Chapter 158 158

Chapter 158 158
“You’re not invincible, Isaak.”

“Wrong.”

She looks at me and shakes her head. “If only that were true,” she says with piercing longing in her tone.

“Careful,” I say gently. “If you keep talking like that, I might get the impression that you’re in love with me.”

She smiles. “Please. You already made that assumption months ago.”

“Assumptions are not truths.”

“Is there a difference in your head?”

I smile and palm her ass. With a groan, she starts to clamber off me. But before she can get far, I stand up, still buried inside her, and walk us both to the bed like that.

I lay her down on her back on the sheets. Then, carefully, I pull out. The evidence of our lovemaking is smeared all over her thighs. I pluck a few tissues from the nightstand and carefully wipe her clean.

She balances herself on her elbows and watches me. “Thank you,” she murmurs, eyes hooded.

I meet her gaze and smile. Then I collapse onto the bed next to her. We lie like that for several minutes before she breaks the silence.

“Sam thinks you’re G.I Joe.”

I turn to the side and catch her profile. “What?”

“G.I. Joe,” she smirks. “Like, the soldier. Big tough guy. Very macho.”

I snort. “Really?”

“Really. Peter is convinced you’re more like Captain America.”

“Jesus. That goody-two-shoes? Tell him to pick again.”

She laughs. “Not your kind of superhero, huh? Which one would you say you are, then?”

She flips onto her side to look at me. I can’t help but stare back. She’s a beautiful woman. But she’s most beautiful like this… with her hair loose, her face make-up free, her skin flushed from frenetic fucking.

“You know I’m no superhero, right?”

A ripple passes over her eyes. She nods silently. “I know.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Sometimes,” she admits.

“I can’t change that about myself.”

“I don’t know,” she says with a small lift of her shoulders. “I think anything can change if you decide it can be done.”

There’s unapologetic hope in her eyes. Right now, I can’t bring myself to kill it.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

I know what she’s talking about, and I find that, weirdly enough, I want to talk to her about this. It’s not the kind of subject I’ve ever discussed with anyone other than Bogdan and my lieutenants.

But somewhere between all the fighting and the fucking, something has definitely changed. Blossomed. Something comfortable and familiar.

“I’m going to have to answer in kind,” I say grimly.

“With blood?”

“Yes.”

There’s no point beating around the bush. She knows it already; she just needs to hear me confirm it. And I’m not about to lie to her about what the Bratva is.

We’re not a bunch of superheroes running around trying to save the world. The Bratva is about power, not peace. And sometimes, power requires blood to be spilled.

“Did learning the truth about your father change anything for you?” she asks softly.

“Killing his brother was a betrayal,” I say. “Not just to Yakov, but to the Vorobev Bratva as a whole. But in many ways, he did it for the Bratva.”

“Are you justifying what he did?”

“No, I’m just stating a fact.”

“You can’t know his motives.”

“I knew my father,” I say firmly. “I saw him for what he was.”

“If that were true, why didn’t you see that he was the one who killed your uncle?”

I look at her sharply, but she meets my gaze without flinching. Maybe what Bogdan has been bleating about this entire time has been true all along.

She is my perfect match. The only woman that has ever provided me with enough of a challenge to keep me interested. To keep me involved.

Maybe that’s why I hadn’t been able to walk away that night at the restaurant. Something in me recognized something in her.

Six years later and it still can’t let go.

“You may have a point. But both things can be true at the same time. I missed a few things, but at the core, I knew him. And for him, the Bratva was everything. It was the end-all and be-all of his existence. And he couldn’t bear to see what Yakov was doing to it.”

“Which was what?”

“He was splitting it up and selling it off like junking a used car into scrap metal. He was weakening our position and leaving our men exposed. In danger. Everyone associated with the Vorobevs became a target.”

My fists tighten behind my head as I remember those violent days.

“We lost thirty-seven men in the weeks after Yakov sold an entire portion of our stock to a foreign investor. Bratvas thrive on their business acumen. But at the end of the day, it is not truly a business. You can’t just liquidate and move on. You can’t sell and walk away. You live and die by the Bratva. No other routes. No other options. That is our way.”

“It sounds like he wasn’t interested in being don.”

“I don’t think he was.”

“Then why not hand the reins over to someone who did want it? Like your father?”

It’s a good question. But I still don’t have the answer. All I have are guesses and assumptions and a whole host of memories that are tainted by the truth I learned after his death.

“I can’t begin to understand why either of them did what they did,” I tell her honestly. “But I’m here now and I have to deal with the fall-out.”

She’s silent for a while. Then: “Isaak?” Her tone is shaky, filled with trepidation, but there’s a determination that transcends even that.

“Yes?”

“This is purely a hypothetical situation, so please don’t read into it. But I want to know: what if you were to hand the reins over to Maxim?”

I can see why she might think the question would start another fight. In any moment before this, it probably would have.

But lying next to each other in bed like this… it feels like we’re finally occupying common ground after months of fighting from separate corners.

“What would I do then, Camila?”

She shrugs. “You could live your life,” she says tentatively. “You could build a family, maybe. Raise them away from all the violence and danger.”

Her eyes are filled with unspoken vulnerability. She’s trying to keep her tone detached, but I hear the tremor. I hear the fear. I hear the fragile hope.

I wish I could give her the reassurance she craves. A promise that we might be able to have a future that doesn’t involve the Bratva.

But she’s still speaking from the perspective of an outsider looking in.

She still doesn’t understand the all-consuming nature of the world I was born into.

“I can’t be anything else, Camila. In all the ways that matter, I am my father’s son. And I will live and die by the Bratva, just like he did.”

She turns her face to the ceiling to try and hide the disappointment in her eyes, but I catch it in the heavy sigh as her chest rises and falls.

“Even if I tried, Camila, there will be no clean break for me.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Maxim will never let me walk away. Even if I promise never to come back, never to challenge him for the title. He will not rest until I am buried. And until all my heirs are buried with me.”

I notice the goosebumps erupt across her skin. I have no choice but to let that terror sink into her.

She needs to understand just how much of a threat Maxim poses to me.

To us.

To Jo.