Page 72 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

I shake my head. “I want⁠—”

“This isn’t about what you want,” he interrupts, not in anger but with a concern I hadn’t seen before. “It’s about what’s best for her. I won’t let you walk into her life before you can stand steady on your own. You’re not a girlfriend that I can explain later on why you left if you have a massive relapse.”

I don’t know how to argue with that. Part of me understands it, even as another part recoils from being kept at a distance from my blood. She’s the reason he married me. And now he’s keeping me from her.

“Fine.” I give in and remember that, despite the hand-holding, the gentle sweeps across the small of my back, and the building smiles I can feel dying to come out, Kirill is a powerful and dangerous man.

I look away and watch the city pass us.

Iron Keep rises in the distance against the pale sky. When the SUV pulls through the tall gates and into the drive, it stops, and Kirill gets out first. He turns to help me.

“I got it. My arms and legs work perfectly fine.” I use the door handle to lift myself out. “Don’t be kind for show. In fact, wouldn’t your men respect you more if you acted cold toward me?”

“You don’t know my men, Sandrine.” He takes my hand anyway. “Family is important. It’s called a brotherhood for a reason. We have a bond. It may not always be blood. But it’s as strong as iron.”

We get inside the house, and I break away from him. But in the kitchen, I feel lost. At Norridge, or at Marlowe, heck, even at Lakeshore, I had a routine. Now I don’t know what to do with myself. I breathe in the warmth and whatever the cook is making in the kitchen.

Kirill walks beside me, close enough that his body competes for that heat. At the archway to a dark corridor, he pauses, watching me.

“I have work to handle,” he says, the distance already back in his voice. “Please stay upstairs. Violet will be home soon. She has a nanny.”

“Are you keeping the nanny?”

He narrows his eyes. “The nanny was hired to help me because I was alone.”

The word alone hurts my heart for him. What he’s been through.

“I’ll bring you your dinner.”

I nod, though the word stay really doesn’t sit right with me. I watch as he turns and walks away. He’s not as tall as Ares, not as muscular. He’s lean and lethal.

I turn and wander off in the opposite direction toward the grand staircase. The walls have a heaviness that drips with tradition. A peek out the window overlooking the grounds confirms Kirill’s warning.

There are guards everywhere.

I reach the staircase, and a long console sits against the railings. The surface is crowded with framed photographs. My throat goes dry as I stop and look down at them.

I pick up a random frame and smile at a younger Kirill wearing a thick parka outside an ice hut. Ice fishing. Squinting, I see snowy mountains in the distance and nothing but a blanket of white stretched out to meet them.

In another photo I recognize Ksenia. Her wedding photo makes me gasp. God, how beautiful she looked. The dress was a monstrosity. Kirill stands next to the groom, and next to the bride is a much older, much scarier man. Yuri Volkov, I presume.

I look up, feeling a chill that he’s here somewhere, sick and dying under this roof, even if he sleeps in a different wing.

I feel better when I reach a wave of photos of Kirill with Violet. He’s holding her and kissing her while she smiles brightly. An ache settles deep in my chest as I wonder if she’ll ever smile like that when I hold her.

My eyes scan the rest of the photos. Kirill, Violet, Ksenia and Drago.

The Volkov family.

My breath catches. There’s none of me.

Not a blurred figure in the background, not a shadow at the edge of the frame. Nothing. It’s as though I never existed. Why are there no photos of me? Or our wedding? Were they kept from this shrine on purpose?

A sickening feeling settles in my stomach. It was to keep what I looked like from Violet. That’s why she didn’t know who I was when she walked into the library yesterday.

My absence cuts deeper than the physical distance Kirill is contemplating for us. I stare down at one of the photos again.

“That’s me and my daddy,” someone says from behind me.