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The next day, Adrik, Maksim, and I came over around lunchtime and stayed for a while. We were most hung up with looking for the Konstantin assassins who could have been hired to take out Adrik and Smithson, the federal agent Wren used to work with. But we had few leads. The ones we looked into ultimately led nowhere.

Frustrated and annoyed, I tried not to let my lousy mood trickle into this domestic atmosphere.

No matter how much I tried to mask my emotions, I was so aggravated with myself and with how hard it was to get answers about this critical attack that Gregori had been behind that it was impossible to act like I was happy and unstressed.

“Mr. Volkov?” Brady asked as he swung his legs from his perch on the chair he’d chosen across from me.

My brothers and I looked up.

“Which one?” Adrik asked.

Brady smiled, always amused when he’d call me Mr. Volkov and forget that the name applied to six of us. “You.” He grinned at me.

I couldn’t help but almost smile back at him. He was a stubborn ray of happiness that I couldn’t ever give up. Each time he called me Mr. Volkov, I wished that I could be considered someone else.

Like… Daddy.

I sighed, wondering if I was getting in too far.

I watched him, waiting for whatever he had to say.

“What do you do?” He tilted his head to the side, his body still moving slightly with him swinging his legs. He’d finished eating before everyone else, so I bet he was bored.

“What do I do?” I raised my brows.

“Yeah. When you go to work.” He frowned.

“Well…” I cleared my throat.

Louisa’s eyes opened wide. “Um, Mr. Volkov is in management,” she rushed to say with a weak smile at me.

I nodded. “That’s right. I’m in management.”

“What do you manage?” he asked.

Shit. I usually enjoyed the million-questions spiel with him. It proved that he was a bright, curious kid. His perspective was interesting, too, and I liked seeing how his mind worked. He was sheltered, yet not. He was innocent, yet not.

“People,” Maksim said. “We manage people.”

“You’re a manager too?” Brady asked him.

He nodded.

It seemed like the easiest, generic lie. But also a truth. Our management of people included punishing and killing them, but no one said we had to go into specifics here.

“What about you?” he asked Adrik next. “You can’t all be managers…”

“I’m the CEO of management,” Adrik said.

“The biggest boss?” Brady asked.

He nodded.

“But what do you manage people doing?” he asked.

“Buddy, remember, it’s not polite to be nosy.” Louisa ruffled his black hair. “Don’t pry.”

“Am I prying, Mr. Volkov?” he asked me, looking worried.