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“Emma and the kids?” Fyodor almost chokes. “Where are they? What happened?”
That snaps me out of it. When he said “family,” he was thinking of mynewfamily. “No. No, Emma and the kids are alright. This is not about them.”
Fyodor eases. Vadim, on the other hand, stiffens.
“What is it about then?”
My gaze slides pointedly to my uncle. “I have Adrik in custody.”
Now that I know what Vadim really is, I can see all the little telltale signs that give him away. It’s a marvel I didn’t notice them before. The twitch of his mouth, the nervous tic in his foot, the way he keeps wiping his sweaty palms against the leg of his pants.
“You didn’t inform us that you were going to run an operation against him,” says Vadim.
“I don’t have to inform anyone of anything,” I growl. “I am thepahkan.”
He flinches. “Yes, of course. I wasn’t disputing that—”
“No, but you are opposed to it. Aren’t you?”
The silence is prickly with tension. It feels as though I’ve just charged the room and now, we’re all waiting for things to goboom.
It’s Fyodor who breaks the silence. “Ruslan, my son, I don’t know what’s going on, but accusing your uncle is not—”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Otets? Ask him if he thinks I should be thepahkan.”
Fyodor doesn’t hesitate. “That’s ridiculous. He has supported you completely from the moment you donned the mantle. He has been loyal, faithful—”
“Treacherous.”
I’ve never seen Fyodor look more afraid. Not since we buried Mother, at least. His eyes dart between me and his brother, his hands are shaky, and his brow is dotted with beads of perspiration.
“I will not sit here and let you run down my brother’s—”
“Brat.” Vadim doesn’t raise his voice but the way that Fyodor stops short makes it seem like he screamed.
“What is Ruslan talking about?” my father asks desperately. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Tell him, Uncle,” I growl. “Tell him how you and Adrik have been working together for fuck knows how long to bring me down.”
The silence hurts. Vadim doesn’t so much as breathe. Fyodor’s eyes go wide but he doesn’t take them off my uncle. “Deny it, brother. Tell me what he’s saying is wrong.”
I can appreciate the desperation on Fyodor’s face. Discovering his betrayal has destroyed me, too, and I’m not nearly as close to Vadim as Fyodor is.
“Vadim!” Fyodor roars, raising his voice for the first time in recent memory.
Vadim closes his eyes. “I can’t deny it,” he says softly. “I won’t.”
Fyodor’s mouth drops. His entire face sags under the weight of that admission. He’s aging ten, twenty, thirty years in the blink of an eye.
“No… no. This can’t be true.”
“It is, Otets.”
“Why?” Isn’t that the question of the fucking day? “You, who have always,alwayschampioned family over all else. You, who have always believed that family is everything. You’ve been working against my son. Against yourpahkan.”
Vadim nods. An air of detached resignation clings to his sagging shoulders. As ancient as my father looks, Vadim looks plenty old himself. He stubs out the cigar in the ashtray and sighs. “As always, you’ve gone straight to the point, brother. Because the truth is,he—” His eyes dart viciously toward me. “—wasneversupposed to bepahkan,was he?”
Fyodor’s frown turns down at the corners. “This is about that.”
