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“I know.” I braced myself as she started weeping quietly. “I don’t want this either. But I have no choice. I won’t take the risk.” I had to end this now, or it was going to get emotional. I didn’t want to fight with her, and I couldn’t stand to hear her cry. “Goodbye, Olivia.”
I hung up on her protest and sat back in my office chair like I’d just been punched in the chest, knowing I had hurt her terribly but had no way to avoid it. Either she was too dangerous for me to be around, or I was too dangerous for her to be around. Possibly, both.
Until I won this damned war, I had no way of learning the truth.
Chapter 22
Olivia
What were the stages of grief again?
I didn’t quite remember, but I knew I was cycling through them. It wasn’t an easy progression, though. Guilt came way before anger, leaving me quietly sobbing on my couch while Michael had his afternoon nap. I should have voiced my concerns about Luis’s friend to Viktor earlier.
Now he might never know his father. Not because I had done anything wrong, but because of something beyond my control. How was I to know that my lifelong friends were entangled with a criminal organization? That didn’t bear thinking about, that Anna might have been lying to me all these years too. I was certain that even Anna hadn’t known, but Viktor didn’t believe me.
He had talked about it like he was just trying to make sure. He had avoided accusing, avoided yelling. But his coldness had stabbed me right in the heart regardless.
The worst part of all of it was that I could understand his reasoning. Right now, things looked very bad for me. I had connections to the people who were trying to kill him. I had just barely learned about that after knowing these people my whole life. Of course it sounded improbable.
But he had also abandoned me just as I had already been pulled into his world, like it or not. If anything happened to me or to Michael because of this crazy mess I was caught in the middle of, he wouldn’t be there to protect us.
So there’s that promise out the window.
That’s when the anger hit. That son of a bitch. I was telling him the truth! All I’ve ever tried to do was do right by him, Michael, and my friends. I had no idea how he and Luis ended up at odds, any more than I knew how Luis became a crime lord or even when he did.
This was so stupid. Luis and Viktor were playing wargames in the streets over what? Territory? Business? Who got to run which type of contraband? Who got to own the police?
And meanwhile, their loved ones were put in danger by all of it, sometimes without even knowing it.
I should have stayed out of his life except to handle the estate auctions. I shouldn’t have gone back to his bed. I shouldn’t have kept talking to him outside of keeping it strictly business. And I sure as hell shouldn’t have let him find out about Michael.
But that was done now. No taking any of it back. No way forward but to deal with the consequences.
I called Anna. I didn’t know who else to call.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as she got on the phone.
“Viktor left me. And…oh God, Anna, it’s all just crazy. I don’t know where to begin.” Or how much was safe to tell.
“It’s got to be less crazy than the conversation I had with my brother last night,” she said.
“I wouldn’t bet money on that.”
She stayed quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Okay. We’ll take turns. You go first.”
Once I started talking, it all spilled out. Finding out that Viktor was in with the Russian mob. Finding out I was going to have a son by him. Raising Michael while not even trying to look for his criminal father. Running into Viktor again and having him find out about Michael. Rekindling our relationship. Starting to get serious, starting to make plans about things like co-parenting Michael. And then the attack at the auction. Nearly being killed. I left out the part about Viktor killing people because I was still wrapping my brain around it. Working together with Viktor to escape, only to learn, hours later, that Luis was somehow involved in the attack. And after that, Viktor learning I was lifelong friends with the family of someone who had ordered his death.
“But Luis wouldn’t do that!” Anna broke in. I had to wrestle with my anger for a second and let her go on. “He told me everything, Olivia. Running the local Pueblo, tension with the Russians, trying to avoid a war.”
“But Viktor says the war was his idea in the first place!” I couldn’t help it, my voice broke.
“Luis says the same thing about Viktor. But the attack at the auction house…he swears it wasn’t him. One of his lieutenants, Miguel, called some guys together and did it on his own. Now he’s in the doghouse with Luis. And Luis is in the doghouse with me for doing all this stuff behind my back and then bringing some of his guys around us and our kids. I am so pissed at him.”
I had to know. “Tell me the truth Anna, did you know about any of this? Did you know your brother was involved in the Pueblo?”
She shook her head. “I had no idea, honestly. He kept it from us all, I knew some of his childhood friends were involved in shady stuff, but Luis stopped hanging out with them after college.”
Well, that was something, at least she hadn’t been lying to me. Thinking back to what she’d just said I was stuck back on the idea that Luis hadn’t planned the attack on the auction house. “So it wasn’t Luis? It was someone else? But why would they do that?”
