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I smile as cousins and various family members and friends laugh at Troian’s joke, though I’m not sure my smile reaches my eyes. I want to remind Troian that he was the one who insisted he drive, and if he’d let me take charge of the motorcycle, we wouldn’t have crashed.
But that’s not my role in this little performance. He’s the reliable one and I’m the fuck-up. These are the parts we’ve been cast in all our lives.
“Not as much trouble as I’d like to cause,” I say with a broad smile, and then glance around the room for Zenya. Everyone thinks I’m joking, and the room erupts with laughter again.
I can’t see my niece anywhere, so I step forward and embrace my brother. “S Novym Godom.”Happy New Year. “How are you?”
He gestures at the cast in annoyance. “I can’t get up the stairs to my own bedroom and I can’t do anything else that a man is supposed to do. I’ll live, I suppose,” he finishes grudgingly.
The adventurous clout of being in a motorcycle crash seems to be wearing off. If I know my brother, he’ll make life hell for me, Mikhail, and every other man who answers to him over the coming weeks, venting his frustration to us at being confined to the house. My brother is a goodPakhanwhen all is well, but when he’s aggravated, he can be as bad-tempered as a bear with a thorn in his paw.
“Apparently you’re unkillable,” I say, patting his shoulder. “Aren’t we lucky?”
I walk through the crowd of party guests looking for my niece, but before I can move deeper into the house, Chessa strides across the room toward me, high heels clacking on the marble tiles and murder sparking in her eyes.
“You are unbelievable, Kristian,” she hisses. Over her shoulder, Eleanor is watching me like a hawk, daring me to even look the wrong way at her sister. As if she has any say in what happens in this house.
“So I’ve heard.” I slide my thumb along my jaw and smile sardonically at Chessa as I try to move past her.
Chessa steps in front of me. “I didn’t mean that as a compliment. How dare you take Zenya to a meeting where you were discussing—” she peers left and right and whispers “—felonies.”
“She told you about that, did she?”
“Only because that girl still has enough decency not to lie to her own stepmother, but I can assure you she didn’t want to.”
It’s sweet that Zenya still believes you shouldn’t lie to the people you love. I almost hope she never loses that innocence. My brother’s second wife continues to lecture me in angry whispers about what I do with my own damn niece. Zenya is a straight A student, exceptional at running the Silo, and a perfect role model for her brothers and sisters. What’s more, she’s hungry for new and exciting things. If it weren’t for me, Zenya would be bored out of her mind and she’d never have any fun, either.
I feel a warm glow as I remember sitting down to a poker game with her and some of the boys after the meeting. They were all fooled by her innocent, slightly confused expression as we played, but I wasn’t. She purposefully threw three hands and then went in for the kill, winning an enormous pot and taking all of Mikhail’s and Andrei’s chips.
What a little vixen. I couldn’t be prouder.
Chessa starts on about the motorcycle accident yet again, and my warm glow vanishes. “Wrap it up, Chessa. I need a drink.”
Chessa bristles with anger. “Troian is sick, remember?”
I glare at her. I wasn’t likely to forget that my brother has lung cancer.
“And you. Don’t you think you behave too recklessly for a man of thirty-four?”
“Not really,” I say, trying to signal the waiter with champagne at the other end of the room to come this way.
“If you have to carry on like a complete id—”
I flash her a glare, and she closes her mouth. She might be my brother’s wife and rightfully angry with me, but she knows better than to start calling me names.
Chessa takes a calming breath and tries again. “Just leave my husband and stepdaughter out of your schemes from now on.”
I laugh as if she’s told a joke for the benefit of people passing us in the hall and embrace her like I’m about to wish her a Happy New Year. In her ear, I say, “Fuck off, Chessa. I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”
Chessa pushes me away, her face white with anger while I laugh and straighten my cuffs. Go on, say you’ll tell on me to Troian.
I dare you.
But Chessa won’t because she and I both know that she’s already overstepped the line tonight by sticking her nose into family business. Marrying Troian doesn’t make her a fucking Belyaev. Not in the true meaning of the name.
I watch in amusement as she flounders in front of me, and then she turns away and greets one of her newly arrived friends with a sparkling, “Thank you so much for coming! Happy New Year.”
I grit my teeth and make my way through the party guests. If Chessa dropped dead tomorrow, I’d fucking celebrate. She’s been busting my balls ever since she married Troian five years ago. We’re not accountants or shopkeepers. We’re in the Bratva, as she well knows, and there’s risk that comes with that. If Troian isn’t willing to get his hands dirty once in a while, he’ll lose the respect of our men.
