“What are you doing here?” Kirill spits. “How did you get past my guards? GUARDS!”
No one comes.
There is no one left but me and I am not ready to reveal my hand yet.
Let him sweat a little.
“No one is coming, uncle,” Ivan tells him quietly. “It’s time we had a nice family chat about everything you have done. Don’t you think?”
Andrei’s gaze darts back and forth between his brother and his son.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks, his tone dipping.
“Everything you received is accurate intel,” Ivan tells his father patiently. “It has all been verified by multiple sources. None of it has been tampered with or altered in any way.”
Confusion flits across our father’s face. “How do you know about what I received?”
Ivan smirks. “I sent it.”
“You little fucking…” Kirill spits, but Andrei holds up his hand to silence him. The man’s face turns an angry shade of purple, his beady eyes bulging from his head as he glares daggers at his nephew.
“There is so much you don’t know,” Ivan continues, his eyes on his father, barely acknowledging that Kirill is having a mini stroke next to them. “So much I tried to warn you about. But you were blinded by his perceived loyalty that you couldn’t see through the cracks in his façade.”
“He is my brother,” Andrei reminds his son. “The man who helped me avenge the death of your mother. If it wasn’t for him, your grandfather would never have fallen.”
“If it wasn’t for him,” Ivan sneers. “There would have been no war.”
four
Kirill pales.
I relish the look of fear on his face as it slowly dawns on him that he won’t be walking away unscathed. Not this time. At my side, my hands clench and unclench rhythmically. It’s hard not to sink my fist into his pug little face.
“Your grandfather murdered your mother while she was pregnant,” Andrei insists. He is blind to the truth. The love he has for his brother is strong, but I can sense his doubt. See it lurking behind his steel cut eyes. “He had proof.”
“He lied.” Striding into the room, hands in my pocket, I keep my gaze on the man who raised me. The man who abandoned me without a second thought. He tore my family apart. Murdered my mother and left me to the wolves.
“Khristos,” Andrei murmurs under his breath. Lips slightly parted. Eyes wide. He stares at me as if he is seeing a ghost. The ghost of my mother. There is very little of Andrei Tkachenko in me besides the color of my eyes and the mark I bear on my wrist. Otherwise, I am a spitting image of the woman who bore me.
“Impossible,” Kirill stares at me in abject horror, his face paling even further. “You’re dead.”
My gray eyes dart to his. “You should have realized by now how hard that really is,” I remind him. “After all, you are the one who sent assassin after assassin to kill me since I was a child.Otets.”
Andrei’s gaze sweeps to his brother. “You said he was dead.”
“He..he was,” Kirill stammers. “Father killed them both. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The lies of a snake are the sweetest,” I sneer at Kirill. “Aren’t they?”
“He killed Antony, Andrei,” Kirill spits, straightening himself up. He will not go down lightly. Not without trying to take me with him. “I have proof of that.”
Lifting my chin, I eye my birth father. “He is right,” I admit honestly. “I was thirteen, living in the shadow of the Bolsheokhtinsky bridge, when Antony attacked me in the dead of night. I defended myself. It wasn’t until his last breath that I realized who he was. When he asked me to forgive him and called me brother.”
Andrei’s darkened gaze turns to his brother. “You told me Antony was killed by the Fedorov’s.” Kirill audibly swallows, the fat of his neck tightening, his pulse thumping, pupils pinpoint as his fight-or-flight instinct takes over. He is sweating, eyes wild as he takes all three of us in.
“Why don’t you tell him what really happened, Kirill.” The utter disdain I have for this man rolls off me in waves. This is his last stand. He won’t escape this room. Not alive. “Tell him how you are the one who stole our mother. Forced her to be your whore after you got her addicted to drugs. And then, when Andrei called you up to take part in his regime, you overdosed her with those very drugs. Kicked me out on the streets.
“Tell the brother who trusted you how you sent Antony to kill me. Whispering in his ear that I was the bad guy. That he needed to prove himself by killing me. How you set Ivan up so that his own father would lose faith in him. Why don’t you tell him the truth for once? That all you wanted was the power the Tkachenko name gave you so you could move your human cargo without worry. That you are nothing more than an ugly, fat traitor to your blood. You are nothing more than dirt beneath his shoes. A coward. A loser. A…”