Defiant Queen: A Dark Bratva Academy Romance, page 24
But not blindly. Not without a single question. And he’s intelligent enough to push back at me when he knows it’s for the best. When he knows I need the challenge to see through the problem.
Just like he’s smart enough to understand implicitly that now is not one of those fucking times.
“I’ll start the lockdown and coordinate up our people. I’ll call you.”
I nod, still shaking as I watch him head back down the stairs into the living area below.
And then suddenly, something clicks. Something ignites with a spark inside of me. Slowly, I turn to let my stormy eyes burn into Vadim.
She bore a son to another man! To Semyon fucking Belsky!
I blink, reality glitching around me and I shake on my breath.
In the avalanche of hatred in that small room where I just killed Dima… he told me something. I heard it wrong, and then somehow shoved it away.
Until now.
“She had a child,” I say quietly.
Vadim swallows, his eyes just as stormy as mine. His face grim and silent.
Holy fuck.
My face pales, and I turn to look down across the large living area. From up here, I can see down the hallway, to the elevator doors as they open. Gavan steps in. He turns, catches my eye, and nods as the doors shut on him.
“Konstantin,” Vadim growls quietly.
The gray eyes.
The dark hair.
The jokes about us being raised as if we were…
In slow motion, I turn to stare at Vadim, watching the truth harden on his lined face.
“She had to give him up,” he says quietly.
“Stop it.”
“You need to hear this. It is time, Konstantin,” he growls thickly. “You need to hear this.”
I grit my teeth, nostrils flaring as I inhale deeply.
“Is he…”
“Yes.”
My heart wrenches, lungs collapsing as I choke back the anger and the overwhelming sadness inside of me.
“There was no love between Antin and Kristina, you know. I’m sorry, I know that’s cruel to tell you of your own parents—”
“Keep going,” I hiss quietly.
He nods, breathing slowly.
“Your grandfather on your mother’s side—you didn’t ever know him, but he was an ex-Soviet colonel turned billionaire. An oligarch as corrupt and dirty as the worst of them. He needed the muscle and logistical capabilities of the Reznikov organization. Your father and his father needed money. That was the entire basis for their marriage.”
“After that piece of shit Semyon…”
He chokes, his eyes narrowing in fury as they glisten in the corners.
“Your father couldn’t know,” he says quietly. “You know the sort of man he was. When Kristina—”
His eyes close.
“I found her crying in her room, maybe three weeks after. When she knew she—” his voice breaks.
“I held her, and she made me promise not to tell Antin. We both knew he would kill her, despite it being Semyon who forced himself on her. Antin was a proud and wicked man, you know this, Konstantin. He’d have viewed her horrible assault as infidelity and killed her.”
His eyes drop, his teeth clenched tight.
“So we hid it. Antin was busy expanding business throughout Russia anyway. And your mother decided she would ‘summer’ in England for a time. There, she could hide the pregnancy, and in secret…”
“She gave birth to Gavan,” I whisper, my voice edged.
“Yes.”
Vadim swallows, his jaw clenched as his eyes meet mine fiercely.
“So I raised him as my son.”
“You raised my mother’s child as your—”
“Yes, Konstantin,” he hisses.
My lips curl into a sneer—not a fair one, by any means. But because all I know right now is rage. All I know is cold, murderous, venomous fury.
“Because you were in fucking love with her,” I snarl.
His eyes narrow dangerously.
“Yes,” he snaps.
My lips curl.
“Pathetic—”
I blink stars as his hand slaps hard across my face. I snarl, my eyes blazing with fury as I grab the front of his shirt and leer close.
“Are you angry?!” he roars at me.
“You have no fucking idea—”
“Like hell I don’t!” Vadim bellows at me. “Like hell I don’t!”
He surges into me, grabbing my shirt just as I’ve grabbed his, his eyes blazing with anger.
“Be. Angry!” He yells in my face. “And later? If that fury is still directed at me? So fucking be it, Konstantin,” he spits. “Later, you can even kill me if you still hate me for this. But right now, we are wasting fucking time!”
If the slap didn’t do it, his words finish the job. Suddenly, through the rage and chaos storming through my head, I find the path.
I find clarity.
I see Mara.
And everything else can wait.
Suddenly, my phone rings. I glance down, scowling as I see Lukas’s name. I silence the phone and shove it into my pocket before I start to storm down the stairs. Behind me, Vadim’s phone goes off.
“Lukas Komarov is calling me.”
“Ignore him,” I growl as we thunder down the hallway.
The elevator doors open. But suddenly, I stop cold, extending an arm to block Vadim as I slowly turn to him.
My eyes close.
“Does Gavan…”
“No,” he says quietly.
“You should tell him.”
Vadim is silent. When I open my eyes, I see his face twisted in anger and pain.
“You’re his true father, Vadim,” I growl thickly. “Not fucking Semyon.”
My throat tightens as my teeth grit.
“Just as you’ve been more of a true father to me than Antin ever—”
“Konstantin—”
“Thank you,” I choke as I grab him and embrace him tightly. “For my mother…”
“I couldn’t save her,” he hisses, horror and pain strangling his voice. “If I could go back—”
“But you avenged her,” I growl thickly.
It’s something we’ve pointedly never really talked about—not since the day I called him, after securing evidence of Antin being the child-abusing piece of shit he was. That was the day I secured the allegiance of men like Vadim, who couldn’t abide bowing to a true monster like Antin, and made my play.
I gave the order, but I didn’t physically pull the trigger that sent my father to hell.
Vadim did. Four shots to the chest as Antin sat smoking a cigar on the balcony of his cliff-side vacation house in Mykonos, before kicking his body into the sea below.
And now, I’ve even more glad for it—that I could give him that finality and vengeance.
For my mother.
But he looks at me curiously when I say it. I grimace, my heart wrenches violently as I square my jaw.
He found out your mother cheated! Sixteen years before! She bore a son to another man! So Antin had her killed.
“The Belsky’s aren’t responsible for that night,” I growl thickly through clenched teeth as I meet his eye, seeing his confusion about my mentioning “avenged”.
“Antin was. He found out about Semyon. He knew there was a son. And he…”
Vadim screams in rage as he whirls like a demon. He roars, smashing his fists against the wall—over and over, splintering the plaster, sending a framed picture down the hall crashing to the ground, and splitting his own knuckles.
He keeps roaring, and keeps blindly hitting, letting the bottled-up horror and fury come exploding out of him like a bomb ripping through the basement of a building. Until finally, with a wrenching cry of anguish, he drops to his knees, his arms going limp at his sides to drip blood onto the floor.
My hand falls to his shoulder, gripping him tightly.
“I’m sorry,” I choke.
He nods dimly, his face a mask of hatred as he stares at the wall. I can almost guess what he’s thinking—that he might have already killed the man responsible for his pain. But now, he wishes he could bring him back, to do it again.
Slower. More personally.
I know it’s what he’s thinking, because I’ve had the exact same thoughts, for the exact same piece of shit.
“I need your help, Vadim,” I growl.
His head hangs, but he slowly nods.
“Da,” he croaks hoarsely through his ragged throat.
He touches the wall, murmuring what might be a prayer before he stands. He turns to me, his mouth grim.
“I lost your mother,” Vadim growls thickly. “I will not lose another woman close to you.”
His eyes narrow as his lips curl.
“We’re going to find Mara, Konstantin.”
I nod grimly as we both step into the elevator. The doors close just as my phone goes off again—Lukas, again.
And again, I silence it as we drop down to the lobby, where my men are clearing the bodies and the wreckage from Grigori’s escape with the woman I love.
The doors slide open to the carnage. And suddenly, a face I know turns towards me.
“Konstantin!”
Lukas’s face is grim as he storms towards me from the street outside the shattered windows of the building lobby. My men yell, bolting to stop him as they draw arms, but I bark an order, halting them.
Lukas’s face is drawn tight as he stops in front of me, looking grim.
“Mara—”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I snarl, shoving past him. “We’re going to—”
“It’s Grigori!”
“No shit!” I snap as I storm across the shattered glass and pools of blood.
“No, Konstantin, stop!”
I snarl, whirling on him with a fury as he lays a hand on my shoulder. I knock his hand away and grab him by the front of his jacket.
“Not for the fucking devil himself,” I hiss thinly, my blood boiling like lava.
His mouth thins as I start to turn again.
“You have an uncle.”
I falter, frowning as I glance back at him.
“Excuse me?”
“His name is Jakov Boyko.”
I blink, staring at him.
Boyko was my mother’s maiden name.
I yank my glare to Vadim, looking for answers. But he’s staring at Lukas in as much shock as I am.
“What the fuck are you talking about—”
“He was kept a secret from you, because he was kept a secret from everyone. But I’ve been digging,” Lukas hisses. “Deep. You must know your parents were married for politics, right?”
“I’m aware of that,” I snap.
“Your mother’s family had the money, your father’s family had the muscle—”
“If you have a point to this family tree powerpoint, arrive at it!” I roar.
His mouth thins.
“Your parents weren’t the only partnership made that day. Your uncle and Antin also made a pact, that if Antin were to fall, it would be Jakov who would assume the Reznikov throne. Even if there was an heir.”
All this time, you thought you had the head of the snake locked here in this room, Konstantin? No, little prince. My job after the king fell wasn’t to lead. It was to waste your fucking time.
My eyes bulge, my throat tightens.
Oh fuck.
“Someone’s been calling the fucking shots against you ever since Antin went down,” Lukas growls. “And it’s not fucking Dima Pavlishchev—”
“It’s Jakov,” I hiss.
Antin had a plant. A mole. A spy in the Belsky ranks.
My eyes blaze as I remember the scarred face of the man I shot, after he shot Mara.
“Grigori was Antin’s plant within the Belsky family,” I choke. “And now he’s working for this fucking Jakov—”
“No, Konstantin,” Lukas says thinly, his face grim as it shakes side to side.
“Grigori isn’t working for Jakov.”
My pulse skips, my gut dropping as it clicks for me.
“No…”
“Grigori is Jakov Boyko.”
Everything goes still.
The man who thinks Semyon Belsky murdered his sister, whose ally and brother-in-law I had killed, has Mara.
Semyon’s daughter.
My love.
Something close to both of the men he hated and hates the most in this world.
“We need to fucking find—”
“I know where he is,” Lukas growls.
My eyes narrow. “How.”
“Because I don’t trust anyone I haven’t known for a long time,” he mutters thinly. “Including Mara’s old bodyguard. I’m betting her phone is still up in the penthouse?”
I nod.
“You’ll find Jakov’s up there as well. One of his, at least. I would bet good money that it’s unlocked, too, with clues all over it pointing to a place he’s taken her, which is all bullshit.”
“Get to the fucking point, Komarov—”
“His main phone is still on him, and I have a tracking chip imbedded in the case.”
My eyes narrow.
“Tell me,” I snarl, my eyes blazing as my lips curl demonically.
“He’s on his way to southern England,” he says quietly. “And if I were to guess, Rye.”
That’s all I need. I whirl, storming out of the ruined lobby of the building towards a waiting car.
No one stops me.
No one on earth is dumb enough to try and stop me right now.
I’m vaguely aware of Vadim and Lukas jumping into the car with me, and then we’re roaring off towards the airport.
“If there was a piece of yourself you couldn’t see, Konstantin, wouldn’t you turn over every rock and look behind every tree to find it?”
“No. I’d burn the whole fucking forest down to find it.”
Someone has taken the thing I care about most in the world from me. And I’ll turn this world to ash to get her back.
34
“There is a devil and an angel in all of us, little zaychik.”
Grigori sighs, his wide shoulders rising and falling as he leans against the window, gazing out at the half moon glistening over the waves crashing against the rocky shore.
“Sometimes, the devil? He stays down. He stays buried, and we can go on with our lives as if he isn’t there at all. But… those are pretty lies to help us sleep. Because that devil?”
He turns, the moonlight glinting off the corner of his narrowed eye and highlighting the scar line down the side of his face
“He is always there, zaychik. Especially when we lie to ourselves about it.”
The fear left me hours ago. So did the ache of betrayal that cleaved my heart in two when the man I’ve thought of for years as one of my most fiercest protectors morphed into a monster.
When he stood from the couch where we were sitting catching up, pulled out a gun, and put a bullet through the head of Konstantin’s guard. When he turned on me, smiling like the devil himself.
When I backed away from him, only for him to flip the table between us, his lips curling like a wolf about to slaughter its prey. And when he chased, dodging the mug of tea I threw, ripping my shoe off as I fell up the stairs.
Smashing in the door when I locked it between us.
I flinch at the memory of the men screaming and the blood splattering the windows of the lobby as Grigori stepped out of the elevator—gun in one hand, me thrown over his shoulder with my wrists bound.
But I’m not scared anymore.
I’m just angry.
Outside of the beautiful seaside home, the ocean crashes against the shore. I don’t know exactly where, but I think we’re in England, or possibly Scotland or Ireland, judging from the airfield signs in English I could see as we stepped out of the jet. Before he threw me in the back of a van and drove us off to wherever we are now.
And it’s so dark in here. We’re in a study or library of sorts, with the only light coming from the half-moon glinting off the waves outside, through the big windows overlooking the shore.
Grigori sighs again, bringing a meaty hand up to stroke his chin.
I used to admire his hands, for being so strong, and yet so gentle. Those are the hands that caught me before I could slip on the ice in the driveway. The hands that placed a bandaid over a cut from the playground. Hands that made me feel protected.
Today, they’re the hands that grabbed me, violently, and ripped me from the second chance on life I’d found.
My eyes narrow at his, my lips curling. Grigori sighs again.
“You are angry, zaychik—”
“Stop calling me that,” I snarl, so furious I’m actually shaking in the chair I’m sitting in, in the middle of the room. I’m not bound. But running is an impossibility. There isn’t a chance in the world I’d get away before he stopped me.
Grigori’s brow furrows.
“And I’m not angry,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “No, Grigori, that was hours ago. I’m way past angry now.”
His lips thin, his eyes calmly and coolly sweeping over me.
“I do not relish this, you know.”
“Then let me go.”
He smiles thinly as he turns to look at the waves again.
“That is not for me to decide, zaychik.”
“Why are you doing this!?” I scream, exploding at him.
“Loyalty, Ms. Belsky.”
The rasping, grating voice from behind me makes me jump out of my skin. It’s the sound of death—the sound a walking, talking skeleton from a movie would make. Bone grating over bone.
Grigori turns as well, frowning before he quickly steps past me. I hear him grunt, and then the clanking sound of something heavy and metal being set down.
“Spasibo, my friend,” the skeletal voice rasps, accented in Russian. “That goddamn step. Spasibo, Jakov.”
I stiffen, my heart lurching as my eyes fly open wide. There’s a whining sound, like the sound a radio-controlled car makes as it drives across the floor. And then suddenly, in the peripheral of my vision, a man in an electric wheelchair rolls into view.
My breath catches at his horrific, twisted pose in the chair—bent unnaturally, his head lolling to one side. Clearly at least partially paralyzed by the way he’s frozen and using just one finger to push the joystick that controls the chair.
