Page 125

For one stupid second, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Thanks to Vasily, his face is now all too familiar. So is the star mark on his cheek, lower than mine, but the same.

After that day outside of the condos, I’ve gotten to stare at him in private. I’ve seen his face in photographs buried in case notes and intelligence reports. Grainy surveillance images. A driver’s license photo. The occasional picture Ariadna dug up for me.

None of them prepared me for seeing him walk into the courtroom. I’m closer than I’ve ever wanted to be to my biological father.

My eyes immediately go to Vasily. He’s gone completely still, like a predator, shoulder muscles bunched and a vein bulging in his neck. My gaze drops to his lap, where his hands flex and contract against his thighs.

The expression on his face is so cold that I know, without asking, exactly what he’s thinking.

He wants to kill my father.

But Semiyon hasn’t even looked toward the front of the courtroom. He keeps his head down as he walks along the back wall, finding a seat tucked into the corner.

Mikhail leans toward me.

“He must be here to see Vasily’s downfall.”

I don’t answer. I can’t. It would be absolutely insane to divulge that not only is Semiyon Usayon one of Yuri Ritter’s trusted advisors in the takeover, he’s also my father.

The man whose absence shaped so much of my life without ever being physically present in it.

He looks older than he did just days ago on the patio. Now that he’s alone, he looks harder; his face is lined, and his skin is weathered. There are the missing teeth I noticed when Vasily and I watched him from a distance.

And yet, somehow, seeing him in person makes him feel more real than he ever has.

My breath catches. This is the man who left my mother. The man who never came looking for me. The man who built a life without me.

I should feel devastated. Instead, something strange happens.

I feel powerful. He is the one sitting there, hiding in a corner, and I’m standing here. I’m a sought-after defense attorney, next in line for a partnership at my firm, and so valuable that an East Coast Bratva boss kidnapped me.

I’ve spent twenty-eight years believing that knowing who my father was would somehow make me less certain of myself.

It doesn’t.

It makes me more certain; certain of who I’m not. And I’m not anything like the shifty criminal tapping out a quick text on what looks like a burner phone.

Over the next few minutes, Semiyon’s attention remains fixed on Vasily. It’s clear that he isn’t here for me. He’s here to watch the man he considers his enemy fall; here to report back to his boss that the empire is crumbling.

Fine.

Let him watch. Because he’s wrong. As long as I’m at his side, Vasily Borisov won’t crumble.

Eventually, perhaps sensing something, Semiyon’s gaze shifts. It moves across the courtroom and stops on me. His eyebrows draw together.

He stares, recognition flickering across those dark eyes. I don’t know whether someone has told him about me or whether he simply sees the resemblance.

But he knows.

He knows exactly who I am.

My heart pounds, adrenaline coursing through my veins. For the first time in my life, I look directly at my father, and I don’t feel like the abandoned daughter.

I feel like the woman he should have been looking over his shoulder for from the day he walked away.

* * *

By the time I stand to give my opening, the courtroom feels smaller than it did ten minutes ago.