by Bella Rose
Okay. I was going to take that as a compliment and leave it. “Papa, Antonin is dead.”
Vasily picked up where I left off. “He told us that he was your son, Boris. Is it true?”
I had never seen my father’s face turn that particular shade of red. He looked as though he were going to have an aneurism or something equally horrible. It worried me. “Papa, are you all right? You look very bad.”
“You just shocked the hell out of me!” Boris blustered. “Of course I look bad.”
“You can’t tell me you didn’t know,” Vasily said sarcastically. “He claimed it was on his paperwork. You had all of that. You brought him over here. They would have given you his information. He was yours. Just admit it.”
“Fine!” Boris shouted. “I admit it! Is that what you want to hear?” He glared at me. “That your papa was a horny young man who could not keep himself from getting a young woman pregnant? I did not expect to find him in that orphanage. I did not even know that he was there. I tested him like any other boy, and he passed. Just as you did.” He gestured vaguely toward Vasily.
“He was angry because you did not let him inherit,” I told my father. “That’s what all of this was about. He just wanted someone to acknowledge him as your son.” I felt the rush of tears. “And now he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Boris looked mystified.
“He was going to kill Anya,” Vasily said flatly. “I refused to let that happen.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was the one who shot him. He was going to murder Vasily and keep me prisoner. I was just a way to get to you. He wanted your position, Papa.”
The horror on my father’s face was genuine, but then so was the guilt. Apparently Antonin had not been lying about his origins.
Vasily
There were so many aspects of this messed-up situation that made no sense, I could hardly name them all. But as I stared at Boris I realized that the old man knew far more than he would ever say. In fact, he knew everything we were telling him—probably had known. And yet he was not going to afford us the respect of telling us what was really going on.
That really pissed me off.
I put both my hands flat on his desktop and leaned in close. “You need to come clean. Now. Your bastard son just tried to marry your legitimate daughter in order to get control of the Romanov holdings. Why would you deny a son and claim a daughter that doesn’t even want the inheritance? It doesn’t make a damned bit of sense.”
“He was insane.” Boris finally threw up his hands and gestured wildly in the air. “Did you not see it? I thought when he was young that he could be helped. I thought that he could become my heir. I would eventually adopt him officially.”
I remembered Antonin when we were younger. “He was always brash and out of control,” I admitted. “But he had a good heart. I always thought his intentions ran along in the right direction.”
“Because you didn’t know about the rest!” Boris leaped up from his desk and began pacing the floor.
Anya watched her father, seemingly aghast at his behavior. I couldn’t blame her. If my parent suddenly started acting batshit crazy, I would have been concerned.
She seemed hesitant to speak. I didn’t have the same compunction. “Why didn’t you do anything? You let him become an Avtoritet. He was a leader. He led his men to their deaths tonight! He turned Romanov soldiers into traitors and led them to their deaths all because he made them believe that he was your true heir.” I don’t think I realized the truth of that until I spoke it. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. He was your true son, and they believed it. It caused a rift in our organization. Our brotherhood was compromised. What have you to say about that?”
Nothing. Boris said nothing. He just muttered to the floor and to the ceiling, as he lifted his eyes to the sky before lowering them back down as though he were praying. He kept repeating the words: “I never meant for this to happen.”
“I know you didn’t!” Anya burst out. “But it did! I don’t understand, Papa. He was your son?”
“I knew his mother. It was nothing like your mother,” he hastily assured Anya. “Antonin’s mother was a camp follower. She’d had every man in the Bratva and more.”
“So what if Antonin wasn’t your son?”
“Antonin took some of my personal things and had a DNA analysis done a few years back.”
“My God!” I could no longer hold back my outrage. Did Boris not understand that I would have helped him with this? He had been dealing with Antonin alone. He’d been hiding the truth from us all! “How could you not say anything? This man has been basically blackmailing you!”
“But it is over. Now you and Anya can take over the business, and I can retire.”
“What if we don’t want to take over the business,” Anya asked in an almost petulant tone of voice. “I left this life, Papa. I don’t want to come back.”
“You have no choice!” he snapped.
There was something wrong. I could not place what I was feeling, but I knew that Anya sensed it too. She was pushing on her father, but he wasn’t really pushing back. He was just arguing. He was ordering and making threats. That wasn’t like him. It bothered me.
Then Boris slumped down in his desk chair once more. He rummaged in the drawer on the right side of the desk and came up with a snub-nosed revolver.
“Boris,” I warned. “What are you doing?”
“I am old and tired.” He sounded every bit of it at the moment. But I didn’t like the way he was handling the gun at this moment. There was something off. “I want my daughter to marry you, Vasily. You will take good care of her when I am gone.”
“Papa, you’re not going anywhere,” Anya said with a twinge of exasperation, but I was afraid she was missing the point.
“I love you, Anya,” Boris told her softly. “You are a wonderful daughter. Any man would be proud to call you his offspring.”
“Papa, you’re scaring me.” Anya edged closer to the desk, and I wondered if she was going to dive across it. “Please? Won’t you put the gun down?”
“This?” Boris waved the weapon in the air. “No. I don’t think so. I think we need to have a chance in the family.”
“Boris, no.” I needed him to understand what this would do. “Not like this.”
He stared me right in the face. “You take care of her. No matter what happens. You put her first. Don’t be like me. Don’t prioritize backwards.”
“Boris, no!”
I knew it was coming, and still I could not stop it. Boris lifted the gun to his head and squeezed the trigger. The roaring sound of gunfire was nothing compared to the mess of blood and brains that spattered on his desk, the floor, and even the wall behind him.
There was a noise in the room. It took me a moment to realize that Anya was screaming. Her voice shredded my composure. She burst into tears and sank to the floor. With her head in her hands, she sobbed as though the world were ending. I could only look on and wonder what had gone so very wrong. This man had ended his life in front of my eyes, and I could do nothing but feel numb. It was all too much. I think I was getting tired of saying that.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Anya
Everything hurt. I don’t think I could even catalog the aches and pains that I was feeling. But all of that was physical. None of it really mattered. Nothing did. My papa was dead. I had never felt so much regret all at once. I hadn’t been close to him. I don’t think I ever had been. Mama had died when I was so young, and Papa had been so overbearing all the time. I think I fought him my whole life. Why had I done that? Why had I wasted so much time when I could have been using it for something good?
“Anya?”
Vasily’s voice was like a whisper in my mind. I knew he was there. I could sense him. I could smell him. The intense masculine scent of him was on my periphery. But I could not respond. I could only stare at my father’s lifeless body on the floor. He was partially concealed by his desk, but I cou
ld see his face. I could see his eyes. They were so empty. There was nothing remaining of the man I knew.
“Why?” I did not realize at first that I had spoken out loud. I didn’t know my lips would still work, that I could still talk. It felt as though I were in a coma.
“Anya, please? Let’s get you to your room. You need to lie down. We need to—to take care of your father.” Vasily grabbed me beneath my arms and dragged me to my feet.
My legs were jelly. I could not stand. I had no bones in my body. Everything felt dead. I felt dead. My father was dead. Everything was so insubstantial and confusing. Surely if I closed my eyes, when I woke up this would all be nothing but a horrible memory.
Vasily picked me up into his arms and carried me out of my father’s office. There were other men there—Romanov men. I recognized them. There were tears too. I heard shouts and agonized sounds of anguish. That was as it should be. These were my father’s men. They should be mourning him. Somehow my brain kept rejecting that idea though. My father could not be dead. Papa was just sleeping. It was a horrible, cruel joke. When I woke up in the morning, I would discover that it was all a hoax.
We entered my bedroom. It looked the same. Everything was the same. Papa had never changed it. I had been here only a week before. Was it a week? It seemed so long ago that Papa had told me I should take a semester away from my job and stay here so that he could keep me safe. Why had I refused? It would have been more time that I could have spent with him. I was a fool. There was so little time for the things that really mattered.
Vasily
Anya was in shock. I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her body. I lay her down on her bed, and then I climbed up there beside her. We were both a mess. There was no other way to describe the mass of barely bandaged cuts, bruises, and lacerations that covered both our bodies from head to toe. This night had been hell, and now it had just gotten worse.
“Anya, Anya,” I whispered softly. I pressed my lips to her forehead and held her as close as I dared. She was cold. “It’s going to be all right, Anya.”
She didn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken a word since she had said “why” back in Boris’s office. I reached down and pulled up the blankets. Her body was cold to the touch. I had to get her warmed up, or things were going to get worse. I rubbed her arms as best I could without disturbing the bandages. She snuggled in closer to me. I considered that a good sign.
There was a knock at her door. I sighed. There was so much more going on right now. I had to remember that. “Who is it?” I called out.
“Sasha Nikolavich.”
“Come in.”
The young Avtoritet stuck his head into the bedroom. “How is Anya?”
“She’ll be fine.” I kept my voice calm and perfectly even. There was no need to stir up trouble within the ranks. “Did you need something?”
“Sir, the men are here. They’re asking questions. You have to say something.” Sasha cocked his head to one side. “They’re saying that Antonin is dead. They’re saying that he murdered the Orlov Pekhan and that we’re at war with the Orlovs.”
Oh yes. This was a mess all right. Shit! Damn you, Antonin! The man had an uncanny way of leaving a mess for others to clean up, even from the grave. I carefully extracted myself from Anya’s bed. I brushed a kiss over her forehead. I had to go smooth this over before the power keg blew wide open and there was nothing left of the Romanov organization left.
Sasha looked tense. “What are you going to say?”
“What do you think I’m going to say?” I snorted. “I need to assure the men that there will be no change. Everything is business as usual.”
“How can there be business as usual when our Pekhan is dead?” Sasha looked suspicious. “And Antonin is dead now too? I did not support his claim to be our next Pekhan, but there are whispers that he was Boris’s bastard son. That would have given him claim.”
“Boris never claimed him,” I reminded Sasha. “Gather the men. Tell them that I am going to make an announcement about the future of the Romanovs. Tell them that I have Boris’s wishes.”
Sasha gave a curt nod and left to do as I asked, but I had a bad feeling that I was in for an uphill battle.
Anya
I blinked my eyes and tried to decide where I was. It was warm. That was nice. I was so cold. When I touched my arms, I felt a shot of pain lance through my body. The shock reminded me that I had been in a horrible accident earlier. There had been an explosion, and then a fire, and then maybe some other kind of explosion. Or perhaps that had all been in the wrong order. My mind was so jumbled up.
Papa was dead.
That thought hit almost immediately. I felt the tears hit, and I rolled my face into my pillow. I sobbed until I could sob no more. My ribs ached with the force of holding back the screams that wanted to rip out of my throat. Papa was not just dead. He had taken his own life. Yet somehow this did not make me want to follow him into death. Just the opposite. If Papa had truly been so tired and so ready to move on, then why would I not want to live my life to the fullest. I should appreciate every single second that I had.
I wanted to spend it with Vasily. I think I had known that for a while. I know I had. This relationship we had was so messed up. It could never be considered “normal.” There had been no average progression. No dating. No getting to know one another in a gradual manner. It had been down and dirty sex, furious physical longing, and a gradual appreciation of everything that the man had to offer.
Struggling to sit up, I pushed the blanket down and stretched. I was so sore. There was not a part of me that did not hurt. I could still barely wrap my mind around the notion that Antonin had been my brother. He would have married me and then murdered me, and yet he had been my father’s son. It was a chilling thought.
The loud sound of men’s voices caught my attention. What was going on? It sounded as though every last Romanov was gathered downstairs. Why?
I put my feet on the floor and stood up. My shoes were gone. I didn’t remember taking them off, but then I did not remember coming into my bedroom at all. The last thing I did remember was sinking to the floor in my father’s office. Vasily had been there. Precious Vasily who had taken such care of me!
It was a few short steps to the bedroom door. I pushed it open and stepped into the hall. That was when I spotted Vasily standing in the place where I had seen my father stand so many times during my younger years. It was the balcony where he could address all of the men down in the first-floor atrium below.
Vasily
I was losing control of the situation so quickly that it felt like a landslide coming down on top of me. The shouts below in Russian and English all seemed eager to string me up on the nearest tree. They blamed me! How could they blame me for this mess we found ourselves in?
“You murdered Antonin!” one of his men shouted. “He was the true heir of Boris Romanov! Antonin should have been Pekhan!”
I pointed at the dissenter. “Antonin would have married his half sister—our Anya—and then murdered her just to get control of the Romanov holdings. Boris put the organization into Anya’s hands! Does that mean nothing to you men?”
“And you’re fucking Anya!” Someone else shouted to be heard above the mutterings and angry retorts. “So that makes you the Pekhan? Why should it? Two days ago, Antonin was claiming that he had Boris’s support! Now he’s dead and you killed him!”
“No!”
I whipped around, shocked to hear Anya’s voice. She was approaching slowly and a little unsteadily, but under her own power. I held out my hand. She took it without hesitation. Putting her arm around my waist, she laid her cheek against my chest. I inhaled of her hair. Even the lingering scent of smoke could not overpower her feminine allure.
“I killed Antonin!” Her words carried to every corner of the house. “I did not intend that my father should take his own life now and create all of this unrest within our family, but that wasn’t my choice. My father made his own choices, an
d I’m sure he had his reasons.” I saw her swallow. “Now I’m asking all of you to follow Vasily as your Pekhan. He was my father’s choice. I promise you that. My papa even arranged for Vasily and I to marry.”
Sasha shushed those around him so that he could speak. “And are you going to marry him?”
“Yes.” She turned and gave me a smile so beautiful that my stomach nearly fell into my boots. “I’m going to marry him just as soon as someone finds a priest.”
“What about the Orlovs?” someone else shouted. “The word on the street is that we’re at war with them!”
I felt the familiar tightening in my gut. There was every possibility that we were indeed at war with the Orlovs. Beside me I felt Anya take hold of my hand. She nuzzled my fingers and placed a gentle kiss on my bruised and battered knuckles.
“Tell them the truth,” she whispered.
“Antonin murdered the Orlov Pekhan.” I gazed at every one of those men. I was asking them to follow me. It was no small thing. I needed to deserve their trust. I needed to know that I deserved it. Did I? Was I really certain that I could do this job?
“I love you,” Anya murmured to me. “No matter what happens, we’re all in this together.”
She was right. That was the only truth that mattered. I gestured at the men standing in the room. “Right now, the Orlovs all know that Antonin had gone rogue. He had promised them things that he didn’t have a right to promise. That was on him. They know that.” I made a fist and set my jaw. I wanted to show them that we were strong enough for this fight. “But if they come knocking, they’re going to know that the Romanovs are still strong and united. We are not weak. And we will never back down from a fight!”
There was a moment of silence, and then the room erupted into shouts and war cries that made my ears ring. Beside me, Anya was laughing. I looked down at her. She was so beautiful. Perhaps right then I knew that if she were by my side, all things would be not only possible, but also totally awesome.