Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(54)

“Five years will be a long time,” he said, folding his hands between his legs. “I have been here for two already, and I am looking at six more. I am behaving but they will be strict with me.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, good luck with that.”

I climbed up on that top bunk.

“If you will not let me help you, I will have to use you.”

I froze, sitting there. There wasn’t much room. My head brushed the ceiling and I flopped down.

“Use me how?”

“You will help me destroy Martin. You can do this and gain from it, or you can be forced.”

“I’m not doing anything that’s going to keep me in here longer, and I don’t want to have any trouble with you, but I’m not going to put myself in your debt either.”

He sighed. “You should hear me out. You wouldn’t want this Eve to have an accident, would you?”

I sat up. “What?”

I also hit my head on the ceiling, and went crashing back down. Fuck. I was out of the bunk and on my feet in seconds, seeing red. I didn’t care if I spent the rest of my life in this shithole, nobody was going to use Eve against me. Nobody was going to threaten her.

Vitali sat up.

“You are hotheaded. I was like this in my youth.”

“Listen, f*ckhead. You put one hand on Eve and I’ll f*cking kill you. You have to sleep sometime.”

“I won’t put a hand on her. Friends of mine will do that, and more. After what Martin did to me, I should feed him her liver, but I don’t think he would care. Martin is not like other men. He does not feel. I would be more frightened of him in this room than all your youthful bluster. In any case, if you threaten me again, Eve will suffer the consequences. Now sit down and we will talk.”

There was no where to sit, besides his bunk, but the toilet. I sat on the toilet and propped my cheek on my chin.

“Good. Now you are listening, I am speaking. I have plan to deal with Martin and return to you what is yours, minus some, shall we say, recompense for my situation. Two years ago, Martin betrayed me to police. Arranged that I would be caught red handed.”

“He’s been sending you money, though,” I said. “To a bunch of fake Russian companies…”

“All his, created with me. When he decided he no longer had use of my services, he disposed of me. I think I should consider myself lucky. If our situations were reversed, I would have had him killed.” Vitali shrugged.

The causal way he said it made me shudder.

“This is agreement. You work for me, help me undo Martin. I leave girl alone, cut you in.”

“Define ‘cut me in’. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“No, no, bad for business. I only torture and kill men who screw me over. Fulfill your end of the agreement and it is done when it is done, no more between us. Yes?”

I looked around. With my luck, this was another setup.

“You refuse, Eve has trouble.”

“Fine, fine, god damn it,” I snapped. “What do I have to do?”

“Wait,” said Vitali. “For five long years, wait, learn, and prepare. Then Martin will wish he had never been born.”

Wait I did. I waited, and waited, and waited.

After the end of the first month, I thought I was going crazy. That was when Mom came to visit me. The only time she came to visit me. I sat in the visiting room, my leg jagging up and down as I scrubbed my hands through my hair. It wasn’t like the movies, with the glass partition and the phone. It was just a table in a room, though I was shackled to the floor by the ankles. I sat there wringing my hands for an hour, forgot the shackles, and tried to stand up when she came in.

She looked bad. She must have lost twenty pounds, she was pale, her skin was waxy. She walked over to the table and sat down and stared at me flatly.

“How could you?”

“Mom?” I choked out. “You can’t believe this. I didn’t do anything.”

She shook her head. “Victor, it was all going to be yours. Why did you do this?” She snorted. “I should have known. I’d hoped you were just going through a phase, with all those girls. When you started seeing Eve I really thought you loved her. You were sleeping with that slut almost the whole time, weren’t you?”

“No. No, Mom, I swear.”

“They showed us pictures. Pictures of you eating with her. Holding hands.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mom,” I pleaded, “she touched my hand. I pulled away…”

It hit me then like a ton of bricks. It was all a setup, the whole f*cking routine. She touched my hand for the benefit of the photographer they had following me.

Martin saw the end was near. He had to know I’d have him out of there the instant I had legal control of the company. How many favors did he call in? I never had a chance. My lawyers could have called Jesus Christ to the witness stand to testify in my defense and the jury would still have convicted me. I just spared Eve some suffering by keeping her off the stand. The result would have been the same. How long had he been planning this? Since that day he tried to drive her away? Before she started college?

Since I met her? Was this the plan the whole time, drive a wedge into my family?

Holy God, if I couldn’t inherit, which I now could not, the entire estate reverted to my mother.