Vigo turns to me. “And you. You’re his muscle. A fucking bitch! He needs you because he can’t deliver! He uses you, Anya!”
“You drove him into the ground!” I screech. “You came in here and took everything that belonged to him!”
“If he was a real contender, he’d have stomped me into the fucking dirt when I showed up on the scene. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. And he never will because I am going to be king!” Vigo glowers at my uncle. “If my nephew had been slaughtered like that, I’d have made damn sure anyone who got in my way of revenge was next.” He glares at me. “Now you know the truth!”
This time, I make it on top of him and spit in his eye before his guys pull me off.
He rakes his beady eyes over me and licks his chapped lips. “Play your cards right and you’ll be my queen.”
I throw up in my mouth before lunging for him a final time.
But Vigo just laughs as his guys drag me back by my long blonde hair. “Be very careful, Anya, or I’ll sell your tight pussy to the highest bidder.”
Chapter Two
Anya
I pace around the kitchen while Uncle Boris stitches up one of the gashes he couldn’t manage to escape at Tatiana. So many thoughts are racing through my mind right now. Vigo spat out a lot of information that I have yet to process.
And he was right. I will destroy anyone who had a hand in my brother’s death.
Maybe my mind is rebelling because deep down, I’m afraid that it’s all true. Why else would Uncle Boris keep it from me?
We’re all we have left now that Maks is gone.
I scrub a hand down my face, taking a few deep breaths to calm the blood simmering in my veins.
I watch my uncle working the needle. My eyes narrow at his shaking hand. Nerve damage from a stab wound years back. “Here, let me help,” I snap, reaching out for it.
He grunts and gives me a slight shove backward. “No!” he thunders. “I can do it myself!”
I should have known better. There’s not much he despises more than being perceived as weak, and Vigo has made that his new reality.
“I hate that bastard,” he mutters, taking a break to swig from the bottle of Stolichnaya vodka.
I tug at my ponytail, anger bubbling in my chest as Vigo’s words pummel me like an all-consuming wave and I can’t hold back the questions for a second longer. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Villanis and their involvement in Maks’s death? You knew how devastated I was, how badly I needed answers. How could you keep that from me? You lied to my face every single time I asked if you knew anything! He was my best friend!” The scream gets caught in my throat, tangled with a gaggle of tears.
He rubs a hand over his shiny bald head, letting out a deep sigh. “Things got out of control that night. The Villanis needed to pay for their part in your brother’s murder. I went there for revenge, to make them suffer the way we had, but we were outnumbered. I didn’t finish the job and they threatened me with a war if I didn’t leave. I had no choice unless I wanted Volkov to put a bullet in my brain for opening the bratva up to a bloody battle with the Italians.”
“You should have set fire to their territory before you left!” I screech, slamming my hand onto a table. “How could you just walk away, knowing what you did about them? And that you haven’t gone back to finish the job?”
“Because I knew it was only a matter of time before we’d get our chance to make them feel our pain,” he hisses through gritted teeth. With a harsh glare, he pins me to my spot. “We have to be smart and do things the right way to get the revenge we both want. And what did I tell you about questioning me, Anya?” He shoves back the chair and gets up from the table, his blue eyes darkening. He stomps toward me with his wound half-stitched and murder in his gaze. “I gave up a lot for you and Maks,” he growls. “For ten fucking years, I watched over you and trained you to become the person you need to be in order to survive this life! And I never got anything in return! Don’t you ever challenge me!”
I stare at him, the words playing on my lips…the same words that run through my head most times we talk business since we really don’t talk about much else. “What about what I’ve done for you? I never wanted this life! You turned me into this person! I have so much blood on my hands, I can never wash them clean!”
I was happy in the Ukraine with my parents and my brother and my school friends and my warm and safe home.
But someone else decided that my life was no longer mine.
“You did it to survive, because it was the only way to survive. Maks was weak. Do you want to end up like him, too?”
“How can you say that?” I yell. “He was your family! He did everything you asked!”
“Not everything,” Uncle Boris grumbles. “He didn’t listen to me that night, and for a lot of nights before it. You work for me, and part of your job is to take orders,” he snarls, so close to me I can smell the stale alcohol on his breath. “He didn’t do his fucking job.”
The words hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer, knocking the wind clear out of my lungs.
He is a fucking insufferable asshole sometimes.
Okay, most times.
But the reality is that now I have nobody except my unhinged and vodka-soaked uncle, so I cling to this dysfunctional relationship, looking for any crumbs he’s willing to drop for me. And he knows it, too.
I sink into a chair, covering my face with my hands. “How am I supposed to trust you when you keep so much from me? How can I not question you?” I ask. “I’m always running in blindly to save you without any knowledge of why you were attacked in the first place!”
“I give you the information you need when you need it in order to survive, Anya,” he says, averting his gaze. “When you know too much, you take rash actions that can be dangerous. And deadly.”
I tap my fingernails on the tabletop, avoiding his hard stare because I don’t want to see the infuriated expression on his face when I ask my next question. But I can’t sit on it any longer. If I don’t have trust…well, shit. Then we really don’t have anything at all. I don’t have anything at all. And that’s something I just can’t accept. I don’t want to know that I’m really all alone in this toxic world. “Did you tell me the truth, Uncle? About Maks? And the Villanis? Or was Vigo right?”
I look up, hesitant to see his face because I’m afraid to see something I’m just not prepared to accept.
“Of course I told you the truth,” he says in his gruff voice. “And I didn’t tell you about the Villanis because I was embarrassed. Like Vigo said, they chased us out of there, and because I was worried about my own ass, I left without avenging Maks’s murder. I didn’t finish the job I went there to do.” His forehead creases. “And that bastard Vigo just loves to tell the story. It’s bad enough he’s taken over my role as brigadier in the bratva.”
“But you said you had a plan,” I say slowly. “Maybe we can fix this and change the way Volkov sees you.”
“I waited for months to come up with it.” His eyes glaze over, his expression pinched. “And now that I have one, the Villanis will be assaulted and decimated by the pain we’ve suffered, trust me.”
“Are you going to tell me about this grand plan?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not yet. I need to work out a few last details. And Vigo…” His lips curl upward into a menacing smirk.