“I just paid her a visit.”
I sit upright, eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Why?”
“Because I think you’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t remember asking for your advice.”
“It’s not advice,” she corrects. “It’s a warning. Taking the sister is not going to get the FBI off your back.”
“This is not about the FBI,” I say. “This is about him. The brother.”
“Then take him. What does this have to do with her?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” I snap. “But taking that pompous fuck would only bring about more questions. The investigation he’s leading would take on a new priority. If I take his sister instead, he can close this little investigation as easily as he opened it.”
She doesn’t look convinced. “You think it can be that simple?”
“I know it can be. The case has no teeth, anyway. He’s under the false impression I have something to do with his fiancée’s disappearance.”
“Don’t you?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
I snort. “It’s the story I’m sticking with.”
“Holding her here is risky.”
“It’s riskier holding her somewhere else,” I counter. “I want her where I can keep an eye on her.”
“Is that so?” she asks, her tone dripping with far too much understanding.
I wrinkle my nose in distaste. I despise these little games my mother plays. “If there’s something you need to say, just say it.”
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “She’s rather attractive.”
“Chert voz’mi,” I curse in Russian. For fuck’s sake. I roll my eyes for good measure.
“I know how men think, Aleksandr,” she says, unbothered by my irritation. “I know how men are. I don’t think keeping her close to you is the best idea.”
I lean forward and drop my voice to a low timbre. The kind that promises I mean business—or violence. “You think I can’t fucking handle myself, Mother? You really think I’m going to get distracted?”
“Men are weak that way,” she says, doubling down. Her eyes are iron. Unflinching.
“I’m not just any man.”
“I just don’t want your manhood to distract you.” She exhales deeply. “Throw the girl back to her brother and let him fumble on with the investigation. Unless you were careless, he’s not going to find anything. So why go through all this trouble?”
I narrow my eyes, wondering if I should even share this part with her. It’s not about trust in this case—it’s about the balance of power. More specifically, the power she lost when I took over as don of the Makarova Bratva.
“Do you know when the FBI started sniffing around?” I ask casually.
“No,” she says. “Should I?”
“Three years ago.”
Her brow creases. “How do you know that?”
“I have my sources. Reliable ones.”
“How can you be sure?” she asks.
I push myself to standing and walk around the desk. She’s a small woman, but with an audacity that far outweighs her. From time to time, she needs to be reminded of the order of things.
I sit on the edge of my desk and lean in towards her. “Because I’m the best there fucking is, Mother.”
She flushes, falling back against her chair.
I nod, satisfied. “Now, are you properly convinced or is this disappointment I’m seeing?”
She looks at me with wide eyes. “How can you ask me that question? I’m your mother.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I have always been proud of you,” she snaps. “I raised you to be the don you are now.”
“Then why won’t you let me do my goddamn job?” I ask. “I don’t need you second-guessing my decisions. I know what I’m doing.”
“It just doesn’t make sense—”
“Because you’re not privy to the same information I am,” I tell her. “Of course it doesn’t make sense to you.”
Her jaw snaps shut. I know I’ve hurt her. There’s a twinge of guilt, but it’s buried almost immediately by a cascade of justifications.
This was always my Bratva to take.
She was simply the placeholder.
“I see,” she says with a curt nod. “So none of my years behind that desk mean anything to you. After your father suffered his stroke, I was the one who picked up the pieces. I kept this Bratva floating for years—years!—before you were ready to take the reins.”
“You don’t need to repeat the story, Mother. I remember.”
“Do you?” she presses. “Because all I see is a boy who’s trying to shut out the woman who built the empire he’s now running.”
That does it. Ignites the fire.
“Let me make myself crystal fucking clear.” I lean forward further, trapping her between my forearms as I grip the sides of her chair. “You are my mother. My blood. And that is the only reason I’m not currently ripping your tongue out with my bare hands for talking to me like that.”
Her eyes grow wide, but for the first time, I see an inkling of fear in them.
“That was your first warning,” I tell her. “Mother or not, there won’t be a second.”
I step away and sit back on the edge of my desk. She looks up at me with new caution. “You’re right,” she says with a repressed shudder. “You are good at this.”
“You’d do well not to forget it.”
She exhales slowly. “I know… and I’m sorry, son. It’s just…” She raises her eyes to mine. The resentment ebbs and something else takes the forefront. “It’s hard for a woman to find her place in this landscape. I thought I’d found mine.”
I know what she means. I observed it first-hand. My father’s stroke had come out of nowhere. But in the wake of that shock, my mother had found herself in a position that rarely comes around for a woman in the Bratva: she was in charge.
She took the wheel of my father’s legacy willingly, and she thrived. He may have laid the groundwork, but she built a fucking palace on top of it. An empire worthy of the name.
Unfortunately, the position was never hers to keep.
“You did well,” I tell her, knowing she needs to hear it. “But you aren’t made for this. Not like I was.”
“I know. I was just keeping the seat warm until you could get here.” She twines her hands together, lost in thought for a moment. “It’s not easy, you know? Once you’ve sat in that seat for long enough, you forget the fact that it was never yours to begin with.”
I nod. “I understand.”
“I don’t know that you do,” she says. “You came back from Russia and… I always understood that I would have to step down eventually, but it was more than that. You didn’t just dismiss me from your throne; you slammed the door in my face. I was left in the darkness, in the cold, in ignorance.”
“Because you would have questioned me,” I say unapologetically. “I needed to establish myself as the leader.”