Satin Princess(118)

Our eyes lock and I give her a small smile. “Look away.”

She fixes her eyes on the dagger I gifted her only hours ago and turns her back on Marina.

“No, no, you can’t do this, Anton. I am still your wife,” Marina begs.

“No, you’re not. You’re my brother’s whore. You’re the lying bitch who pinned your death on me. Since I’m being given the blame anyway, might as well make good on the accusation.”

I cock my gun and she pushes back against the wall, trying to get away from me. But she can’t run from the bullet.

I press the gun to her temple and pull the trigger.

The gunshot rings through the small room. Marina goes limp and hits the ground.

Silence, hot and thick, swallows us up. Lev rolls her body over with his foot so that her face can no longer be seen. He nods to the men standing behind him and two of them come forward to remove the corpse.

Jessa doesn’t turn back around until I tell her the body is gone. When she does turn, she looks towards Yulian. I notice the lone tear running down her face.

“How could you?” she whispers to him.

He is standing between two of my men, but it’s clear he doesn’t really need to be restrained. He’s lost his will to fight. He is a broken man.

“She made me think that this was the only way,” he whispers in a hoarse croak.

“The only way to what?”

“To be something,” Yulian says, glancing towards me. “Be someone.”

“I trusted you more than anyone else in the world,” I say. “Most people have to earn my trust. You were the one man who didn’t.”

“I was never going to let Marina hurt Jessa or the baby. When I told you that I would protect them, I meant it. You could trust that.”

Despite everything, I believe him.

But Marina? I’ll never believe a goddamn word she ever said.

“She would never have allowed that.”

He shakes his head vigorously. “I was planning on smuggling them out of the country and giving them a fresh start somewhere Marina would never be able to find them.”

“There is no fresh start for me,” Jessa says, moving to my side. “Not without Anton. Did you really think I would have accepted your help after you’d killed your own brother to seize power?”

“You wouldn’t have had a choice,” Yulian says.

Jessa shakes her head, looking as betrayed as I feel. “I liked you so much, Yulian.”

He gives her a sad, haunted smile. “I liked you, too, Jessa. I would have protected you anyway, for my brother’s sake. But it helped that I liked you.”

“You have lost the right to call him your brother,” Lev says, stepping forward.

“You may be right about that,” Yulian says, and even though I didn’t need the confirmation, I know now for sure that he’s abandoned his ambitions. They’ve been bled out of him, leaving him pale and lifeless in their absence. “You were always the better brother to him, blood or not.”

Then he glances up at me. “For what it’s worth, I did have doubts.”

“Based on what?”

“Love,” he says simply. “I really do love you, brother. I just decided to be ruthless.”

“Otets would have been proud.”

Yulian scoffs. “The irony is, he wouldn’t have been. You were always his favorite son.”

“No, I was his heir. There’s a difference.”

“You still don’t get it…”

“Actually, I do. You were ignored and underestimated your whole life,” I say. “You had to follow his orders and then you had to follow mine. You wanted to be the don I was. And you lost track of what was really important. You lost track of Otets’s most absolute rule. Do you even remember what it was?”

Yulian’s shoulders hunch, the exact same way they used to when he was a boy and he was being reprimanded by our father.

“Never go against the family.”

“Never go against the family,” I repeat with a nod. “There have to be consequences now, Yulian.”

Jessa’s eyes dart to my face. She looks both alarmed and terrified. I swallow my own doubt, my own regret, and stare at my brother without reservation.

“All I ask is that it be quick,” Yulian says. “But I will understand if you can’t grant me that.”

“Anton,” Jessa gasps, moving forward to stand in front of me. “Please, he’s still your brother. Traitor or not, you can’t kill him.”

I almost smile at the stark contrast between my first wife and my future one.

One full of love. One incapable of it.

One full of life. One barren of it.

“I’m not going to kill him.”

Yulian looks far more surprised by that than Jessa. “You… you’re what?”

I take Jessa’s hand, but look up at my brother. “You will be taken to the airport. From there, you will be put on a plane that will transport you to the motherland.”

“Russia…” Yulian breathes.

“You will be moved from the airport straight to White Swan.”

Yulian’s eyes go wide. “You’re putting me in a maximum security prison?”

“Ten years,” I intone. “That’s your sentence. At the end of those ten years, you will be released. A man free to live out the remainder of his life in Russia.”