Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (69)

Dr. Yevgeni was Papa’s personal Bratva doctor for decades. The two of them were thick as thieves. Both men of the old country, stubborn and silent and proud.

She nods. “Your father had been poisoning Yakov for months with Dr. Yevgeni’s guidance. They wanted it to appear as natural as possible so that there would be no question of disloyalty when Vitaly assumed the mantel of don.”

My hands ball into fists. My father had been a ruthless don. He’d been cold, calculated, and entirely without conscience when it came to dealing with his enemies.

But Yakov was no enemy. Yakov Vorobev was his own brother, his don.

He had turned against the one man he was sworn to protect. He had turned against the flesh of his flesh, the blood of his blood.

He’d broken the one rule.

“Loyalty,” I say.

“What?”

I lift my head. “Loyalty. That was one fucking thing he taught us to respect above all else.” My voice is rising, shot through with steel cords of anger.

“Without loyalty, you will have nothing,” Bogdan says, repeating the words Otets had told us time and time again during our training sessions.

I look at my mother. “You’re telling me he was the worst kind of hypocrite. The kind of man who preached about loyalty in the open and then killed his own brother in the shadows. Is that what you’re saying?”

She nods, trembling uncharacteristically. “It was part of his strategy,” she says. “Who would believe that a man as loyal as Vitaly would be capable of murdering his own brother? But it was more than just that. Vitaly’s pride was his biggest downfall. He believed he was above everything—including his own rules.”

I pace over to my desk, trying to fight the urge to punch something. To break something. “You’ve known about this for years,” I accuse. “You found out when Otets was still alive.”

“Yes.”

“So why tell us now?”

Bogdan stiffens and stares at Mother along with me. Her gray hair glows silver in the firelight. She looks older than I ever remember seeing her before.

“Because… I couldn’t keep the secret anymore,” she admits. “I have too many.”

“So now it’s our burden to bear, eh?” I snap. “Now, it’s my fucking problem?”

Her eyes turn cold as she looks at me. “You can’t image what it’s been like for me. Holding your father’s secrets close to my heart. Feeling obligated to be loyal to a man that never showed me a moment of love. But what was I to do? He had me in his thrall since the day we married. Even when I rebelled against him, I had to do it in the shadows so that he’d never know.”

“How did you rebel?” I ask.

Her body tightens instantly. “In the small, subtle ways a woman can rebel,” she says vaguely. “And I will hold onto those secrets.”

Grimacing, I turn and sweep all the files off my desk with a roared, “FUCK!” I turn to face her again with my chest heaving. “Do you know what this fucking means, woman?”

“Isaak—”

“Maxim’s claim that I stole everything from him is true,” I growl.

“No, it’s not,” Mama says, stepping forward. “You are the true don. You have the temperament and the talent for it. Trust me, Isaak.”

“Trust you?” I scoff. “I doubt I’ll ever trust you again.”

“Hey, brother…”

“No,” I say, cutting Bogdan off at the pass. “No. I refuse to stand here and listen to this fucking nonsense. Everything he ever taught us was a fucking lie.”

I push past them both and whip out of the office.

I hear them call out to me, but I’m not interested in sticking around to hear what Mama has to say. She’s said her piece and now she has to deal with the fucking consequences of keeping her damn secrets.

Does this change anything? It changes my perspective at the very least.

But as for the rest of it? No. I cannot just hand the keys of the Vorobev Bratva back to Maxim. It’s no longer his to take. And I will not abandon my men to his control.

This information has come too late. I am the fucking don, and I’m not giving anything up.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel as though I’m walking on shaky ground. Because the foundation of who I am and where I came from? It’s crumbling.

Who am I without it?

Loyalty. That was the one absolute, the one constant that guided every moment, every life lesson, every training session with my father. That’s what he built me out of.

He built me on a lie.

I have no idea where I’m going exactly. I just needed to get away from here. I need some fresh air, room to breathe. To think.

That’s when I spot her.

Camila is walking down the cobbled steps that lead to the garden. Her head is angled downwards, and I know instinctively she’s deep in thought.

Without even thinking about it, I follow her. She’s standing by the koi pond when I catch up to her. She doesn’t hear me approach until I’m standing right next to her.

“Jesus!” she gasps, jumping backwards. “Where’d you teleport from?”

I ignore that. “Something on your mind?”

She frowns. “Always.”

We look at each other. The fight feels distant, forgotten. In its place is something else. Something I don’t know how to describe just yet.