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“Strange?”
She chuckled and let go of me, allowing me to shift away.
“Thank you for what you did back there,” I said, tasting cherry gloss on my lips. “My brother’s not a good man. I’m sorry he tried to hurt you.”
Surprise flickered through her eyes. “Really? Aren’t you sorry we stopped him from taking you away?”
“I do want to get out of here but not with my brother,” I said honestly. “My relationship with Callum isn’t...” I tried to find a word that could describe it. “He doesn’t care for me. It’s just a sick kind of obsession.”
“What do you mean?”
I thought of the way she was with her brothers. They adored her and were protective, but they didn’t cripple her. Lilja was taught to fight and allowed to be strong.
There was no way she’d understand my relationship with Callum.
“Your brother’s a crazy bastard,” she said bitterly. “My brothers were a broken mess when he was done with them. It took years for them to heal completely. They weren’t the same when they returned home.”
“This was their home?” I asked, my curiosity rising.
Lilja was as lethal as her brothers but she wasn’t being threatening or forceful. Even her kiss was soft and gentle. Maybe she’d give me the answers I sought and fill the gaps in my understanding.
“This has always been their home,” she said.
“I thought they were homeless,” I said in a confused tone. “They lived with my family for over three years.”
She chuckled and nodded. “You don’t know a thing about them, do you?”
“They used to be homeless,” I said. “My dad let them come work for us and live in our home. He tried to send them to school too.”
She laughed. “He tried to tame a Volkov man.”
“Who are the Volkovs?”
She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Right. I forgot you know nothing about us. Well,we’rethe Volkovs. Our family descended from a guild of Russian assassins that used to work for the czar a long, long time ago.”
I blinked.
“One of our ancestors moved here and continued the family tradition,” said Lilja. “The boys are trained from a very young age. They’re taught to kill from instinct alone. When they turn fifteen, they’re thrown out into the world without any family support. They must live and survive on the street using the skills they acquired. That’s the rule. It makes sure the weak are weeded out. Only the strong are allowed to become part of the Volkov family.”
Lilja’s words explained the ancient manor and all the paintings and historical artifacts dotting the place. I stayed silent for a while as the truth slowly sank in.
John, Rafael, and Danny were not dead. They were alive and far stronger than I could ever imagine.Assassins, my mind repeated.
“Your family tradition is extreme,” I said.
“Yep. They have to be,” Lilja said with a nod. “Look what happened to my brothers. They got too lax when they started living with your family and paid for it. How else could a weasel like your brother hurt them?”
“John was already a killer when I met him?”
“John?” she asked with a confused look.
“Sorry. I mean, Yakim. That’s the name he gave us when we met him. Leon called himself Rafael and Mikhail was Danny.”
She sniggered. “Nice names they decided on.”
“They used to be so nice to me,” I said, reminiscing those sweet, warm days. “I could never imagine them to be assassins and killers.”
“They hid it from you,” she said with a shrug. “They didn’t want to scare you.”
