Page 41 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

“Then we’re halfway there,” I mutter.

“Sir?” she asks with a tilted head.

And she doesn’t call me Pakhan. No one does in his presence. He still thinks he’s in charge. I am. His food, his security, his medical care, and access to visitors are all completely under my control. He can think he’s the Prime Minister of Russia for all I care.

I move farther into the bedroom, and the sight of him is still a punch to the gut. Every fucking time.

Yuri Volkov once commanded rooms like violent storm clouds filling the night sky. Men feared him before he even opened his mouth. Now one side of his body hangs down from the stroke, the skin of his face garishly uneven.

He sits half-reclined in a massive bed. Alone. Oxygen hisses beside him. A blanket covers him to his waist despite the heat in the room.

His dark eyes, clouded with advanced cataracts, slowly shift toward me.

“Kirill?” His voice sounds like gravel dragged over broken glass.

“Excuse us,” I say to the nurse and wait for her to disappear through a side door. “It’s me, Papa.” I stop near the foot of the bed. Gripping the wooden footboard, I don’t mince words with him. “I found her. Sandrine. She’s home.”

His gaze narrows, and then for a moment, a thoughtful expression moves through his cloudy eyes. “And?”

The way his mouth twists, I know what he’s really asking.

Did she betray us?

I shove my hands into my pockets before the urge to reach for my gun becomes too obvious. “She doesn’t remember anything.”

That gets his attention. He responds with a cold stare.

“She had an accident,” I clarify and tell him what I know.

Thomas De la Vega’s involvement. The hospitalization. The memory loss.

Silence settles thickly between us.

Finally, Papa gives a sinister smile. “Convenient for you. Put her back where you found her. Do what is expected of you, Kirill.”

Rage flickers hot beneath my ribs.

“You keep forgetting, I love her,” I say, even though I’m not sure anymore.

I won’t give this man the satisfaction of thinking he got what he wanted all along. I had to live with the humiliation for five years that he might have been right about her. That my broken heart was deserved.

“Weak people break under pressure.” His breathing rattles faintly. “The pakhan’s wife must be a strong woman.”

“Like Mama? The woman you beat and cheated on. The mother who took her own life?” I say flatly. “Strong like that?”

“That was my business with my wife,” he says coldly. “Or did you forget what I can do to you when you overstep?”

Forget? Acid curdles the word now.

How could I forget the beating I got? His enforcer, Adrian Chernov’s knife against my throat. My father’s fists. A broken rib. A gun slammed into my face. Blood in my mouth. The Vory watching while I knelt on the floor taking it all because I refused to give up Sandrine.

Because I married her against his wishes.

“No. I didn’t forget.” My jaw tightens hard enough to ache. “I didn’t forget the night you decided my obedience mattered more than the blood we share.”

I should expect a more violent outburst for speaking to Papa this way. Now there’s only wheezing and the slow hiss of oxygen.

I take a breath, not wanting to spin this conversation any further in an ugly direction.