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To my surprise, she nodded. I gave her leeway with a lot of things, but not with a man who had beaten the crap out of her.
“I’m not here for him.”
“Elena,” I guessed.
She pulled at my left glove. “What’s going to happen to her?”
What indeed? If it were up to me, she’d already be six feet under.
“Viking has claimed her. Guess you were right after all, his hate goes as deep as his love once did. Since Elena isn’t blood or a wife, he has to marry her to keep her.”
Her jaw dropped. “Marry her?”
“As aVorywife, she’ll be protected from the likes of Vasili. So you can stop worrying about Elena.”
She braced herself as she pulled off my other glove. “And who’s going to protect her from Viking?”
“I don’t give a damn. Anyway, that might be a short-lived problem.”
“How so?” When I didn’t answer, she looked worried. “There’s more to this, isn’t there? I can’t imagine him just breaking off an engagement to Sokolov’s niece and riding off into the sunset with his new wife.”
Smart girl. “Every action has a reaction. Viking has to pay with blood if he survives the gun.”
Katya stiffened and her eyes went wide. “Gun?”
“Russian roulette wasn’t invented to appear in bad Russian mob flicks. Viking broke his vow to apakhan. In our world, vows are sacred, you know this.”
Her gaze darkened, but she nodded. We both knew I’d made a blood vow to her mother to protect Katya. So far I’d kept it, and I refused to think about the day my vow would clash with the one I’d made to Sokolov. But her four years weren’t up quite yet.
Katya’s jaw set. “He has to take a bullet to the brain.”
I leaned back on a bench near hers. I didn’t react to her shocked expression but simply started doing chest presses.
“Why would he do that?” she asked softly. “How can his revenge on Elena be worth his life? That’s just insane.”
That was one way to look at it. But she hadn’t seen Viking shatter to pieces when his girl married another man. She hadn’t witnessed the darkness within him grow. But most of all, she had never drunk from the poisonous cup called ‘the fountain of vengeance.’ It was a bitter drink that could only quench your thirst in one way. By finishing off the object of your hate.
“The USMC has a saying. ‘If I charge, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, revenge me.’ Elena killed a part of Viking years ago.”
Her eyes bore into me. “That’s what it all boils down to, right? Getting even.”
We weren’t talking about Viking anymore. “Not even,” I corrected. “More than getting even. Getting above and beyond.”
“That’s why Baldy’s still alive,” she guessed.
Apparently wewerespeaking about the Bulgarian asshole. “He would have raped you, or broken you in, as they call it. Then he would have put you in a whorehouse and sold you over and over again. But not before he got you hooked on drugs. Because that’s how his crew operates—they get their women addicted to crack, so by the end of the week you’ll beg him to sell you just so you can get another hit. Imagine that, Katya. Imagine what kind of man he is and what he would have done to you, and then ask me again to have mercy on him.”
She stepped closer to my bench. Her floral fragrance permeated the air and coated my skin. My muscles strained as I worked my chest.
“Tell me why this is so important to you,” she asked. “I want to understand.”
Understand why I was fucked up in the head like the rest of my Bratva? She couldn’t fathom the hell I’d been through, nor did I ever want her to. I’d do anything in my power to keep her out of my murky world. But maybe if I lifted a corner of the veil, she’d back off. The image of her haunted eyes after she’d just seen that scum hadn’t left my brain. I could never tell her how my inner demon reveled because Baldy was suffering every day for what he’d done to her. But I wasn’t sure if I could keep it up if she pestered me to put him out of his misery. Katya had a kind heart, unlike that fucker who, given the chance, would have made her life a living hell.
I sat up. “The man who killed my mother didn’t just murder her, he violated her first.”
Understanding dawned on her face.
“The police chalked it up to a home invasion.” As always, I felt detached while reliving that day.
