Page 3 of Bratva Brother’s Bride

“Why didn’t he want to be buried with his family?”

Roman says nothing. He keeps walking, and I quicken my pace to keep up. The gravel shifts under my heels.

“Why?” I repeat. “Why would he do that?”

Roman is quiet for a moment. We turn onto a narrower path lined with older graves. Here, some of the headstones are almost entirely covered with moss.

A large oak spreads its branches overhead, and the light filters through in pale, watery patches.

“Dmitri was the favorite,” he says. His voice is flat, like he’s reading from a list. “Our father’s golden child. He could do no wrong.” He pauses. “Dmitri still hated the man.”

I don’t know what to make of that. Dmitri never talked about his father. He never talked about any family, actually. I’d assumed they were dead and gone a long time ago, buried in some unmarked grave in a country he’d fled.

I’d assumed a lot of things.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If he was the favorite⁠—”

“It doesn’t have to make sense.” Roman cuts me off. “He hated him enough to want to rot in a separate plot for eternity rather than share a wall with him.”

We round a bend in the path, and I see the mausoleum. It’s a large stone structure with columns and a heavy iron door. The name Volkonsky is carved into the stone above the entrance.

Roman stops a few feet from the door. He turns to face me, and the gray light catches his face. The resemblance to Dmitri is there in the line of his jaw, mostly, and the shape of his nose. There’s a scar through his left eyebrow that I didn’t notice before.

He fills out his suit in a way that makes me suddenly, painfully aware of the damp fabric clinging to my curves. He looks so perfectly put together.

I become aware of how close he’s standing. My breath catches, and I take a half-step back. My heel skids on the wet gravel.

“You’re afraid of me,” he says bluntly.

“I don’t know you.” The words spill out too quickly. “You’re a stranger who showed up at my husband’s funeral unannounced, claiming to be his brother. Excuse me if I’m not relaxed.”

A ghost of a smile. “That’s fair.”

He reaches past me and pushes the iron door open. It groans on its hinges, and I flinch. The air that escapes is cold and damp and smells of old stone. Inside, I can see the faint gleam of brass plaques on the walls.

“After you,” he says.

I look at the dark interior. Then at him. Every instinct I have is screaming at me not to go in there. I need to walk back to Dad and the safety of the crowd, where this man can’t touch me.

Except I’m tired of safe. Safe got me three years of lies.

I step inside.

2

ROMAN

The mausoleum smells like wet stone and mold. It’s sharp enough to make me wrinkle my nose as we enter and colder inside than out. The darkness swallows us whole until my eyes adjust.

Vera stands just inside the doorway, her shoulders rigid. She hasn’t moved deeper into the space, and her fingers grip the umbrella handle so hard her knuckles have gone white.

I pull the gate shut behind us. The groan of metal on metal echoes off the stone walls.

She flinches.

“Relax,” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“That’s what someone who’s going to hurt me would say.”