AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At the hospital, Konstantin, Sasha, and I wait impatiently for the doctor to return.
“What did your father mean he’d be justified if he had killed my father?” I stop my line of questioning. “Hold that thought.” My brow furrows. “You’re suddenly calling Marco your father now?”
“We’ve worked out our issues.” Konstantin’s cool eyes meet mine. “To answer your other question, your father, Sergei, and Lev killed my mother along with my uncle and aunt.”
“What?” My eyes widen. “That can’t be true.”
“It is,” Urie says from the door as he walks back into the waiting room having been checked out. “I found out the day Konstantin drugged us all at your wedding.”
“That’s why you were acting like a fucking traitor?”
“Yeah, that was part of the reason,” Urie tells me. “When my father and Ivan realized Konstantin was back, they were shitting themselves. I heard them conversing in secret. Later my father admitted that if Lev was alive, he was afraid that Konstantin knew the truth about what happened to his mother. Konstantin already hated Sergei for putting him in the container.”
“Sergei didn’t just put me in the container!” Konstantin’s voice is low and dangerous as his eyes bore in Urie. “He stripped me bare and whipped me first, then left me with two scared teenage girls to be shipped to another psycho and tortured for information on what my mother did with the missing recording and formulas.”
“Jesus!” I hiss. “Sergei did that?”
“He hated Konstantin,” Urie admits, and he glances at the ice man.
“Why?”
“Because he thought Konstantin had raped Hannah when she was eleven!” Urie’s answer makes me go cold.
I turn to the ice man. “And did you?”
Konstantin’s eyes narrow. “I don’t need to rape a woman in order to make myself feel better about being fucking dead inside. I was also eleven, and Hannah was one of my best friends and if you must know, she was also my first love.”
“It wasn’t Konstantin,” Urie tells me. “Just before we thought Lev died, my sister came home and tried hard to hide the side of her face. When I saw she’d been beaten, I was furious and ready to kill whatever fucker did it to her.” He looks at me. “I actually thought it was you at first, Andrey.”
“What?” I splutter. Oh fuck he must know about me and Hannah being lovers since I was a teenager. “You know about Hannah and I?” My brow knits tighter together and anger hits me at the thought Urie would even entertain the notion I’d beat Hannah up. “What do you fucking mean you thought it was me?”
“As far as I knew, you were the only person Hannah was screwing around with,” Urie answers. “But when I managed to get her to talk, Hannah broke down and admitted everything to me. Including that Lev used her whenever he was feeling like a rough good time and it had started when they were eleven.”
“Lev?” I feel myself go a little colder. “Lev raped Hannah when she was eleven and then continued to abuse her all this time?”
“Apparently,” Konstantin adds, “he knew she was in love with your bartender, Helen, is it?” I nod in confirmation. “Lev used it against her to do what the fuck he wanted with her holding the fact that your father wouldn’t be pleased about her sexual orientation. Lev also told her that my father wouldn’t be happy when he learned that she lied about me being the one that raped her when she was younger.”
“Shit! Sergei is old school. I’d see why Hannah would be scared of the information,” Sasha says, and he looks at Urie. “Do you want me to have words with your father while he’s still alive?”
Urie balks at Sasha’s words. “My father was avenging his daughter,” Urie says, “acting on Ivan’s orders.”
“He killed my mother, and that’s not your father’s only crime, though, is it?” Konstantin glares at Urie. “Why don’t you tell Andrey the other reason you’ve been so cagey.”
Urie nods and turns to me. “It was me that broke your brother’s spine and Igor who stabbed him.”
“What?” I shake my head. “Is that because he raped Hannah?”
“He raped her repeatedly,” Konstantin reminded me, backing up Urie. “And blamed me when he’d attacked her the first time. He used my mother’s NeuroVeil to knock me out and put me in a compromising position.”
“Lev was also the one who broke into Karina’s lab looking for her formulas. He was convinced that if he made her drug into a fancy street drug, Roman would choose him as Pakhan,” Urie tells me.
“He was eleven.” I know I’m backing a dying horse here, but someone needs to defend Lev. Even if I’m beginning to see reason in what I know his fate is going to be. “I’m sure it was just a—I want to be a firefighter thing and he’d never really meant that. I’m sure he wouldn’t have really stolen Karina’s formula.”
“Being a firefighter is a far cry from being a drug dealer,” Konstantin points out and eyes me suspiciously, his voice filled with warning. “Are you with us or Lev, Belov?”
“I’m trying to figure this out!” I say between gritted teeth. “I’ve had a lot of information thrown at me, and I just need it streamlined so it all makes sense.”
“It’s simple,” Sasha tells me. “Your brother found out that Roman was to choose the Belov Pakhan. He wasn’t happy when you were chosen and needed to find an edge to outdo you, his genius brother.”
