Pain pulsed instead of a heartbeat.
What good parts of me were left?
She pressed her left hand to her face.
And that was when I noticed the monstrosity on her finger.
“What the hell, Violet!” I roared my hands shaking.
Because how dare he!
How dare he!
The letter fluttered to the floor, I was ready to bring him back to life just to kill him all over again.
The rage was back.
And so was the disappointment that I knew nothing when I thought I knew everything.
“I’m married,” she said quickly.
“He married you?” I roared, kicking one of the chairs into the wall, it impaled itself into the side.
A picture fell with a crash, spreading shattered glass all over the hardwood floor. “Then had the fucking audacity to die?”
“Not him.” She burst into tears again, her body rocking back and forth. “Not him.”
“Ash!” Junior barked my name. “A word real quick.”
“This isn’t over.” I pointed at her while Serena gave me a stop making it worse look. “You will explain to me what the hell is going on!”
I’d lost my ability to stay calm and didn’t give two shits if I was making things worse. My sister was somehow married, apparently to a complete stranger from where I was standing, and nothing was what it seemed. Nothing. Why else would they send her here?
It was all a ruse.
A setup.
Had he known?
And why the hell didn’t he say something to us?
I followed Junior outside where he’d already tossed in the video and a few other items; the black folder, however, he was holding in his hands made me want to hurl all over again.
Do your job, just do your job.
“It’s our names, ages, aliases,” I whispered.
“It’s our garage codes,” he hissed. “Our driver’s license numbers. It’s not even useful unless they actually get in, whoever they are.”
“Oh, that’s the weirdest part…” He sighed. “There are records from here to Seattle Penitentiary and back and then back again. Phone conversations about carrying out hits and the contact person is—”
“The guy who cut all our brakes.” I grabbed the paper. “I wish I could kill him all over again.”
And then I wished I could bring her back, bring him back—all the loss, all the heartache. Maybe it was my penance for killing my own cousin in cold blood because he had the strength to say no to this life.
Maybe God was punishing me, the way I punished them, over and over, for not submitting to the Family, for choosing themselves over blood, however stupid that choice may be.
I bit back a curse. “Who’s asking for the intel, and how can we tell who’s in on it?”
He looked on the next page and the next.
And at the very bottom of the documents was a contract between Mil De Lange and Victor Petrov—signed in blood, dated a year before Violet was born.
“Russians,” I whispered in horror. “It seems like they’ve gotten tired of Andrei’s leadership.”
“Because he’s half.” Junior sneered, looking ready to rip the papers in half. “And they think we’re bad when it comes to blood.” He kicked a rock and then another. “That means Andrei knows, which means my dad knows, but what the hell does it have to do with Breaker?”
“Collateral damage.” I started dropping the pages into the fire one by one, more secrets would die with those I loved, they would burn. “The cost of knowing too much or being in the wrong place at the right time, or maybe a combination of both.”
My mind flashed to the last year and how he and Violet had started acting strangely and how he was constantly looking over his shoulder when he was with her.
Now we would never know why.
Because Breaker Campisi was dead.
Chapter Fifteen
A fool with a crown on his head and enemies who lie—I saved the world, and I didn’t even try, to be anything but what I was born to be, prince of the East—Russian Royalty. —Valerian Petrov
Valerian
I got out of the Denali, greeted by Sancto, whose normally chipper demeanor was as grim on the outside as I felt on the inside.
“Good day at the office?” He approached, his brown eyes searching for the answer he’d been waiting for—the answer they’d all been waiting for since my birth, it seemed.
“Yes.” I held my head high. “It seems we’ve decided that the merger wasn’t entirely working out for us. I’ve made some changes I think the men will find… inspiring.”
His grin was wide, and then his eyes filled with tears as he reached out and grabbed my hand in his, pulled me against his chest, and kissed my forehead. “Mother Russia would be proud; your mother would be proud.”
“May God bless her soul,” I whispered in Russian.
“We celebrate!” Sancto shouted, earning more shouts of appreciation throughout the yard as men in suits acted more like men who’d been freed from a prison they didn’t even realize they’d been in.