“It can’t be.”
“Why?” I demand. “Why this loyalty? Why the need to defend the man?”
“Doesn’t friendship mean anything to you?” she asks. “Wouldn’t you defend Demyan if someone accused him of such horrible things?”
“I would forgive him many things. But betraying the Bratva? Not even Demyan would survive that.”
“Are you suggesting that I’ve betrayed this family?” she asks in outrage. “That I’ve concealed who was trying to hurt us?”
“It depends. Did you?”
“How dare you! I would never. He would never.”
I look at her in disbelief. “You are not that fucking naïve.”
“Aleksandr, you don’t know the man. He is what he seems: an honest, good-hearted, hard-working businessman. He built his empire from scratch. He donates to charity.”
“And I’m sure he rescues kittens out of trees in his free time,” I snap. “Open your fucking eyes, Mother. A man like that doesn’t get to the top without stepping on more than a few necks.”
“Aleks—”
“The answer is right there for you to see. You’re just blinded. And don’t give me that spiel about ‘friendship,’ either. Because there’s more to this. Denying it won’t make me believe you.”
“What do you want me to say, my son?” she whispers. “That I have feelings for him?”
“Do you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says tearfully. “He doesn’t feel the same way.”
“So you’ve had a conversation about this?”
“Of course not,” she says. “But it became clear early on in our friendship that he wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship with me.”
“And you decided to stay involved with him regardless?”
She twists the ring on her finger uncomfortably and says nothing.
“I told you. For fuck’s sake, how many times did I tell you? I should have put my foot down once and for all.”
“You must have gotten the wrong information, Aleks,” she says desperately. “It can’t be him.”
“It absolutely can be,” I snarl in her face.
I stride around my desk and rip open the packet Demyan and Jennifer prepared for me. I thrust the first page into my mother’s hands, then the next, and the next.
“Do you know what these pages say?” I demand. “These are sworn testimonies and physical evidence confirming that Donald Jeremy Hargrove raped a pair of fifteen-year-old prostitutes, then threatened them into signing non-disclosure agreements so they wouldn’t dare say a word to anyone. Does that sound like the kind of thing a ‘good-hearted man’ would do, Mother?”
“There… there must be some sort of misunderstanding…”
“Look at the bruises,” I order. “Look at them! Right fucking there.” I smack the photograph in her hand of a poor young girl’s mottled throat and my mother jumps in her seat. “The only misunderstanding here is yours. The man isn’t interested in fucking you, but it isn’t because he doesn’t like you. It’s because you’re fifty years too old for his depraved fucking tastes.”
She drops her head in defeat. Her shoulders sag under the weight of the revelation.
“He befriended you for a reason.”
Her head snaps up again. “What are you saying?”
“I would have thought it was obvious,” I tell her. “He knew who you were from the beginning. And he knew who your son was. He’s found out enough about me and the Bratva to justify pinning his crimes on me.”
“But—”
“The FBI was closing in on the sick son of a bitch. So he re-routed them in my direction. And you helped him do it.”
Her eyes go wide. “I would never ever help him hurt you or the Bratva. How can you even say something like that?”
“You sacrificed a lot to this Bratva. It took a lot from you and gave little in return. Perhaps you’re bitter.”
“That doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I may have resentment in me, but nothing could ever justify turning on my family.”
I look at her, and I see an old woman. One who’s lonely and desperate and sad. Who saw what she thought was a light at the end of the tunnel and reached for it with hope that maybe things could be different.
But there was never a light.
There was just a devil waving a torch amidst the darkness.
I breathe and close my eyes. “Starting now,” I tell her, “you will sever any connection you still have with Donald Hargrove. You will see no one without my explicit permission. You will do your goddamn part to keep this Bratva alive. Do you understand me?”
She nods fearfully. “I understand.”
“Good. You’re dismissed.”
She stands and heads to the door, but just before leaving, she pauses on the threshold. Her gaze is distant, foggy, like the truth of what I’m saying is written somewhere beyond these walls.
“What are you going to do now?” she asks finally.
“That’s for me to know.”
“You have Olivia. You married her. Surely the brother’s thrown out the case and closed the book on us by now.”
“If only it were that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “Robert Lawrence has been replaced.”
Her eyes go wide. “What?”
“The Bureau felt he was getting too erratic. They called into question his personal stake in this case and they pulled him out of it. So now, there’s a new detective leading the investigation. And from what I know of him, this thing is going to get much worse before it gets better.”
She blinks and shudders. “What about Olivia?”
“What about her?”
“She’s no longer of use to you anymore, is she?”
I look towards my desk and rearrange some of the files sitting there. I need to work, to burn off this excess anger and the lingering flame of what almost happened between me and Olivia just before I came in here.
“You never know.”
She wrinkles her brow. “Wait—you’re not letting her go?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t understand. Why keep her here?”
“Because she’s my wife. And I’m assuming Hargrove knows about it, doesn’t he?”
She has the grace to look ashamed. “I might have mentioned it in passing.”
“The man is going to come at me with everything he’s got. If this route doesn’t work, he’ll try another. Here, she has my protection. Out in the world? She’s a sitting duck.”
She’s silent for a long time.
“You’re trying to protect her?” she asks at last.
I exhale wearily. “Get out of my office, Mother. I have work to do.”
41
OLIVIA
I’ve done the math again and again.
Almost three months to the day since I was brought here.
Three months of confinement.
Three months without my family.
Three months of Aleks’s cruelty, laced through with just enough moments of the lightness inside of him to keep me from giving up hope altogether.