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“How’s Clara?” he quietly asks me.
“She’s back with her ex. How the fuck do you think she is?”
It sounds harsh, but I don’t blame Tolya for what’s happened. What could he do? He’s been caged like a beast for fifteen years.
But the words still snap off my tongue. I don’t feel like apologizing for the mood I’m in, so I yank myself onto the loading stairs by the railing and avoid eye contact with him until we get inside.
Tolya’s hand clamps around my shoulder right as I’m about to storm into the jet’s living space.
“We’ll get her back,” he promises in my ear. “Just be patient.”
“Fuck patience.”
I hear him snort a stifled laugh. “If I can wait fifteen years for this, you can wait fifteen days. We need to get him somewhere he can’t follow us from. Until then, your family is safer where they’re at.”
Very, very few things in my life have ever made me feel so emotional. I’m not allowed to show emotions, let alone have them.
But to hear my big brother acknowledge Clara and Willow as my family? That means he’s embraced them as his family, too.
And, like Otets has always said,family is everything.
I nod. Tolya takes that as his cue that I’ve got my shit pulled together. He leads us over to the plush couch and stretches his long limbs out over the coffee table as we settle in.
“Shit,” he chuckles, “it’s hard to believe I was staring at cement blocks just this morning.”
“Be grateful for it,” Oleg grumbles through a sip of what I’m assuming is vodka. “Your grandfather spent a decade in the gulag.”
“I’ll be sure not to complain too much.” Tolya sighs and leans back, closing his eyes. “I’m just glad I’ll never have to eat mystery meat for lunch ever again.”
Even through the fog of my fury, he manages to make me snort a low laugh. “I could remove all the labels from your fridge. If you ever get homesick.”
He rolls his eyes. “Do that, and I’ll be cookingyoulunch with it.”
I see the flight attendant signal for us to buckle up. She keeps a wide berth around Oleg, which is a wise choice. Soon enough, the plane cruises down the runway.
I close my eyes and breathe as we accelerate and launch into the air, leaving the whole godforsaken City of Sin below us.
Somewhere in it, Clara and my daughter are clinging to each other.
I just hope to God they’re strong enough to last until I can make things right.
Once we level off, we abandon the seatbelts for the mini bar and, as expected, Oleg snatches the first bottle of vodka he sees. “Nouse wasting good liquor,” he explains with a wink. As if I give two shits either way.
“So, Otets.” Tolya stirs a few ice cubes into a glass of water.Interesting. I guess I figured he’d be basking in freedom and booze right about now. “You mentioned a meeting with the grandpakhanin Sochi.”
Oleg nods. “I did. Between the Yakuza doubling up their efforts and the American police planting evidence to falsely imprison our family, it makes sense to get him involved. Who knows? Maybe he’ll let us borrow some reinforcements to raze Las Vegas all down once and for all.”
“I’m sure he’d hate to lose such an important benefactor as yourself,” I wryly muse.
He frowns. “The hell are you talking about?”
I roll my shoulder and pretend like I’m not watching his every microexpression. “You’ve been doing so well with your international enterprise, especially the ring you mentioned you have in Russia. With that amount of wealth and power, it makes sense that you’d be high up in the grandpakhan’slist of favorite people.”
“Eh, it’s true the business is going well. But power and money are two entirely different things,mal’chik.”
I pour myself a glass of bourbon and use it to mask my sudden suspicions. “You outbid everyone at Clara’s auction. Fifty million, if I recall correctly. That’s nothing to sneeze at.”
Oleg chuckles. Either the booze is hitting me harder than usual, or he looks and sounds a little nervous. “It’s true, I went for ashow of power. You see how the Yakuza have turned against us. I needed to remind Raizo who he’s fucking with.”
