“It’s no secret that you and Marina didn’t have the best relationship.”
“The woman didn’t have the best relationship with anyone,” Lev chimes in. “Well… except maybe with you, Yulian.”
Yulian rolls his eyes. “We barely spoke to one another.”
“Which is why it worked, no doubt,” I say.
Yulian snorts with laughter. “My point is, you and Marina were at each other’s throats through most of the marriage. And towards the end…”
“You don’t have to remind me,” I say, cutting him off. “I know what happened. I was there.”
“She told her father everything,” Yulian says anyway, as if I’d never spoken. “Every fight, every disagreement, right to his ears.”
“The old bastard should have kept his nose out of my marriage.”
“He’s a powerful man, Anton,” Lev advises. “Powerful men aren’t in the habit of staying out of anything, whether it’s their business or not.”
“Don’t lecture me on the nature of power,” I snap. “I know very fucking well how it works.”
“Can I be honest?” Yulian asks, his expression growing wary.
Lev whistles under his breath. “Oh, boy.”
Lev and my younger brother are the only two men in the world who can get away with saying uncomfortable truths straight to my face. They know our respective bonds protect them.
But that doesn’t mean I have to be cheery about it.
“I’d rather you be silent. But I’ll take honesty if that’s the second choice.”
“When I saw her body that first time, after she was found…” Yulian says, “my first thought was, ‘Anton has started a war.’” He shudders, obviously reliving the moment he stumbled across my wife’s lifeless corpse.
I don’t give anything away. “You thought I had her killed?”
“Is that so crazy?”
I scoff in his face. “You know I do my own killing.”
“You would have needed an alibi that night,” he says. “And you had one. You were with Lev on this very yacht.”
“I do my own killing, Yulian,” I repeat, staring him dead in the eyes.
He sighs. “I knew that. I know that. But I also knew how difficult things had gotten between you. I knew how tempted you were to—”
“You really think, if I wanted out, I would have killed the bitch? I would have sooner divorced her.”
“But shit was bad and you didn’t,” Yulian says.
“What point are you making, little brother?” I ask. “Get to it quickly. Because this is starting to sound more like an accusation.”
Yulian gives me an apologetic smile. “I’m just making the point that even I, as your brother, assumed you were the one that killed Marina. What is everyone else supposed to think?”
“I’m not going to defend myself to any other man on this goddamn planet,” I say. “But what I am going to do is make it clear that, if he insists on pushing this into a full-scale war, I’m prepared to fight.”
“Can we win?” Lev asks, looking to me for reassurance.
“We’re the Stepanovs,” I growl. “Of course we can win.”
“Benyamin turned,” Yulian points out.