I landed on denial.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise at my calm tone.
“Tell me the truth,” she demanded, her jaw clenched. She wanted to believe me, I knew it. “This is a matter of life and death for all of us.”
I scoffed at that. “It seems you’ve already decided on death for me.”
“This isn’t a joke, Liana!” My mother glared at me, her Italian accent thickening. It was always the harshest when she was scared. “You know what the Tijuana cartel did to your sister. Do you want them to do that to you?”
I clenched my teeth, my voice lowering. I’d seen the video of my sister’s body dissolving into nothing. I’d tortured myself enough with it.
“Let them fucking come,” I hissed. “And I’ll end them just like they ended her.” My mother gritted her teeth, hating my rebellious streak. Lou was peaceful; I was a tornado. Lou was good; I was bad. Lou was innocent; I was far from it. “How can you even stand to work with them, knowing what they did to my sister?”
The black rage in my mother’s eyes couldn’t be missed. It was venomous and hateful, reflecting exactly how I felt about her associates. Hers was directed at me.
“You could get my father to help,” I hissed, my blood boiling. “He’d kill them all if he knew the truth.”
But truth was one thing Mother withheld. She’d used him, used all of us. She was Ivan Petrov’s wife but had fucked the Irish mobster, my father, Edward Murphy, with one purpose only. To get pregnant. Ivan couldn’t give her children and was more than happy to agree to Mother’s seduction plan. It put one more mobster in their pockets.
She wanted an empire; she got it. She sought revenge; she got that too, ten times over. This was her own cruel version of revenge against the world. Only, she was too blind to see that everyone—including her daughters—paid for it.
“Your father can’t help.” Something about the tone of her voice set my senses on high alert, but I didn’t dare question her.
Had something happened to my dad?
I hadn’t been able to get in touch with him for a while now, but that was nothing unusual. Sometimes he and Mother went through episodes of total silence. Growing up, they included us in their petty power plays, but my sister and I always had each other to lean on. It hurt that they couldn’t ever put their differences aside for us, but it brought us closer.
I didn’t have that anchor anymore. And I’d hardened that organ called a heart.
“It’s just you and me, Liana.” She dusted nonexistent wrinkles out of her Oscar de la Renta dress. “And I won’t tolerate disobedience.”
Her pruney fingertips reached for the faucet, twisting it. The pipes protested, and when I took my next breath, the rush of icy water came running out.
Minutes blurred, and so started my screams.
Chapter 14Liana
“You took her from me.” Mother’s blurry face was distorted. “I need her back. Understand me?” I nodded, despite not comprehending what she meant. “Very well, Liana. Let’s start.” The screams rang in my skull, refusing to cease. The shocks came, wrenching screams from my throat until it bled.
My body startled awake and I sat up straight, my ears ringing. I breathed heavily as sweat covered my skin, making my nightgown cling to my skin. I shook until I realized they were my own screams.
I brought my weak hands to my face, pushing drenched strands away from my forehead.
The ringing in my head made it difficult for my lungs to work, and I felt myself start to heave. Whispers that plagued my dreams, speaking faster and faster, taunted me.
You’re too easy to break. You’re too weak.
I squeezed my eyes shut, chasing the nightmares I didn’t understand far away. Memories.
I shook my head and closed my eyes. They weren’t memories, they couldn’t be. That never happened. The cracks in my chest and my skull deepened while a dull ache drummed behind my temples, lingering for hours as I lay awake staring at the ceiling, trying to remember.
Trying to forget.
A week later, my mother and I were back in the motherland. My birthplace.
Exhaustion weighed heavily on me. I’d barely slept a wink over the past week, each night a new dream plaguing my sanity every time I dozed off. They didn’t make any sense. There was no rhyme or reason behind their recurrence, but nonetheless, each one rattled me down to my core.
Frost settled into my bones, drawing a shiver out of me. Gosh, how I hated the cold and snow.
The first snow of the Siberian winter covered the landscape, stretching beyond what my weary eyes could take in. Ironic really, since every inch of Mother’s property was drenched in crimson, the invisible blood of innocents coating every corner.
The metal gates of the mansion opened ahead, my mother’s house—my prison—looming stark white against the gray sky. No matter how clean and pristine it looked, there was no hiding the sins beyond the property line.
My mother was the first woman in her family to sit at the head of the business. She was a Pakhan—well, to some. If you asked others in the underworld, that title belonged to Illias Konstantin.
I didn’t know—nor did I care—who the rightful leader of the Russian mafia was. I wanted to burn it all to the ground.
I sometimes hoped my mother would come to her senses and see what her place in this world had cost us. I used to think my mother loved me. My twin and I had grown up wanting for nothing. We had the latest technology at our disposal, the latest fashion and gadgets and cars, but we never had our mother’s love or affection.
It was pretty early in life when both my twin and I learned that our mother loved only one child—Winter Volkov. Our father, on the other hand, wasn’t much of one. He wanted to be, but Mother had him by his balls. Edward Murphy, an Irish mobster, couldn’t do much but leave us at the mercy of the Russian underworld.
I couldn’t forgive either one of them for my sister’s sad ending. They were supposed to protect us, shield us, or at least cajole us into a false sense of safety. All they managed to do was break us.
The car pulled up in front of our home manned by four guards just as my mother’s phone rang.
“What?” she spit out angrily. “How could you lose another shipment?” A heartbeat of silence before she spoke again. “Do we have any leads?”
Two “lost” shipments of flesh in such a short timespan were bound to raise flags and hurt the business Perez and my mother had going. Not that I gave two shits about it. My goal was to crumble their empire from within and let it burn as I held the matches and a gas can.
“I’m dealing with it.”
A bead of sweat rolled down my spine, knowing exactly how my mother would deal with me. It’d be time for another one of her “sessions,” and I wasn’t sure how many more of those I could take. I hadn’t broken…yet.
I clenched my jaw, resisting the urge to bolt out of the car. Instead, I folded my hands in my lap and begged my heart to stop thundering in my chest. I listened to one side of the conversation, my gaze trained out the window.
I sat upright, keeping my eyes trained on the guards waiting for the signal to open the door. It had to come from my mother.
“Does Perez know?” Her voice was steady, but I knew what she was masking. Could feel it in the space between us on the leather seats. She sounded calm, collected, and poised. “Keep it that way. See if we can organize a shipment for the Tijuana cartel.”
Santiago was the head of the Tijuana cartel who worked with Perez and all the scum in the underworld.
My lip curled with disgust as she ended the call and gave a signal to the guards. The minute the gates swung open, I got out of the vehicle and started walking toward the front doors. The walls couldn’t be seen from here, but I felt them.