Page 83 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

“This is my wife,” I clarify. “You will greet her as Madam Volkov.”

“Madam,” the hostess corrects herself. “Your table is ready, Pakhan.”

Shoulders square, a calm acceptance settles over Sandrine. The same as when I told her she was to be my wife five years ago.

That’s right. Own it. Own me.

We’re led through a hallway to a private table tucked into the back. There, I hold out a chair for Sandrine, and she sits. Taking the seat across from her, I tell the hostess which bottle of wine to bring, but Sandrine shifts uncomfortably. I remember her medication.

“Scratch that,” I correct. “Just sparkling water.”

“Can I have a Coke?” Sandrine says, fiddling with the napkin.

She wasn’t even twenty-one when we… I can’t finish that thought. When we were in love.

“You were saying?” I sit back in the low glow of candlelight that gives the room quiet warmth and intimacy.

A mood I wasn’t expecting we’d reach so soon. But it feels right.

“This upheaval triggered something positive,” she says. “I feel better than I ever have.”

I tilt my head. “At this point in your recovery, you need a combination of therapy and independent living.”

She studies me. “You really looked all this up?”

I don’t admit that at first it felt like a burden. But the more I read, the more cases I reviewed, the more I learned about what Sandrine has been going through. The small details she wouldn’t think to confess.

“It may look like the brotherhood is my primary concern, but it was always you. And Violet.”

She thinks about that, and maybe it’s too soon to make her unpack what all this means. Instead, she says, “I lost a lot of progress being in Lakeshore for four years. Lourdes was in New York. In a bad marriage. I’m glad she found Ares.”

I dug up that situation and learned a local Chicago thug named David Sinclair who married Lourdes figured out I’d been looking for her sister. He tried to make a deal with me. But that got him killed, and his wife ended up married to Ares Zervas of all fucking people.

The God of War didn’t need anything from me. He staunchly refused to hand over Sandrine to me. He saw her as a fragile woman with no memory.

That’s not what I see now. That’s not who I’m with.

“I think we should approach your recovery very cautiously,” I say.

“Violet… I feel like she’s already changed my brain chemistry. Can I see more pictures of her growing up eventually?”

“Of course.” I lean back, warmed by her interest. My earlier worry she’d reject her own daughter now feels ridiculous.

She bites her lip and then, looking at me from under her lashes, asks, “Were you there in the hospital? When she was born?”

My gaze sharpens as possession coils low in my gut. “I was there. I watched her come out of you.”

Her eyes widen at that. “Do you have a video of that, too?”

“No,” I say with a wry smile. “But I can pull hospital footage.”

“That’s not necessary.” She shakes her head gently. “You have no reason to lie to me. Of all the people you could have dragged across several state lines to Chicago to be Violet’s mother.”

“Dragged?” I repeat, the word tasting bitter in my mouth.

“I’m making a point,” she says quickly. “Kirill, I’m disabled. I can’t even drive a car.”

“I taught you to drive,” I counter immediately, the memory of what we did in that closed parking lot vivid in my mind.