Page 107 of Nemesis

Loyalty over love.

Strength above all.

But after spending time with the Siderov unit, it’s become clear that punishment and fear aren’t the standard here.

I slice open the bloody steak on my plate, casually listening to the chatter erupting across the long table. Octavia sits beside me, her hair still tousled and wild from our time at the shooting range. The recollection goes straight to my dick, an entirely inappropriate reaction to be having in front of her entire extended family.

Whatever.

As if I could stop thinking of her body for a fucking second after having free rein. I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard in my life.

“So,” Kirill, her youngest cousin, starts, breaking off whatever he was talking about to turn his attention on Octavia. He looks to be in his mid-twenties—none of those crunchy wrinkles that come from dealing with years of stressful decisions. “I noticed Dmitri has been acting quite irritable since your trip to the range. I’ve seen that man take a bullet with less of a reaction. What’d you do to the poor guy, cousin?”

A fork screeches against a plate, cutting off all other conversations at the table. Octavia goes beet red beside me, flushing all the way down to her pretty…

Stop, Vasiliy. So not the right time.

“Did he try something?” Her father drops his knife to the table.

“He did not,” Octavia answers, eyes glued to the rim of her plate.

A small smile plays across my lips. What can I say? I tried to keep her quiet, but my girl loves to moan. I suppose I could’ve fucked her against something other than the door the little soldier was no doubt standing outside of, but where would be the fun in that?

Then I make a critical mistake. I raise my gaze off the plate in front of me, colliding with Kirill’s playful eyes across the table. He spits out his sip of wine, falling into an obnoxious fit of laughter.

Octavia’s quietest cousin, Maksim, smiles knowingly beside him.

“Son!”

“What is wrong with you?” Sasha says, cutting off his brother.

Octavia physically shrinks down into her chair beside me and hides her face with her glass of wine.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Uncle Sasha,” the little shit starts, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “I just realized we never made Octavia a proper hair appointment. Surely that’s the reason the back of her head is more tangled than a ball of yarn.”

“Hey!” she snaps, pride winning out over her embarrassment.

Sasha’s gaze swings back and forth between his daughter and nephew several times before the revelation rolls over him.

A loud thud shakes the sturdy table as he smacks his head against the wooden surface.

“Boys!” Octavia’s aunt, a short blonde lady who spends most of her time in the garden, chides. Unfortunately, her stern reprimand seems to have the opposite effect as intended, because all four of her sons break down in varying degrees of laughter across the massive table, joined by their troublesome father.

Suddenly, the serrated blade of a steak knife slams into the wood beside me, landing less than an inch from my pinky finger. I don’t even bother to move my hand out of the way.

“The next person who brings up my sex life at the dinner table is getting a new piercing,” Octavia yells with an adorable glare.

Her dad’s head smacks against the table again at the whole sex-life declaration, causing his brother to laugh even harder and pat his shoulder.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude. We are a sex-positive household. From one father to another, you’ll get used to the idea of⁠—”

“I will get used to nothing! We are a murder-positive household, and yet I’m allowing this dead motherfucker to sit at my dinner table after defiling my perfect baby girl!”

“I bet she did some of the defiling herself,” Kirill mutters down the table, taking another bite of steak.

Sasha’s chair cracks back to the floor as he rises and turns to his nephew, violence in his eyes. “What. Did. You. Say?”

“I didn’t say anything! I said I love you, Uncle Sasha!” Kirill stutters, getting up and shuffling behind his father like a scared boy.