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“We’ve ramped up security since then,” Mila said when Katie kept her head down. “And now that Katie’s fully aware, she knows to stick to protocols.”
I almost felt bad for Mila, trying so hard to sell this impossible scenario to me. Great. Was I going to be filled in on these so-called protocols? Should I expect a gunfight to break out after cocoa later on tonight when we were all gathered around a fireplace?
“So, is that where the money for my apartment came from?” I asked.
Katie thrust her chin up. “Yes, and your tuition. And the trip to DC you were so desperate to take. Aleks and I are together. Consider all that a gift from our hearts. Does it really matter where the money came from?”
She was so desperate to get me to see things her way that tears welled in her eyes. Not happy ones this time, but full of anguish. Despite my anger at her news, seeing her so miserable tore me up inside.
But it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t pretend to be delighted with the avalanche she let loose on me.
Sinking back onto the couch, I put my head in my hands and lapsed into silence. Mila murmured that they should leave me alone, and after a moment, they both left me in the library to stew.
I went over every phone call and video chat I’d had with Katie and Aleks since they admitted they were married. He’d been nothing but charming and kind to me, even when I let him have it for the secrets. Knowing he could have had me quietly erased just underlined that he was probably a fair man to a point.
And Katie so obviously adored him. In my entire life, I’d never seen her so joyful. In her element. Thriving. Maybe Aleks and his family were good people at their core to make her so happy.
Maybe I had learned to accept their relationship, but I could never accept how the Fokins made their vast fortune.
I also couldn’t ruin the family gathering by making a big scene by storming out and dragging a confused Brooke with me. That wasn’t my style, and who knew how a mansion full of mafia kings would react to something like that.
Things had to change, though, because there was no way I’d keep accepting their dirty money. I’d find a job without Katie knowing and somehow scrape my life back together without her help. There might be a way I could reconcile meeting with her sometimes, because the thought of giving up my sister or my niece-to-be nearly doubled me over with sorrow.
But I’d never take another dime from the Bratva.
Chapter 2 - Lev
I tapped my watch, nodding toward the front door. I’d been sitting in the car in front of my brother Aleks’s house for close to five minutes. My favorite, and for the moment, only niece shrugged at me, still refusing to get out. Nataliye glared at the home she grew up in, as if it were the worst tenement in the city, and filled with snakes to boot.
It would be easy to write her behavior off as bratty, but I could see the hurt she was still holding onto lurking under her anger.
“I get it,” I said, hoping to get her out of the car and into the house sometime before Christmas morning. “It was a crappy thing he did, keeping the relationship from you.”
She turned her glare to me. “Oh? It wasn’t crappy that it was my best friend that Papa married?”
“Katie’s still your friend,” I said mildly, not wanting to stoke her anger. “In fact, she misses you. She’s constantly asking about you, and I know she’s glad you decided to come today.”
With a sniff, she tossed her blonde hair behind her shoulder, looking more like Aleks than I’d ever noticed when her face fell. They both presented as some of the strongest people I knew, but being close to them both, I had seen their more vulnerable moments.
“This was a mistake,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have agreed to come. I’ll just call for a ride back to the apartment and get an early flight home to spend Christmas in Italy with real friends.”
Her eyes filled with tears, breaking my heart, but I needed her to buck up and be the Nat I was more familiar with. “Hey,” I said. “No way. The Fokins stick together, especially atChristmas. I’ll carry you in there over my shoulder if I have to. I mean, are you going to keep acting this way after your new sister is born? This isn’t you, wallowing in self-pity and holding grudges.”
She laughed. “Do you even know me at all? I’m still plotting revenge on someone who pissed me off in sixth grade.” At least she was laughing, though it was forced and bitter.
“A hundred babies couldn’t replace you in your father’s eyes,” I said. “So if that’s what you’re worried about, knock that shit right off.”
She turned to me and blinked back the tears, finally giving me a nod. “We’ll see.”
“That’s right, we will. And I’ll be right, as usual.”
“Come on, Mr. Fokins stick together even though you’re not a Fokin anymore,” she teased, finally reaching for her door handle and sticking a foot out.
“Hold up,” I said. “I’m only going by Volkov until we settle things in San Francisco.”
We’d been quietly and carefully branching out up north for about a year now, and I had a couple lucrative and legal businesses up there that I wanted to start spending more time growing in the new year. After the mess we had down here with a rival organization, and our sister Mila had been threatened, we decided to move in silence until we had a firm hold on the area. That meant me taking the masculine form of our mother’s maiden name for the foreseeable future, and Nat had been teasing me about it ever since.
“I know,” she said, already halfway to the front door.
