7. Mikhail

Blood is still pumping rhythmically out of my father's neck when the door to my office bursts open.

Raoul barges in, ready for anything. Until he almost trips over my father's body, that is. Then he glances down at the blood on his shoe and the paling corpse and looks like he's going to be sick.

"I think he's still alive," I drawl as I turn and do what I came into this room for in the first place—get a drink. "In case you want to try to save him."

Raoul leaps over his twitching legs and stops me mid-pour. "Are you okay?"

I shake him off roughly and top off my glass. "I'm not the one bleeding out on the floor. I'm fine."

"What happened?"

He asks the question like it's simple. Like I can draw a line from dot to dot and end up with some crystal clear picture of this night, this week, this whole cursed life.

What happened is that my father murdered my daughter and first wife and kidnapped my second. And right this very moment, watching his chest convulse, I'm still not sure if he did it because he loved or hated me. Maybe both.

I settle on an easier explanation. "It's complicated."

"No shit," he snaps. "Your father is dead on the floor. That usually comes with some complications."

Raoul has always taken everything in stride. It might be a vestige of the fact that he was technically given to me to be used as a slave. Since this is the twenty-first century and I don't own a powdered wig, I never took Raoul's family up on the offer in full. But still… the dynamic lingers. Raoul jumps when I say jump and he doesn't ask questions.

Until now.

When I called him last week to tell him Anatoly had been shot, he was shaken. Then the dominoes kept falling. Pyotr betrayed us; Stella died; Viviana and Dante were kidnapped. The last week has been a shitshow and now, even the most dependable person I know is in shambles.

I take a long drink and drop down into the leather chair in the corner. The gash in my father's neck is bubbling now, a slow leak compared to the deluge a minute ago.

"My father killed Alyona and Anzhelina."

Raoul blinks at me. He doesn't look surprised—he looks worried. It's well-documented that Ruben Falcao, Raoul's father, ordered the hit that ended with my family slaughtered in their own home. He probably thinks I'm crazy to suggest a different version of events.

"No," he says gently. "My father killed them."

"Your father picked the—hell, it wasn't even low-hanging fruit. My father tossed it on the ground. He rolled it to your father's feet." I take another drink, not entirely sure if it's exhaustion or the alcohol making my head spin. "The night they died, my father sent me to the other side of the city and withdrew guards from the property. He might as well have put the key under the mat for the cartel. He wanted Alyona and Anzhelina to die."

Saying it out loud makes me want to stand up and kill him again. Maybe I should ask Raoul to revive him after all.

"I always wondered," Raoul mutters.

That wakes me up. The world around me solidifies as I stare up at one of my oldest friends. "What the fuck does that mean? You always wondered what?"

Raoul's face shifts from pity to guilt and back again. He sags like the truth is physically weighing him down. "My father was a brutal man, but he did what needed to be done to protect his family."

Rage rises up in me, fierce and swift. "He protected his family by killing mine! Don't tell me he did the right thing."

"That's just it," Raoul continues. "My father never hurt a child. Not once. I grew up hearing stories about him mounting the heads of his enemies on his wall like trophies. Men whispered about the way he would chop off someone's leg for accidentally stepping on his foot. But in all those stories, he never hurt a woman or a child. Ever."

I frown. "He made an exception for Alyona and Anzhelina, then."

"Maybe." Raoul shrugs, his head sinking deeper between his shoulders. He looks like a turtle trying to hide away. "Or… maybe he didn't know who was in the house that night. Maybe he had bad information and called that hit having no clue that your wife and daughter were home alone."

Would my father have gone that far to kill my family off? He could have taken them out himself, but I would have traced it back to him. If there hadn't been a common enemy to point to—an imminent threat that needed to be dealt with—I might have realized the hand my father played in their murders even sooner.

"Your father offered you as a sacrifice," I remind him. "He told my father that we could torture you, kill you, enslave you—whatever we wanted to do to make things right. He did that to his own son, but you think he would draw the line at killing one random woman and child he didn't even know?"

Raoul thinks it over, choosing his words carefully. There is no good outcome here. At the end of the day, Alyona and Anzhelina are still dead. Raoul was still used as a bartering chip by his father. My father is going cold in the corner.

Everything is fucked up. But if we can untangle this knot, maybe the future doesn't have to be.

"Your father orchestrated the murder of your wife and child and then kidnapped Viviana and Dante," Raoul says gently. "He did that to his own son… Do you think he'd draw the line at feeding bad information to his enemies to get them to do his dirty work?"

Raoul looks at me and I remember the first moment we met.

He stepped out of the car parked in front of the mansion and all I saw in him was myself—the spare son whose only purpose was to sacrifice himself at the altar of his family for no other reason than his father asked him to.

It's another reason why I never considered forcing him to be a slave. We'd both spent more than enough of our lives doing that already.

"No," I finally answer. "I don't think my father ever drew a line. He always did whatever it took to get what he wanted."

A string of curse words from the doorway alert us to Anatoly's arrival. "And who is responsible for this mess?" He gestures to our father like he's a glass of spilled milk before he kneels down in the blood and checks his pulse. "This is bullshit. I miss all the fun! First, Trofim. Now this."

"Your father is dead," Raoul hisses at him under his breath. "Pretend you have some decorum."

Anatoly slowly, shamefully lowers his head and stares down at the floor. He folds his hands in front of him and looks solemn.

Then, after a few seconds, he shakes it off. "I think that was enough mourning, don't you? Now that that's out of the way, who in the fuck is responsible for this mess?"

I raise a hand. "He deserved it."

"Obviously. That wasn't in question. But what did he do this time?"

Raoul has always been appalled by our manners. Even though his father shipped him to our house and his likely death, Raoul has never said a bad word about him. Even when I know he's burning up with anger, he's kept a tight leash on his outward response.

But there's no sense in me beating around the bush. Not when the elephant in the room is decaying in the corner.

"He arranged for Alyona and Anzhelina to die and framed Viviana for Trofim's murder."

Again, all eyes are on me.

"He killed Alyona and Anzhelina?" Anatoly asks, finally stunned.

At the same time, Raoul frowns. "Viviana didn't kill Trofim?"

Anatoly turns to Raoul. "Wait, what? Then who killed Trofim? I don't understand anything."

I fill Anatoly in on everything as quickly as I can and watch as my brother practically inflates with rage. He looks twice his normal size, I swear.

"That fucking coward," he hisses. "He murdered his own granddaughter. I don't know why I ever expected better, but this is low even for him."

Anatoly saw more of Anzhelina than I did in the brief few months she was alive. We were in the middle of a war and he was the primary guard stationed at our house. He was there day in and day out until the night my father pulled us both across the city to fight the cartel. The same night he knew Ruben Falcao would launch an attack on my house.

Anatoly clenches his fists at his side. If our father wasn't already dead, Anatoly would be on his way to take him out. "Why?"

"He thought I was distracted. He thought having a family made me weak."

"Of course he did," he spits. "We're talking about the man who ignored me from the second I was born and let Trofim kill my mother. Sentimentality isn't something he ever concerned himself with. Even his beloved firstborn didn't get a funeral after his death. We're all just tools he can use until we snap in half. He never cared about any of us."

Anatoly's teeth grind together with every word. He gave up on our father a long, long time ago. That doesn't mean he's made his peace with him.

Now, he won't get the chance.

"The lack of a funeral might have been on purpose since… Trofim isn't dead."

They both stare at me, wide-eyed. After a few long, silent seconds, Anatoly presses his fingers into his eye sockets. "It's too late for this shit. I should be asleep."

I walk them both through my father's confession about Viviana stabbing Trofim but not finishing the job. About the tape he showed me and what he claimed was on the footage I didn't receive.

"And you believe him?" Raoul asks when I'm finished. "You really think Viviana didn't do it? What if he's lying?"

"Why would he? The only reason I sent Viviana away is because she killed Trofim and I had no clue. It made me realize how much of a distraction she was for me. Which is exactly what Otets wanted. Why would he reveal that Trofim was alive and risk me bringing her back?"

Anatoly holds up a finger, amusement curling the corners of his mouth. "I thought you sent Viviana away because you needed to marry Helen to appease the Greeks."

"That, too," I mutter dismissively.

"Then there's no chance you'd bring Viviana back, so Otets could have lied to you." Anatoly watches me closely as he says it. I know he's paying attention to every flicker of emotion across my face.

There is no chance I'm bringing Viviana back.

There should be no chance that Viviana comes back into this house.

And yet…

"Anything is possible," I bite out grudgingly.

"Spoken like a man who"s getting married tomorrow," Anatoly snorts. "Or have you forgotten that your wedding to Helen Drakos is happening in less than eighteen hours?"

"I haven't forgotten anything," I lie.

I forget about Helen hourly. I need to keep the Greeks happy to make sure Dante is safe, but I'd be willing to do it in many ways that have nothing at all to do with marrying Helen.

"Because we're going to have a much bigger mess to clean up than our father if you back out of this engagement a second time. The Drakos family is ready to defend Helen's honor if they have to."

There will definitely be some honor to defend once the Greeks find out I'm still married to another woman. Annulment papers were drawn up by my lawyer, but I haven't signed them. I haven't even attempted to track down Viviana and have her sign them, either.

Legally, I can't marry Helen tomorrow.

Morally, I won't.

"Trofim is alive and an imminent threat," Anatoly recounts. "The Greeks are a dark cloud over our heads. We have a lot of enemies and few friends. We can't afford to do anything stupid here, Mik."

I toss back the rest of my drink. I should be trying to clear my head, not make things muddier.

Then again, when I think about it, things have always been clear.

"My father turned me into a ruthless, cold-hearted pakhan," I announce, rising to my feet to face my brothers. "I'm finally the man he always wanted me to be."

Anatoly and Raoul share a look before Raoul asks, "What does that mean?"

"It means," I explain, "that I know what I have to do. And nothing is going to change my mind."