“If that’s the case, then why didn’t you accept the mansion I bought for you in Paris last year?”
I nearly laugh out loud in disbelief. A mansion in Paris? And she said no? Rich people are a whole different kind of crazy.
“Because this is my home!” she cries out. “This place is my home and I’m not leaving it. I deserve to have a life outside of this Bratva without having to sacrifice everything else in the process.”
“That’s fine. Leave the house, don’t leave the house, I don’t give a fuck. But family business stays under this roof.”
“What do you take me for?”
“A woman who wants attention,” he retorts sharply.
Ouch. Even I wince at that. Their relationship is obviously a lot more complicated than I first realized. There’s bitterness between them. A rotting, festering kind of resentment.
Aleks sighs and puts his head in his hands. “This isn’t a lecture, Mother. I’m not trying to micromanage your life. I’m just saying—”
“Saying what, precisely, Aleksandr?”
He wrenches his head upright. “That spineless motherfucker will be on the prowl for newsworthy stories. If he gets wind of the investigation or—”
“Or what?” Yulia taunts. “The fact that you have a young woman here against her will?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies coldly. “Olivia is my wife.”
“You haven’t spent one night with her since you got married. On second thought, sounds like the marriage I had with your father.”
“As you’ve said so often, I learned from the best.”
I cringe at the vicious barbs flying back and forth between them. Yulia is getting in some damage of her own, but she’s much too worked-up and emotional to retain the upper hand. Her son, by contrast, is perfectly calm.
“What else are you scared of, Aleks?” she asks, her voice getting lower and lower until I can barely hear it. “Worried that he’ll find out your dirty little secrets? The women…”
I freeze on the spot. Are they talking about Isabella?
But Yulia said “women.” Plural. Are those the same women Rob was referring to?
“Enough!” Aleks roars. “Don’t say another fucking word, Mother.”
I take that as my cue to leave. If he storms out unexpectedly, he’ll catch me eavesdropping, and then there will be hell to pay.
My heart is beating so hard that it’s all I can hear as I slip out of sight and climb the staircase up towards the second floor.
I avoid the maid cleaning one of the sitting rooms and slip into the next room instead. I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for.
But I know something: if I look long enough, I’m certain I’ll find it.
25
ALEKS
“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to,” I growl as my mother turns her back on me. “As long as you choose to remain a part of this house, I am your don.”
She turns slowly, her severe features twisted with hurt. “I wasn’t aware that I was even a part of this Bratva.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask. “A certificate? We don’t do membership badges.”
“Some recognition for my hard work, perhaps. For my sacrifices. Would that be so hard?”
“Every deal you made while I was in Russia turned out to be a dud. You chose Sarkozy over Minkoff because you liked his dick better. You think that was a smart decision?”
She goes deathly still.
“That’s right.” I nod savagely. “I know about that. I know about everything that happened while I was away.”
“You had someone spy on me?” she whispers.
“I did what I had to do,” I reply. “I needed to make sure my interests were being taken care of here. And you were simply not capable.”
“Sarkozy offered better returns—”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I snap, refusing to let her finish the lie. “He had nothing to offer apart from his loyalty and a handful of ill-trained men. But Minkoff had manpower and territory that he was willing to share out of respect for Otets and the Makarova family. You turned him down because you were fucking that sleazy Sarkozy son of a bitch.”
“I… he… that was…”
“What, Mother?” I press. Her jaw snaps shut. “What excuses are you going to give me next? What justifications are you going to make? You want to know why I don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut about this Bratva? It’s because you’ve never been able to do it before. You’ve given away your secrets to men who shower you with nothing more than a little attention. And this time, I can’t be bothered to deal with the fallout.”
“What fallout?” she protests weakly. “There was no—”
I take a step forward, getting in her face until she cringes back from me. But there’s nowhere for her to go.
“My mistake was in shielding you from the consequences of your decisions,” I tell her. “I chose to recuse you from your duties and take over without telling you exactly how badly you fucked up.”
“You’re exaggerating. You would have told me—”
“I had two options: crush you or protect you. Luckily for you, I chose the latter.”
Years of pent-up anger comes flowing out of me like lava. I’ve held back for so long, out of respect for her. But I don’t have the patience to go easy on her today. Her naïvete is more than I can take.
She shakes her head, unable to accept what I know to be the truth. “I thrived while you were gone,” she whispers. More like she’s trying to convince herself than convince me.
“Ask me about Russia,” I challenge. “Ask me how it went there.”
“You dealt with our enemies and brought our business interests back home,” she says, reciting the old party line. “Because you didn’t want to stay in Russia forever.”
“Wrong,” I breathe in her face. “It was either save everything there, or save everything here. I couldn’t do both. So I burned every last resource we had abroad just to keep it out of our enemies’ hands. Then I came back here, to keep the Bratva out of yours.”
She looks dumbfounded by the onslaught of new information. What I’m saying is true: it’s been a mistake to keep her in the dark, to let her think she could play-act as don without consequence.
This is not a game.
“What happened to my son?” she whispers in a daze. “What happened to the sweet little boy who loved me?”
“You think I don’t care for you?” I grimace. “You think I have no regard for you as my mother? Love is the only thing that’s kept my mouth shut.”
“Because you were waiting for the perfect moment to humiliate me,” she says, a sob escaping her lips.
“That was never my intention,” I sigh. “But I will not let you blow up what I have built because you feel lonely and unappreciated. Hargrove is a dangerous friend to have. Especially right now.”
She bites down on her lip. “He’s not interested. He understands how things work.”
“Tell me: did his interest in you increase once you told him who I am? Who we are?”