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“I’ll meet you back at the house,” he says in a hard voice. “I’ll get Adam packed.”
He doesn’t ask me to get in again. He just revs the engine and, seconds later, he’s disappeared down the road. I stand there for a minute, staring after him, wondering how he managed to hide those demons from me for so long. I never even suspected that his relationship with his father hid something so dark.
And yet I remember Mila’s story and the little she told me about what happened to him.
I should have paid closer attention. Not everyone offers up their pain like you deserve to hear it. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own nightmares that I haven’t asked the right questions.
But I am going to pay attention this time.
Forallour sakes.
19
ILARION
I don’t know why I brought up that son of a bitch. I’ve buried him so deep at this point. He ought to stay buried.
But then again, the nightmares have been popping a little more frequently lately. The last time this happened, we’d only just put his coffin in the earth. Mila had become a hermit. She stayed locked up in her room at all hours with the blinds drawn, and it wasn’t like I could talk to just anyone about the things clawing at my mind every night when I closed my eyes.
Well, maybe I could’ve talked to Dima, but I wanted to protect him from what had happened. From what we’d done. If I told him the truth of it all, he’d have to carry the weight of it around with him for the rest of his life.
He would have never looked at Mila the same way again.
It just seemed unnecessarily cruel.
The nightmares are always the same. Not even really a nightmare—just a memory that plays on an endless loop, and every time it starts over again, the details are more grotesque. Eyes bigger. Voices wilder. Emotions heightened.
“You handled the deal well,” Dad told me after my first solo effort at closing an important arms deal. “I spoke to Don Hernandez afterward and he was very satisfied.”Very satisfied. I remember those words only because of how he said them, like it was the absolute bare minimum. “You impressed him.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“Good. That's precisely why you did. I may have been wrong about you.”
I raised my brows, refusing to take the bait. Any answer he’d give would just hurt. But he answered the unasked question anyway. “I worried that you were too soft to take over for me. I thought you’d be too weak.”
I cringed. “I’ve been watching you for a long time. I’ve been a part of the Bratva for a long time.”
He blinked languidly. I remember that specifically, because his eyes were the same blue hue as mine, and I’d always hated that. I wanted to rip those parts out and replace them with new ones that wouldn’t always remind me that his blood ran in my veins. That he was part of me and I couldn’t get rid of him if I tried.
“The way you used to be, the way you sometimes still are with your sister…it had me worried.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to find her in your room at night.”
I frowned. “That was when we were kids. When she was scared.”
“You should have kicked her the fuck out.”
I gritted my teeth. “As I remember correctly, you would wake us both up and drag her back to her room and lock the door. Seems like you did the job for me.”
“It had to be done.”
“Why? She didn’t have a mother to go to. And she knew better than to run to you.”
“My children shouldn’t need anyone,” he snarled ferally. “Needing others is a weakness that must be eliminated. True strength is being an island that exists on its own.”
“No Bratva can function that way. You need men.”
