ADRIK
When my brother’s front door opens, his wife is standing in front of me.
“Veronika,” I say coolly.
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. The white knuckling of her hand on the doorknob doesn’t exactly scream “Welcome In.” She’d probably slam it in my face if she could.
But then Yasha calls from inside the house.
“It’s okay, V,” he says gently. “We’re building bridges tonight.”
Veronika looks like she’d rather build a moat and drown me in it. But she opens the door and steps to the side without a word. I hold up my bottle of bourbon and saunter down the hallway to the living room.
Stefan knows I’m here. Emery doesn’t. She was sleeping when I left, nuzzled under a pile of blankets, an IV dripping fluids in her arm. She’d only panic if I told her where I was going.
Besides—by the time she wakes up, this will all be over.
Yasha stands up as I walk into the room. His smile is wide and familiar, but he keeps distance between us. As if a chair and coffee table will be enough to protect him from my wrath.
“It’s good to see you, brother,” I remark. “Like this, I mean. Without you pointing a gun at me.”
His expression tightens. “We both did things we regret.”
“What about framing me?” I ask. “Do you regret that, too?”
“Getting right to it, then,” Yasha sighs.
Veronika steps into the room behind me. Unlike the last time I saw her in loose, flowing linen, she’s wearing a tight dress that emphasizes her growing bump. “What the hell is going on, Adrik?”
“V,” Yasha warns, “behave.”
“He’s accusing you,” Veronika snaps. “Did you come here for a drink or to fight? Because I wouldn’t have opened the door if I knew you wanted to put my husband on trial.”
I turn to her. “Bridges require a foundation. I’m trying to create one. A foundation of honesty. Openness.”
“You have a foundation,” she hisses. “He’s your brother. You don’t need anything else.”
“Speaking of a trial, I might be on trial soon enough. Yasha was still my brother when he made me the main suspect in a murder case.”
Veronika looks around me at Yasha. “He shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.”
“It’s fine,” Yasha says calmly. “Sit down and let the men handle this.”
Tension crackles in the air. Veronika isn’t happy. But she listens.
Yasha sighs. “The setup was a misunderstanding. I thought you’d have more time to cover your tracks. It was meant to be a threat, not an indictment.”
“You killed a man and left him in my foyer. That’s not a threat—it’s a call to war.”
“I killed my abuser,” he corrects sharply. “I did what I thought had been done ten years ago.”
I nod slowly. “Let this be a lesson to me, then: kill my enemies when I have the chance.”
Yasha’s eyes snap up to me. I know he’s thinking about that day at the eagle’s nest. The day I fired two shots into the ground instead of into his head.
I break the tension with a tight smile and turn to Veronika. “But a deal is a deal, isn’t it?”
“He helped you,” Veronika says. Her voice is tense, a string stretched too tight, liable to snap at any moment. “He tried to help.”
Yasha nods, his eyes downcast. I can’t believe he thinks he can fool me.
This is why our father never put him in the meetings. The truth is written all over his face. The deception is plain.
“I asked you to find Emery, and you did,” I say. “I know where she was. And who took her. I know who killed her. Now, I can exact my revenge."
He glances up at me and then quickly away, as if the pain of my loss—or rather, what he thinks I’ve lost—is too much for him to even look at. “I wish I could have helped more.”
I make a show of it, swallowing hard. “You did enough.”
His throat bobs as he swallows, too, matching mine. He’s putting on a show of his own. Unfortunately for him, I’m holding the script in my hands. And we’re approaching the end of the final act.
“I… I can’t believe Sofia survived the crash,” he says.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I reply. “Cockroaches like her can survive everything. Except a bullet to the head, apparently.”
Yasha whips towards me. “You killed her?”
“Of course.” I set the bourbon down on the table and grab two glasses from the bar cart behind me. “I never let a debt go unpaid. And I sure as hell never let a wrong go unrighted.”
I pour two drinks. As I hand one to Yasha, I look at Veronika. “I assume you won’t be partaking.”
She dances a hand over her stomach. “I better not.”
“I’ll drink for us both,” Yasha says with a smile. He lifts his glass. “What are we drinking to?”
I lift mine as well. “How about we drink to… to partnerships being severed?”
Yasha’s brows pinch together. “You mean your engagement to Sofia?”
“You’re not wrong about that. Severed, finally, thank fucking God. But I was referencing a different partnership. One… a little more recent.”
A shiver moves down Yasha’s arm. His glass clinks against mine. He pulls it back, lowering his arm. “Sorry, I guess I don’t know—”
“No?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. “I think you do. I think you’ve got some ‘splaining to do, brother.”
Veronika is looking back and forth between us in bewilderment, trying to understand what is happening.
But Yasha already knows.
His nostrils flare and his jaw clenches. “Emery is alive,” he says through gritted teeth.
Veronika gasps. “What? How do you—What’s going on?”
“That’s an excellent question, Yasha,” I say, setting my drink down on the coffee table. “Why don’t you tell your wife what is going on?”
Yasha says nothing as I pull the gun from my pocket, aiming it straight at his face.
“What the hell?” Veronika screams and steps in front of Yasha, placing herself and her baby in my way. “What are you talking about?”
I'm tired of dealing with this. I'm ready for it to be done. To pull the trigger and leave.
But taking out a pregnant woman isn't on my to-do list. I need her to understand who Yasha really is before I kill him.
“Your husband allied himself with Sofia Volandri.”