Page 17 of Vicious Betrayal

I wake to the sound of a sharp knock and Sergei's voice outside my door. "Your father wants you," he says through the door. "Now."

Something in his voice makes me sit up fast, blinking against the dim afternoon light bleeding through my curtains. "Now, like right now, or now like⁠—"

"Now," he says again. I hear him already walking away, like he doesn't want to be standing outside my door a second longer than necessary.

I throw on jeans and a t-shirt, twist my damp hair up, and head downstairs. I have a feeling this is going to be the other half of the lecture, and probably the result is going to be my father officially grounding me, even if I am an adult. I still live under his roof, and I have a feeling last night's shenanigans might be the thing that finally makes him crack down on my behavior. No going out, probably. Maybe not even phone privileges. Definitely more of a security detail glued to me for the foreseeable future. I'm already composing my argument in my head as I walk, trying to figure out which of my father's soft spots I can press to get out of the worst of it.

I'm not prepared for what's actually waiting in his office.

The first thing I notice is how quiet it is. My father's office is never quiet. There's always a call happening, or the low murmur of the television in the corner tuned to some Russian news channel he insists on despite hardly following politics back home anymore. Today there's nothing. Just my father, sitting behind his desk, and a man and a woman I've never seen before standing near the window, dressed in suits that scream government the second you look at them.

The second thing I notice is my father's face.

He's pale. Gray, almost, the color leached out of him like someone's siphoned it away. His hands are folded on the desk in front of him, too still, as if he's forcing himself not to shake.

"Papa?" My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

"Sit down, Oksana." He doesn't look up at me when he says it.

I don't flop into the chair this time. I sit slowly, keeping my spine straight the way I've been taught in a hundred etiquette lessons, my hands folded in my lap as my heart starts to hammer in my chest. The two by the window turn toward me. Up close, they're even more clearly not friends of my father's, not business associates or anyone I recognize from the rotation of people who come through this house.

"Miss Svenkova." The taller one steps forward, holds up something small and leather. He flips it open just long enough for me to catch the gold badge and the letters underneath.

FBI.

My stomach drops straight through the floor.

"Special Agent Cole Brennan. This is Agent Reyes." He nods toward the woman beside him, who watches me with an expression I can't read at all. "We have some things to discuss with your family."

I look over at my father, whose jaw is tight enough that I can see the muscle working under his skin. "What's going on?"

"Your sister," my father begins slowly. Something in his voice cracks. "Went to them."

For a second, the words don't fully make sense. "Katya?"

"Two weeks ago." Agent Brennan says it like he's reading off a report, unbothered by the shock of everyone in the room. "Ms. Svenkova came to our field office voluntarily. She's provided detailed information regarding your father's operations and several of his associates. Enough, frankly, to build multiple indictments."

I stare at him, then at my father again, waiting for someone to tell me this is a joke, some kind of test. Some elaborate stunt meant to scare me straight after last night.

Nobody does.

"That's not—" My voice cracks. "Katya wouldn't."

"Katya," my father says, bitterness bleeding into every syllable, "is angry. She has been angry for months. Apparently angry enough to hand over everything she's overheard sitting at my table since she was old enough to understand it."

I think of my sister, who is twenty-four years old, always demure and quiet in a way that used to make me think she simply wasn't paying attention. Apparently, that isn't the case. Three months ago, my father announced her engagement to Levya Volkov, a fifty-eight-year-old, twice-widowed man with extensive connections to every Bratva family on the East Coast, multiple businesses, and very large bank accounts. Their marriage was a coup for my father, who could never have managed to marry her off to one of the greater pakhans, given our family's status, but who will do very well via an alliance with such a rich and well-connected man. And given his age, Katya will likely outlive him, which means that she will bring the family a generous inheritance, eventually, especially if she gives him a son.

My father explained all of this to the family later. It all sounded very sensible, but I saw the look on Katya's face, and I felt the horror of the thought of what if it had been me? Only the fact that Katya is the eldest meant that she was going to suffer this fate, and not me. The relief I felt at that thought made me feel horribly guilty.

I remember how Katya smiled through the entire dinner where it was announced. I complimented her ring after—because it really was stunning, a huge, emerald-cut diamond in gorgeous platinum—and she looked at me like I was the stupidest person she'd ever met.

God, of course she wasn't happy. She'd been furious, and none of us bothered to notice, because Katya's fury has always been quiet. It's nothing like my own, which burns loud enough that everyone around me knows exactly when I'm upset. And my father didn't notice mostly because it didn't benefit him to.

I love my father, but fury suddenly rises in me, too, at his part in all of this. For once, I bite it back, though. "She did this because of the engagement," I say slowly, and my father's silence answers for him.

"It doesn't matter why," Agent Reyes says, speaking for the first time. Her voice is even, almost gentle. It feels more dangerous than if she'd been harsh. "What matters is what we do with what we have."

"And what do you have?" Some part of me doesn't want to know.