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“What do you want?”
I sighed, seemingly content. “Did you try to kill me six years ago?”
“Yes.” His response was cold, quick and, just like the next step he took, calculated.
I felt a sharp pain in my chest.
“Were you hired by my father to kill me now?”
“Yes.” He took another step.
I knew what he was doing, but he wasn’t doing it correctly. To someone who hadn’t met him, this probably would’ve seemed innocent enough. He was trying to get closer to me, to try and disarm me.
I gave him a knowing look and he froze.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Because I never intended for you to be… you.”
A loud laugh flew from me. It was bittersweet. On some level, I knew it was true, but the betrayal didn’t hurt any less. Had my father had his way, I would’ve been the one lying on the ground dead, instead of my twin brother.
“Oh, please,” I mused, “I want the truth.”
“The truth?” His voice was dangerously low. “The truth is, Ekaterina, that from the night I saw you at that club, you were all I could think of. If I skipped a day without seeing you, I went on a killing spree to release my anger. If I didn’t know that you were safe, it made me lose my fucking mind.”
“Aw,” I mocked. “That’s very cute, but not the answer I was looking for.”
“I can’t read minds,” he told me.
“All right then.” I inched closer to his mother, ignoring her whimpers. If she tried to release herself, it would only get her killed quicker. Galina wasn’t an issue.
I tilted my head to the side, a small smile appearing on my face. “And what made you change your mind about killing me now?”
The moment he’d found out I’d taken his mother, he’d have been planning my murder. But as dangerous as he was, the second he’d stepped into the room, I’d realized that plan had long since been discarded.
“Because, Ekaterina.”
He stepped forward boldly. Only a few feet separated us, but it was a few feet too short a distance. I got as close as I possibly could to his mother. If she moved even so much as an inch, she’d kill herself.
“I know. About everything. I know about the dirty little secret you kept in that safe.”
It was as if all the air had been knocked out of my lungs. My mind went back to the voice message Brianne had left me. I’d been right about the second one being for him, and she’d told him everything I’d kept hidden all these years.
“So it’s the attention you liked?”
He shook his head. “No, little lion. The fact that we’re the same is what I liked.”
I interrupted him immediately, anger rising from the pit of my stomach. “You and I are not the same, Adrik.” I spat his name out like it was venom. “You were born that way—I was made. Nothing we lived through is any kind of similar, let alone the same.”
His eyes lingered dangerously on my face. His demeanor hadn’t changed from the moment he’d arrived, and he wasn’t revealing any of his feelings. Fucking hell, his poker face was amazing.
“That might be true, but you know that there isn’t a single person in this world who will understand you as much as I do. We were made for each other, little lion. There’s no escaping that.”
It finally hit me what he was trying to do. If I knew anything, I knew when someone was trying to manipulate me. And sadly for him, it didn’t work.
Tears fell freely down my cheeks, but it was pure fury I was feeling—a deep rage that had built over years and threatened to leap straight out.
I didn’t stop it, not for one minute. I wanted him to know how much his betrayal angered me. I wanted him to know just how much of a sociopathic bitch I could be. And more than anything, I wanted him to have something to remember me by.
