She stays down for nearly twenty seconds. Long enough that I start to wonder if she intends on staying submerged forever.
But when she comes up again, she doesn’t look any more relaxed.
“She’s not who you think she is, Willow,” I say, once she’s wiped the water out of her eyes.
“What’s the story now?” Willow scoffs. “Is she some undercover superhero? She’s saved the world a million times, but she protects her real identity by being a first-class bitch?”
I almost smile. “I told you she was family.”
“Yeah, yeah… because the Bratva is a family. Spare me.”
“You’re not listening,” I say. “She’s family. She’s my sister-in-law.”
19
WILLOW
“Your brother’s wife?” I ask.
He nods. “Well, technically, they never made it down the aisle. Pavel was killed before that happened. But they were engaged.”
I stare at him, but all I can see is Brit.
Wait.
“Brit’s not her name, is it?”
Leo chuckles. “No.”
“You told me her name a while ago,” I say. It doesn’t take long to remember the moment. “The boat. You said it belonged to your brother and he named it for the love of his life.”
He nods.
“Ariel,” I whisper softly.
I think about Brit. I see her long supermodel legs, her blonde hair, her porcelain skin. She’s not Brit at all. Her name is Ariel and she loved Leo’s brother once upon a time.
I let that sink in. To Leo’s credit, he stays quiet. The silence gets heavier and heavier as I absorb the truth of what her identity truly means.
“Spartak Belov killed your brother,” I point out.
“Yes, he did.”
I shake my head, unable or unwilling to fully comprehend just yet. “She… she’s with him now. Stuck with Belov. Belov.”
“She’s with him because she has to be,” he tells me. “For now. It was a necessary part of our plan.”
I frown. “She’s had to fuck the man that murdered the love of her life for the last eight years?”
“Not quite eight years,” Leo tells me. “But yes, that is part of what she’s been doing.”
“That’s… that’s insane.”
“No. That’s Ariel. I told you, she’s one of the strongest women I’ve ever known in my life.”
The jealousy is still there, but it’s fading. Morphing to fit this new understanding.
“But… how? How could she be with a man who did that?”
“That’s a question you’ll have to ask her. But I think it has something to do with purpose.”
“Purpose?” I repeat dumbly.
“Losing Pavel nearly broke her,” he explains. “She became a shell of the person she was. There was a moment there when we thought we were going to lose her.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what he means, and I don’t ask. I still feel like I’m running to keep up with this insane revelation.
“I set up a plan to get back at Belov. I wanted to destroy the Mikhailovs and avenge Pavel’s death and the deaths of his Vors. Then Ariel made a suggestion. It took years of preparation and training,” Leo says. “It took strength beyond anything I’ve ever seen. But she was determined. Right from the start, her only goal was avenging Pavel’s death. She lived for nothing else. It’s what gave her the strength to keep going.”
I look down at the way the bathwater ripples with my every movement. “Well, fuck,” I breathe. “How am I supposed to hate her now?”
He smiles. “You’re stubborn. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
I sink into the water, head whirling. Above me, Leo looks out of the window to the craggy mountains beyond. His expression goes distant with old memory.
“You have no idea how powerful the Mikhailovs were at the time,” he murmurs, almost to himself more than to me. “Pavel didn’t believe in finding trouble where there was none. He was okay with dividing up territory so long as Semyon and Spartak respected the boundaries. He was young. Naive, maybe.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Where were you during all this? Weren’t you his right-hand man?”
His eyes turn inward, cloudy with regret. “I was not interested in the responsibility of running the Bratva. Besides, Pavel had his own men. Petyr and Logan. The two of them were—”