Chapter 33

**| VIKTOR |**

I slowly pushed the door and entered his room. The lunch tray was lying by the side of his bed, untouched while my brother sat on the bed with his face turned away.

Stef did register my presence, but he simply refused to acknowledge it and stubbornly looked away. Stalking closer, I perched on the side of his bed and exhaled heavily. The road to his recovery was getting tougher every day now with his defiance.

“This madness has to stop now,” I sighed. “You need to eat, Stef.”

He didn’t move a muscle and continued to stare blankly. As much as I wanted to keep my anger in check, it lashed out every second with this unappreciative brat.

Pissed, I grabbed his jaw and forced his attention on me. “You know the silent treatment won’t work with me.”

“Fuck you.” He wrenched his face away and looked away once again.

It made me chuckle a little. “Yeah, that’s more like my brother. Cursing is better than a brooding silence.”

This time, he turned to me on his own accord. “If I am cooped up here one more day, I will go crazy. I need to go out, Viktor.”

“Soon, kiddo.”

His temper frayed. “Stop calling me that.”

“I will, once you stop giving me a hard time,” I reasoned and reached for the tray of forgotten lunch. “C’mon, eat up now. Mom is already beside herself over you.”

To my surprise, he did take that from me and jumped on to another topic. “So, who were they who tried to kill me at the rehab?”

“No one important.” I shrugged. “Aurora and Marco took care of it.”

For a first, Stef cracked a smile that I could not understand.

“What?” I asked.

“Aurora almost kicked my ass the day she found me…”

“…buying coke from the street junkie,” I finished for him when he trailed off. His eyes flew to mine, mildly surprised. “I know. She and Sammy got an earful from me for that already.”

I still remembered the day I found out. My anger cauldron into a sick rage, more so because it wasn’t supposed to happen under my watch. For the longest time, I took pride in the fact that I had controlled every notorious movement in the city. But when it was my brother, my blood, on the bender, I utterly lost it.

“I wasn’t buying it for me. Not that time, at least,” I heard Stef mumbling under his breath.

“And for whom were you buying coke off the streets?”

“Does it matter now?” His gaze challenged mine. “I am the one who got high.”

I fisted his t-shirt and brought his face closer to mine. “Yes, it matters because I am asking you.”

“Look, I am not—”

The door burst open, and Dominic poked his head.” Viktor, office.”

“One minute—”

“Can’t wait.” He glared at me, trying to inject an urgency. “Now.”

Frowning, I released Stef and stood up. “We are not done talking. And finish off your lunch before I am back,” I warned before following Dominic out of the room.

***

“What was so important that you could not wait for a minute?” I yelled the moment we were in my office.

“Close the door,” was all he said.

I slammed it shut, turned, and leaned back against it.

“I went through every file on Giovanni’s computer and phone, and I could not find anything useful in them. Except for some contacts, it’s all a bunch of crap.” He emphasized his frustration by shoving off the pen stand on the table as they clattered down to the floor. “For all I know, the fucker either sold it off, or the ledger has already exchanged hands.”

First Stef, and now Dominic. Just when I thought nothing could make this day any worse. “And you gave me one hell of an attitude to deliver this epic news of failure? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

His face twisted into a snarl before he went quiet for a few seconds. “I found something else. Thought you should know,” he muttered.

I pushed off the door and stomped closer. “What did you find?”

“A video,” he vaguely answered. “Giovanni must have shot it at the club with his phone sometime before his death. And I think I have a faint idea what happened there. So whatever Marco told us was a lie.”

“Cut the crap and show me what you got because I am tired of this fucking suspense, Dominic.”

He turned the laptop around and slammed the space bar as the video played. With every passing second, I realized that it was just the tip of an iceberg. And the avalanche was not far away. What Dominic has found would most likely change the entire constitution I have worked so fucking hard to create.

All it took was one goddamn video to destroy it.

“He lied. Motherfucker! He lied through his teeth.” I seethed as I felt the rage creeping up my skin.

“Aurora needs to see this,” Dominic initiated.

I shook my head, too angry to form words.

“She deserves to know!”

“No fucking way!” I blasted. “And who is going to control her after she goes off the rockers, huh? And don’t tell me that she wouldn’t. That girl is nuts. Fuck!” I paced around the room, raking a frustrated hand through my hair. “I had warned, Marco, but the asshole thought he knew better.”

“And how long are we going to hide this from her? She deserves to know the truth, Viktor. She is loyal to you and to this family.”

As ironical as it sounded, I honored loyalty. And there was not a speck of treacherous fiber in her bone for me to doubt. Whenever I needed Aurora, she delivered. She never failed my family or me. And for that, I respected her.

But this? I didn’t know. Marco failed and fucked it up. And I wasn’t sure I could clean up his mess.

“Fine.” I stopped pacing and turned to warn him gravely. “But you are not going to break this news to her over the phone. Ask Aurora to come down and make her sit with Sammy before you send her down the rabbit hole. And make sure that she is fucking unarmed.”

“I got this.”

AURORA

Marco was never a man of many words, but the silence he dispensed out worried the hell out of me. He wouldn’t tell me what happened at the club but insisted I sit by his side while he drank his scotch straight from the bottle.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been sitting by Marco’s side, watching him fall asleep under the alcoholic haze before I heard the phone vibrate for what had to be the fifteenth time. Dominic just didn’t know how to put a fucking lid on his urgency.

But it wasn’t Dominic’s incessant calls that made me drive back to their place but Sammy’s text.

It read: Come here, asap. Urgent. 

That last word was enough for me to floor the gas pedal and run every red light in the city to make it there in record time.

“What happened? What’s the emergency?” I asked, storming through the door. “Is Stefan alright?”

“Stef’s fine. Sit down; we need to talk to you,” Dominic answered. Sammy sat next to him, wringing her hands in her lap as she bit on her lip. The cloud over her expression didn’t lessen my anxiety.

“Oka-ay..” My gaze bounced between them. “But I don’t like the sound of it. What is going on?”

“I am afraid you are not going to like what you are about to see either,” Dominic muttered, fixing something on the laptop and turned the screen.

“I found something from Giovanni’s iCloud server—a video he had shot about half an hour before his death. Just try and not to react.”

Sammy glared at him. “Like that’s going to happen.”

I stared at the screen, frozen in time.

A woman…a semi-naked girl, actually, knelt by Marco’s feet with his dick inside her mouth as he fisted her hair to control the movements. The faster she sucked him off, the louder he moaned. His eyes…almost rolling back in pleasure.

My mind was spinning.

That’s what happened at the club…

Frame by frame, I could see my world collapsing and crumbling around me. And the ruination it left in its wake rapidly filled me with an acute pain I thought I had already gotten rid of. My heartbeats were heavy and loud—gonging in my ears. As if a metaphorical knife was jabbed into my gut and twisted around.

“Have you…” My voice cracked a little no matter how hard I controlled. “Have you run it through the software? It could be a doctored video and the sounds…”

“Aurora, I have done every possible check, and all the boxes have ticked out. Shadow, voice, movement — everything. Do you really think I would bring something like this to you without checking for its authenticity?” Dominic countered, and I could only nod.

By the time the 7-minute video ended, I felt like fucking seventy and worn out. And air refused to enter my lungs as I struggled to breathe. But not a single emotion surfaced because I was feeling too many things at once.

Rage, pain, cluelessness…

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know,” I whispered. “I will take it up from here.”

Sammy gaped at me. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Dominic shook his head and stood, blocking my way. His wrist immediately clasped on mine as if to hold me back. “No, you are not okay. Listen, I…”

Years of training took shape, and before he could react, I pulled out the safety blade and slashed at his biceps.

“Ah, goddamnit!” He yelled. “Viktor told me to get those fucking weapons off you, and I didn’t listen to him.”

I was almost halfway across the room when Sammy clutched my arm. “Aurora, please don’t. Not now. You need to think for a bit….”

“Sammy, let me go,” I told her, as calmly as possible. “I don’t want to hurt you because then I will have to deal with your asshole brothers, and I don’t have time for it. I would rather have all my anger directed to one person alone at the moment.”

She did release my arm but not before a sharp pain pierced my neck, and my muscles went numb.

“It’s for your own good. Sorry,” I heard Dominic’s half-assed apologetic voice before darkness took over.

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