Page 59 of The Marriage

“Why don’t you just come out and say what you want to fucking say?” Roman asked, opening his hands wide. “Fuck her feelings—say it.”

Demyan stood up at that.

Claire stepped back, clasping her hands together. He could count the number of times he’d gone to blows with his father in his lifetime—once when he was eighteen. Because if he could walk and talk like a man, then he could get hit like one, too. Or that’s how his father justified it. After spending two or three years, completely wild, on the streets, rarely at home, finding all kinds of trouble, he thought he could do this once with his dad.

Back him up against a wall.

Let lingering anger spill between them.

Forget who they were.

He’d been too young. Threw the first punch, too. Demyan kicked his ass that day—rightfully so. On the wet grass, he’d beat a lesson into Roman with three punches to the mouth that left him swollen and bloody.

Roman had been high that day, too.

He didn’t like who coke made him be.

He also wished he wasn’t aware.

“Get out of my sight before I get Pavel to drag you out,” Demyan demanded, jerking a pointed finger at the door. “That is the last time you speak like that in front of your mother.”

Roman didn’t move a muscle, but his gaze darted to his mother. Claire had turned her face to the side, but he didn’t miss the swipe of her sleeve under her eyes to wipe away tears she didn’t want him to see.

Just like that, the tunnel vision his rage had created vanished, leaving him loosening his stance and glancing away.

He shouldn’t be doing this here.

“Sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean to just—”

“Why don’t you tell him what you know?” she said, offering the words to his father like Demyan would know exactly what she was talking about.

The change of topic didn’t give him a chance to breathe.

Roman searched his father’s face for a clue. Demyan gritted his teeth and shook his head. In that moment, Roman realized he still hadn’t become a better son to his father. He had tried to—in the months that he spent in Chicago.

It didn’t last.

Demyan sat down again, picking up his napkin to tap the corners of his mouth before tossing it to the table. Something he would never do carelessly, yet didn’t think twice.

“Maxim is still alive.”

Roman thought the ground was shaking under his feet until he realized it was just his fast-tapping foot, and he had to cross his arms over his chest to stop the nervous tic. His parents could clearly see the effect this news had on him, as much as he tried to hide it.

“The body they found in the fire wasn’t him. Leonid is missing. Dima is pretending to be the boss and keeping his father’s absence hush-hush. I don’t have proof. Nobody has proof. But that is the only explanation.”

Roman could feel his feet moving. He was headed to the door before his brain had even arrived at the decision to leave.

“Don’t go anywhere, Roman. Don’t do anything that’ll jeopardize the bratva or the girl’s safety. You need to be here. Little Odessa is the safest place for you. And you know she’s where she needs to be.”

His father was right.

But she had to know.

Not even the devil would keep him from Karine now.

*

When Roman got there it was the middle of the night.