” she said to me as we walked up the stairs.
“Don’t pretend you know anything about my life, and I won’t pretend I know anything about yours,” I told her harshly. “We may share blood, but that won’t stop you from shedding mine.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me to face her. She was almost as tall as me and, dare I even think it, probably twice as fierce. “Unlike the Kincaids, the Volkovs put loyalty in blood.”
I leant into her. “Tell that to Peskov.”
She grinned. “I hear you made him bleed first.”
She sounded proud of me. I don’t think anyone had ever actually been proud of me before. I wasn’t sure I liked what it did to me.
“Why are you really here?” I asked her.
“I hear you are to be married.”
My eyes narrowed. “How?”
“BabushkaKincaid thought I should know.”
Of course, she knew. Da’s worst kept secret was that he still told his mother everything. For a hardened criminal who threw women away as easily as a used cigar butt, he was a proper mama’s boy. What did surprise me was that Nana Kincaid had reached out so far East with that information.
“You keep in touch?”
“Women know better than men the worth we can be.”
