16. Viviana

I don't know how long I've been crying when someone knocks on my door. All I know is my eyes burn, my cheeks are sticky with dried tears, and I absolutely do not want to see Mikhail. Not now. Not ever.

"Go away!" I try to yell, but it comes out in a croak. My throat is raw from crying.

The door opens. "Come again?"

The deep voice doesn't belong to Mikhail, but that doesn't matter. Everyone in this house is loyal to him. That's how Bratvas and mafias and all of these messed-up criminal organizations work. The sun shines out of Mikhail's ass and everyone is dying for a tan. I don't want Mikhail or any extension of him in my room right now.

The room sways as I sit up, but I turn to the massive mountain of a man peeking through my doorway. He looks familiar, but my vision is blurred from the many hours of weeping. "I said, ‘Go away.'"

"That's what I thought you said." Then he walks into my room like his comprehension skills aren't quite up to snuff, the door snicking closed behind him. "I thought I'd come see how badly my brother fucked things up."

Brother? Jesus Christ, how many Novikov men are there?

I look the man over, taking in his tree trunk legs and barrel chest. Then I make it to his face, which is split in a wide grin. He wags a brow at me.

"Anatoly," I say, the name and flirting tactics clicking into place. I watched him woo and win many a woman over the six months I was engaged to Trofim. It was like his mission at every event was to leave with a different sexual conquest. In the case of the christening, two sexual conquests.

"You remember me? I'm flattered." He toes at the curtain rod and sheet bundle still laying on the floor where Mikhail left it. "Is this some weird sex thing?"

"Ew! No! It's—" I run my hands over my face. "Go away, please. It's the middle of the night and I'm exhausted. Too exhausted to hash out my current situation with one of the many people responsible for keeping me and my son trapped here."

"I'm also one of the people responsible for keeping you alive."

These Novikov men and their over-inflated egos. I want to take a needle and pop each of their swelled heads like a balloon.

"I've kept myself alive for twenty-five years without the Novikov family's involvement just fine, thank you very much," I spit. "Actually, I've kept myself alive despite your family's involvement."

"Up to now," he agrees with a shrug. "But you know that would have changed the second someone found out who Dante is. Who his father is. He would have been a target."

I stare down at the comforter, picking at the delicate embroidered flowers along the edge. "That's why I wasn't going to let anyone find out."

Easier said than done, I know. But at least out there we were free.

"It would have come out sooner or later. He won't be a five-year-old kid forever. He would have grown up. Had questions. Even someone as stubborn as you couldn't have kept Dante from looking for answers."

"You don't know me or what I'm capable of."

He hums a surprisingly high-pitched, unconvinced sound. "Both of my brothers have been engaged to you at one point. I know enough."

"Mikhail and I are not engaged," I growl. "I don't care what he told you, but?—"

"You think Mikhail tells me things?" He snorts. "I'm sure you've noticed, but Mikhail isn't exactly a chatterbox. The only thing I've noticed is that every time he walks out of a room you're in, he's in a mood."

I roll my eyes. "I don't know why he wants to marry me if he hates me so much."

"He doesn't hate you," Anatoly says almost too softly to hear. Before I can ask what he means, he pushes on. "Besides, marriage is about a lot more than love."

"Of course you think so. Because this world is a toxic stew of violence and status and bloodrights. It's medieval. I'm the daughter of a don and I couldn't even make my own choices about who I got to marry."

"You mean with Trofim?"

"Yeah. But even before that."

Anatoly leans in closer. "Who did you want to marry before?"

I don't owe him an explanation. I don't owe anyone my life story. But having someone in Mikhail's inner circle who has some sympathy towards me can't be a bad thing, right?

"His name was Matteo." I swallow down the emotion that bubbles up every time I think of my first love. "He was the son of one of my father's maids. He picked her up from work a few days every week. While he was waiting for her, we would talk."

Matteo had big brown eyes and an even bigger heart. He talked about the world like it was full of possibility. Anything he wanted, he could have if he worked towards it: a college education, enough money that he could take care of his mom… and me.

"Matteo and I weren't stupid. We knew that my father wouldn't like us being together. Even his mom tried to warn him against it. She was afraid she would lose her job, but…" I shake my head, blinking away a fresh wave of tears. "I don't think either of us really understood the risks we were taking."

Anatoly moves to sit on the end of the bed. He curls one massive leg up on the mattress to face me. "What did your father do?"

"He told me to stop seeing him, but I refused. When he forced me into agreeing, I kept seeing Matteo secretly. We were going to elope." I chuckle humorlessly, remembering the night I crawled out of my window with a white dress tucked under my arm and ran to Matteo's car to meet him.

Except he wasn't in the driver's seat.

My father was.

The next minutes and hours are a black spot in my mind. The memories are locked away and I've never tried to access them. I don't want to relive what I know happened.

"Your father killed him," Anatoly guesses.

I swipe my sleeve across my cheek. "In front of me. Yeah. ‘My duty was to the family,' he said. What I wanted didn't matter. Who I wanted didn't matter. I wasn't my own person; I belonged to the Giordano name. And I… I don't want that for Dante."

A new wave of tears burns at the backs of my eyes. Hopelessness crushes my chest worse than any claustrophobia attack I've ever experienced. Because now, I can't just open a door and leave.

I'm trapped here.

"Yeah," he sighs. "This life is no walk in the park, that's for fucking sure."

The words pull me out of my self-pity spiral. I glare at him. "Yes, what a hard life you lead," I sneer. "I saw you at enough fundraisers and parties to know all about your many burdens. Being the son of a pakhan has been horrible for you. Is all that meaningless sex with people who only care about your last name becoming tedious? It must be so hard."

Anatoly's face hardens for the first time. I'm aware of exactly how big he is and exactly how alone we are. If he wanted to crack me in half like a glowstick, he could.

"Keeping the Novikov family name and a place in the Bratva is the prize Iakov awarded to me after he let your ex-fiancé slaughter my mother in her bed," he snarls.

I gasp. "Mikhail?"

"I thought he wasn't your fiancé?" Anatoly taunts with a raised brow. He shakes his head, blowing out a long breath. "No, Trofim."

"Trofim killed his own mother?" I whisper.

"He killed my mother. Iakov's mistress. One of them, anyway," he mutters. "She got pregnant while Iakov was only courting Trofim's mother. Trofim wasn't even a fetus yet. But Iakov didn't offer to marry my mom. He was interested enough in a waitress to get her pregnant, but not interested enough to marry her and protect her from this fucked-up world."

"Why?" I breathe, too horrified to speak above a whisper. "Why did Trofim kill her?"

"To make sure Iakov wouldn't change his mind and marry my mother. It had been decades. Iakov was never going to change his mind, but Trofim was too power-hungry to see it. He wanted to make sure I'd never have a direct line to the leadership he was born into."

Anatoly isn't a legitimate Novikov. Not in the ways that count.

Like Dante.

"This world is dark and brutal and fucked up at times." Anatoly turns to me, sympathy etched into every line of his face. "But not all of us are that way. Some of us try to do the right thing."

"Like you?" I ask.

"Like Mikhail," he corrects. "You might be pissed at him right now, but Mikhail could have abandoned you and Dante to your fates. He could have taken Dante and left you with nothing. But he's offering you the key to the kingdom."

Too bad it feels like the key to my own prison cell.

I'm exhausted and off-balance. I entertained this conversation to try to endear Anatoly to me, but now, I'm sitting here feeling sympathetic for him and Mikhail.

It's too much for one day. It's too much for one lifetime.

I shake my head. "Please leave."

This time, Anatoly listens. He stands and walks to the door. But he stops, his hand on the knob, and looks back at me.

"You thought you knew me when I walked through this door, but you didn't," he says softly. "Give my brother the same benefit of the doubt. You think you know him, but you don't."

"I know enough," I fire back, doubting the words before they're even out of my mouth.

I know Mikhail is offering me something a lot of men wouldn't. Again and again, he has taken care of me when he didn't have to.

But he said it himself: the Bratva is an extension of him. No matter what kind of man Mikhail is, I can't separate him from the world I hate.

Anatoly sighs. "He saved you once before when he didn't have to—when you didn't ask him to. Think about the life you'd be living right now if Mikhail hadn't done that."

With thoughts of a Dante-less, Trofim-filled life bouncing around my head, Anatoly finally leaves me alone.