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“Are you kidding me? Calm down?” I take a few steps backwards, every instinct telling me to run. Run now before I can’t. Run now before it’s too late.
But Jayce walks toward us, raises his gun, and cocks the hammer. He taps the silver barrel to the side of Dad’s head, and everything inside me goes numb.
Jayce jerks his head toward the car. “You need to get in.”
“This is wrong,” I choke out, sounding like a little mouse.
He answers with a devilish smile. “Just so you know, I’m not required to keep your father alive. He’s not needed for anything, but you are. Do you understand?”
I understand completely. The translated version of what he’s saying is he’ll kill my father right here and now if I don’t do as I’m told.
The message my heart receives is that I’ll lose another parent.
The memory of Mom’s cold, dead eyes filters into my mind, and dark dread fills me. I nod my acquiescence, making my legs move so I can get in the car as quickly as possible.
When I slide in, Dad grabs my hand and squeezes it. That’s all he gets to do, though, because Jayce pushes him away and closes the door.
He gets in next to me while the other men pile into the car. One on my other side and two in front.
The car starts up and pulls out of the driveway, taking me deeper into this nightmare, but I don’t look away from my father’s rigid form standing on the pavement with his shoulders sagging.
He said his hands were tied.
There’s only one way to tie a man like my father down to beat him, and that’s to hold something so powerful over his head that his only option is to bow.
So… Desmier must have something like that. Something big.
What is it?
Or maybe the better question iswhy.
If I’m right, then what did Dad do to him to cause this?
And what exactly are Desmier’s plans for me?
ChapterFour
Desmier
Leif takes us to the closest meeting room, which is just as ornate as the rest of the building.
I’m the last to enter and close the door. My guests don’t sit. They stand together facing me, waiting for answers.
“Well, start talking,” Viktor demands.
“Yes, I’m eager to find out how I have another brother I never knew about,” Malik says, and Zakh nods.
“My mother was Fryeda Polinsky,” I begin. “She and our father grew up together in Moscow. He was with her before your mother.” I pause, glancing at Mira, who looks more ghostly than before. Leif told me everything about the past and never shied away from the possibility that Mira was at least aware Mom existed and was involved with my father. She didn’t know about me, though. No one did. “They broke up when he was promised to Mira, but he didn’t know she was pregnant with me. She didn’t tell him until I was twelve. However, things didn’t go as expected. She didn’t know that my existence as his firstborn son threatened his business relationship with Mira’s family. Or that he would order our deaths.”
“What?” Mira sucks in a sharp breath, and her entire being trembles. “Evgeni did that?”
“Yes, he did.” That’s the truth I’ve had to live with. My father sent Uther to kill my mother and me. “My mother was killed, but I survived.”
Mira’s eyes grow larger. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
“It is the truth.” Mira’s family business mines diamonds in three different countries, and the Volkovas have a shipping company that practically owns the seas. It was a match made in heaven and the reason for their combined success today. Success my father wanted to protect, but I’ll take all of it now. “Once your father died and signed over the remaining parts of his company to my father, losing the business was no longer a threat to my life.”
Her father died two years ago. After that, Leif and I waited for the right moment to strike. We already knew of the plan for Viktor to marry Anastasia so the Sidorov family property development business could join the Volkovas’ already flourishing fortune. But Leif wanted me to get everything else. The door was opened with the news that my father’s heart condition was terminal.
