Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(110)

She inches closer while she talks. I’m not even sure she realizes she’s doing it. But just like that, she’s in my arms. To me, it feels completely natural that she should stay there. It’s where she belongs.

“You asked me how she died once,” she whispers, reaching up and winding her fingers around my dog tag. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

I hold my breath. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Paige shakes her head. “I’ve never wanted to share this story with anyone. In fact, I never have. To this day, Anthony doesn’t know that Clara ever existed.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You never told him about her?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t. I just—didn’t. Maybe…” Her voice drifts off for a moment, dipping painfully before she glances up at me. “Maybe I was scared that sharing her death with someone meant I would have to face the fact that I could have prevented it.”





84

PAIGE

“Paige.”

He utters my name like a whispered prayer.

His hand is on mine, and it gives me the strength to continue. Because I recognize now that I have to continue. I can’t turn back now that I’ve started down this road.

“It was a shooting,” I say. “That’s how it was spun in the news, at least. A gang-related shooting.

There were two others in the last few months. She was just the third victim. She fit the profile, too: young, disadvantaged, disturbed. That’s what they said about her. They almost made it seem like it was her fault that she was gunned down in the street. Like somehow, all these things that happened to her were things that she could have controlled. No one seemed to realize that if she could have controlled anything, she wouldn’t have been in that fucking trailer park.”

I take a deep breath and look up at him. He really is listening. Intently. With his whole body, his whole heart, his whole soul.

I’m clutching my pendant so hard that I can feel it digging into my skin. Misha seems to realize the same thing, because he slowly loosens my hand and wraps it around his own instead.

“She’d started dating this guy, Moses, three months before her death. He was a member of the gang. I knew that relationship was wrong. I should have stopped it.”

“Clara was her own person,” he rumbles. “Her choices were not yours.”

“She wanted to self-destruct, Misha,” I protest helplessly. “What’s more self-destructive than getting involved with a man who’s in a gang? A gang that was already responsible for so many dead people?

There’s more to this story, but I find myself choking on my own sobs. Even after all this time, I’m still just trying to find a way to turn back time.

“It’s not your fault, Paige,” he snarls fiercely. “Her death wasn’t your fucking fault.”

But I have so much more information than he does. I know the truth. I’ve lived with it for all these years.

“Yes, it was,” I say through my sobs. “It was.”

“I know what it’s like to have blood on your hands, Paige. Trust me, you are faultless.”

I meet his eyes, realizing that I don’t have the lion’s share of pain here. “Misha—”

“It was meant to be a straightforward mission,” he tells me. “Go in, secure the deal, and get back out again. But the Ivanov Bratva crashed the party. What was supposed to be a clean deal ended up in an all-out gun fight. My brother’s orders were clear: stay by his side and cover him. But I thought I knew better. I had a clean shot at Petyr, and I was greedy for it. So I moved. I left my position and exposed my brother. While I was concentrating on Petyr, Petyr was focused on Maksim.”

Now, Misha is holding onto me as tightly as I’m holding onto him.

“If I’d followed orders, if I’d maintained my position by Maksim’s right side—”

“Don’t,” I say softly, cupping his face with the palm of my hand. “Don’t do that, Misha.”

“It’s too late, Paige. I’ve gone there over and over again in my head. The result is always the same. I could have prevented his death. I was arrogant and pigheaded. I thought I knew better. That’s guilt.”

I don’t know what to say to him. I know that telling him to release the guilt is impossible. I’m carrying around the same kind. The kind that can break your heart if you let it run wild.

“No one knows,” he says softly. “No one except Konstantin.”

It makes more sense now—why he seems to want to avoid his family. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be around them; he just can’t look them in the eye.

He doesn’t know how to say he all but killed his own brother.

It’s a common theme because I don’t know what to say, either. I don’t have the words to make it all better. So I hold him. I lean in close and let my breath mingle with his. I give him as much of my warmth as I can.

When we finally pull back enough to see each other’s faces, I realize that there’s a part of me that feels a little lighter. I wonder if he’s feeling the same. His eyes don’t look quite so dark and tortured.

We exposed a little more of our souls to one another tonight. We lightened our loads, and I’m not ready to give that up.