AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was one of the worst things about having an addict in your life: it made you cynical. It was impossible to trust anyone when you were fed a constant stream of lies. Impossible to believe someone could reform when the wordrelapsebecame a part of your everyday vocabulary.
Not that Roman could have been anything but cynical with Igor as his father.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Roman said, because he was. As long as Erik was on Igor’s side, his brother was his professional enemy, but Roman bore him no ill will. He didn’t want to see his brother meet his end in a hotel room with a needle in his arm, and Erik wasn’t enough of a threat to Roman’s desire for control for the bratva to enter into that equation.
“Don’t you want to know how Father’s doing?” Erik asked.
“No.”
Erik nodded. “I guess I can’t blame you. You always took the worst of it.”
The acknowledgement was as welcome as it was surprising. He and Erik hadn’t spoken about their fucked-up family in years. Roman had started to wonder if Erik even realized he’d been spared the worst of Igor’s wrath. “It doesn’t matter now. He doesn’t matter.”
Even as Roman said it, he wasn’t sure he believed it.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Erik said. “As long as father is pakhan, he’s in charge of the bratva.”
“He didn’t seem in charge at the Orlovs’ funeral.” If Igor hadn’t been hit, hadn’t been so critically injured, Roman might have thought the massacre was his doing, a show of strength to deter Roman, to reassure the rest of the bratva that he was in charge.
But it didn’t fit. Igorhadbeen hurt in the massacre. And there was something else, something about that day, that teased the corners of Roman’s mind, but the details were lost to his injury and the days he’d spent unconscious in the hospital.
He remembered arriving at the funeral, beginning to walk up a small hill, and then… nothing until he woke up to Ruby’s face. The doctors said it was common with severe trauma. The memories might come back — or they might not.
“That’s why I’m here,” Erik said, pulling Roman back to the present. “We obviously have a shared enemy. It’s time to set aside this fucked-up war and come home, back to the family.”
Roman almost laughed. Erik’s words sounded so insincere, so rehearsed, that Roman wondered how many times he’d practiced them in front of a mirror. “Do you really think we know the meaning of the wordfamily?”
Family was putting each other first. It was taking care of each other no matter what. Ruby and Olivia were a family. What Roman and Erik were part of was a fiefdom. Roman and Erik were given certain things in exchange for their loyalty, their service to Igor’s army.
That was all.
“Yeah,” Erik said, “I do. It’s about being loyal. It’s about blood.”
“I won’t deny that blood is a bond,” Roman said. “But it’s not an unshakable one. Not when loyalty only flows one way.”
And it did. Igor had taught Roman that lesson over and over again, hurting him when he didn’t please Igor as a child and adding humiliation to the mix when Roman grew to manhood, too big to beat (to whip, to burn).
But now he’d found a new way to hurt Roman.
Ruby.
He’d taken her to hurt Roman. Had hurt Ruby to hurt Roman.
And Roman couldn’t let that stand.
Erik leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “You launched a war against our father. What did you think was going to happen?”
“What I still think — what I know — is going to happen,” Roman said. “I’m going to squeeze him until he taps out, until he has no choice. And then I’m going to tap him out myself.”
“Except you’re forgetting something,” Erik said.
Roman shifted against the pillows behind his back. He missed Ruby already. She was always there to help him get comfortable, always there to murmur sympathy when he wanted it and give him a kick in the ass when he needed it. “Please do tell me what I’m forgetting.”
“Someone wants all of us dead,” Erik said. “Father is lying in this same hospital. The only reason I’m not here is because I wasn’t at the funeral.”
Roman had a flash of memory from the funeral: flower-draped caskets, mourners in black suits, the lurching figure of his father working his way up the hill.
“That doesn’t put us on the same side. It only means I have two enemies instead of one.”
