Chapter 127 127

Chapter 127 127
“Survival?” she balks. “It wasn’t about survival. It was about you. Your pride, your ego. Why else would you go to Ravil over your own brother?”

Adrian blusters, but no words pass his lips. His finger is inching closer and closer to the trigger.

“Because he was going to give you back the faction of the Bratva that left,” I guess quietly. “Wasn’t he?”

Adrian meets my eyes. That’s all the confirmation I need. “You kept me in your shadow your entire life,” he accuses. “Under the guise of protection. So that you could take everything and I would have nothing.”

“I gave you what you wanted,” I point out. “It’s not my fault that you chose wrong.”

“He’s not worth it, Kolya,” Milana says bitterly. “Any of it.”

“I know that.”

He looks between the two of us as we talk like he doesn’t exist. He’s always hated that—feeling like the most inconsequential person in the room.

“You know that, do you?” he interrupts. “So what are you going to do about it?”

I can feel Milana’s eyes on me. She’s waiting for me to start fighting back. She’s waiting for me to be the ruthless don I always have been. Crush the uprising. Execute the traitor. Grind every enemy beneath the heel of your boot.

“You wanna know what I’m going to do about it?” I ask softly. I pause, then I say the answer I’ve arrived at again and again and again every time I’ve thought about how this might end. “Not a damn thing.”

Milana and Adrian both look at me, stunned.

“June doesn’t want you dead,” I continue. “And I will not do anything that might hurt her.”

Milana looks panicked. She knows what’s going to happen next, long before Adrian’s sweaty, fear-soaked brain has even begun to piece it together. “Kolya… he will never stop coming for you. He’s selling young women into prostitution. He’s—”

“I know what he’s doing. And he will pay for it,” I promise her. “But I will not kill him.”

“That’s so generous of you, brother,” he mocks. “Making big promises when I’m the one holding the gun.”

I turn to him solemnly and sigh. “That’s true, Adrian. So the real question should be, what are you going to do?”

“You wanna know what I’m going to do?” His eyes glow with the pale poison of long-held anger and hatred. The kind that rots you soul-first. “I’ll tell you. I’m going to strip away everything beautiful in your life. I’m taking away your Bratva, Kolya. I’m taking back my woman and my child. At the end of it all, you’ll be left with nothing. And it starts now.”

I stand tall and prepare for the end. I hear the click of the hammer of the gun as he thumbs it into place. He sucks in a breath.

Then he turns and fires at Milana.

45

JUNE

I hadn’t meant to stay away so long.

I just wanted some time to myself. To walk. To think. To take stock.

It has been dark for a few hours now and I’ve gone from waiting for Kolya to show up in a rage searching for me, to wondering why he hasn’t shown up in a rage looking for me.

I catch a cab back home. As we drive up the sloping hill that leads to the mansion, I realize the gates are half open and there are at least a dozen men milling around. Even from the backseat of the cab, I can feel the tension in the air.

The cabbie slows down a little. “Uh… this your address, miss?”

“Yes,” I tell him as panic grips me. “Here you go. Keep the change.”

I get out of the car and pace fast towards the gates. Some of the men look at me in panic, as if I might be a threat. But then they recognize my face and move aside without a word.

I don’t recognize any of them so I don’t ask questions. I just rush past them, then up the driveway towards the front door. By the time I reach it, not only am I winded, I’m a hundred percent certain sure that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I burst through the front door and look around. I can smell blood. Why can I smell blood? Then I notice a trail of the stuff on the ground. So much of it. Too much of it.

I feel myself start to shake. Where is Kolya?

“Ms. June?”

I turn to find Knox sprinting around the corner. He looks surprised to see me. Apparently, everyone is. Which means that whatever happened here tonight was big enough that everyone forgot all about me.

“What happened?” I ask. “Where’s Kolya? Is h-he… alright?”

“He’s fine,” Knox replies. “But Milana is pretty badly off.”

“What?” I ask, feeling my blood run cold.

“She was shot. Dr. Sara’s working on her now.”

“Shot,” I breathe, trying to wrap my head around that. “She was shot here? In the mansion?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“By whom?”

Knox fidgets, looking extremely uncomfortable for a man as calm as he usually is. “By the don’s brother. He came with your sister.”

I freeze. “Adrian. He came with Geneva? Where is she now?”

“In the blue room where it happened,” he says. “She’s been stuck on the same chair for the past fifteen minutes. She hasn’t moved or said anything. The shock… It got to her.”

I move past him and charge into the blue room. Geneva is exactly where he said she would be. She’s perched on the edge of an armchair with her hands on her lap. Her expression is blank, a frozen rictus of haunted anxiety.

I drop down on my knees in front of her. “Geneva?”

Nothing.

“Genny?” I say softly, trying again. “Genny, it’s me. It’s June.”

She blinks. It’s pathetic how much that one simple gesture makes me feel so much better. The catatonia seems to fade as her eyes focus on me and she blinks a few more times. “Juju…?”

“Yeah,” I say urgently, grabbing her hands. “I’m here. Genny, what the hell happened?”

Geneva shakes her head. She opens her mouth, but instead of words, sobs come barreling out. She leans forward, throws her arms around me, and starts crying.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my sister cry.

She holds me like a child would hold her mother, with that deep trust that comes from instinct. So I hold her back and wait for the tears to slow.

They don’t. Not for a long time. When she finally pulls away, my legs are numb with pain. I force myself up and onto the coffee table in front of her.

“Genny,” I say gently, “can you tell me what happened?”

Her eyes are wet, her cheeks creased from where she had her face pressed into my shoulder. She doesn’t make any move to wipe her face clean, so I do it for her.

“It’s okay,” I encourage. “Just tell me.”

She looks down for a long time, trying to find the courage through her sobs. “I-I-I… I’m sorry,” she finally manages to choke out. She looks up at me, her eyes pale and translucent. “I should have believed you. Not him.”

I suck in my breath. I can almost hear the dramatic music swell. The true villain is unmasked. The lies are unraveled. The truth is revealed.