I stall for time by taking another sip of my hot chocolate. “The plan was to move back to the United States.”
“Of course he’d have wanted that.”
“It wasn’t his suggestion,” I reply. “It was mine. I was determined to go back home.”
“To reunite with your beloved sister and nephews?” he asks.
Goosebumps pepper my skin. Here it is—the moment I was dreading.
I know that to avoid mentioning Jo now would make things obvious later if and when she does come to light. There’s no way I trust the man enough to share Jo’s existence with him. God only knows what Isaak would do with that information.
But maybe I can protect her by telling him about her now. I can hide her in plain sight.
“And my niece,” I say, feeling like I’m betraying Jo.
“You have a niece, too?”
I nod. “She’s a beauty.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“I’ve missed so much of their lives. I don’t want to miss anymore. And Alex—”
“Maxim.”
“Maxim,” I amend. “He swore was powerful enough that he could protect me from the threat of the Bratva. I know—ironic, isn’t it?”
“Life usually is.”
“I was on the verge of leaving the program altogether, you know,” I inform Isaak. “The department was going to release me back into the wild, so to speak.”
“I see,” Isaak says slowly. His tone is telling, but I can’t pinpoint why.
“You don’t know my reasons for making certain choices, so don’t bother trying to figure them out,” I snap.
He raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t say a word.”
“But I can see you thinking.”
“You’re going to hold my thoughts against me?”
“If I have to.”
He chuckles. At that sound, I feel excitement snake down my body before concentrating between my legs. The fact that my physical attraction to him is so strong even after all these years is troubling. Not to mention terrifying.
Nothing about the two of us is simple.
We share a daughter and he has no clue about her.
He married me against my will and he’s keeping me hostage.
His cousin is my ex-fiancé and there’s a whole family feud brimming just under the surface.
It’s all so complicated that I get a headache just thinking about it.
And it’s nowhere close to finished.
“Are you going to tell me how this thing started between you and Al… er, Maxim?” I ask.
“It started long before we were born,” Isaak explains. “With our fathers. Exceptions have been made, but generally speaking, the mantle of Krestnyy Otets passes down from the oldest son to the oldest son.”
“No wonder you think of yourself as a king.”
He smirks. “My father, Vitaly, was the youngest son and my uncle Yakov was the older one. So Yakov took over when my grandfather died.”
I lean in, immediately intrigued.
“Except that Yakov wasn’t really suited to be don. He wasn’t ambitious, wasn’t motivated. He took the legacy my grandfather built and began mortgaging it for nothing. He started selling to our enemies and dramatically reducing the power of the Vorobev Bratva. He made us vulnerable. Weak. We were more susceptible to attack because our enemies started to see our family as an easy target. The reputation we worked so hard to construct was falling apart.”
“Did something happen?”
“We had many enemies outside of the Bratva. But under Yakov’s leadership, we started to earn enemies within our ranks, too. And then, Yakov started to get sick. His diagnosis was vague. Complex. He died months later, coughing up blood in his own bed.”
“And your father became don,” I surmise.
“Yes. He rebuilt the Vorobev Bratva and restored our reputation.”
“He was a ruthless man, I take it?” I ask, glancing at Isaak’s mutilated arm. I can’t see the scars under his long-sleeved shirt, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget them.
“He was what a don needed to be,” Isaak replies. “Like it or not, everyone agreed that it was effective. Everyone but Svetlana.”
“Svetlana?”
“My uncle’s widow. Maxim’s mother.”
“Oh.”
“After Yakov’s death, she took Maxim and they left New York. My father gave them a mansion in Michigan, and he also gave Svetlana a generous monthly stipend. She kept her distance, but she always maintained that it was my father who killed Yakov.”
I raise my eyebrows. “And did he?”
Isaak’s eyes go cold for a second, and I know I’ve asked the wrong question. But I refuse to take it back.
“Of course not. My father was not a perfect man. But loyalty was one thing he did have. He ingrained the importance of loyalty into my brother and me when we were still just boys. He may not have agreed with my uncle, may not even have respected him. But while Yakov was alive, he was my father’s don. He would never have moved against him.”
I can see the certainty in his eyes, the absolute absence of doubt. And I can’t help but believe it, too.
“It is possible that Yakov was poisoned,” Isaak admits. “But if so, it wasn’t my father who did it. Svetlana didn’t believe that, though. And when she took Maxim away, she filled his head with the same lies.”
“So he believes that you’ve taken his birthright?” I say.
“That’s exactly what he believes,” Isaak says. “And he has his loyalists who support that opinion.”
“And you couldn’t have just, I dunno… talked things through with him? Explained that your father could never have killed his brother?”
“I did try,” Isaak admits. “But Maxim severed all chance of reconciliation in one move.”
I tense. “What did he do?”
“He killed my father.”
I stare at him in shock. “He killed his own uncle?”
“Not personally, he’s too much of a coward for that. He got one of his henchman to do the dirty work.”
“And you’re sure that Maxim gave the order?” I ask.
“My father died the same way my uncle did,” he replies. “I’m sure.”
I sit back and take a deep breath. “That’s… a lot of information.”
He smirks. “Don’t say I never shared with you.”
After a night of refusing to do it, I finally give up and lose myself in that smile. It’s too easy to do. Like falling asleep. One moment, I’m raging against it, swearing that Isaak Vorobev will never get inside my head or my heart. The next, I’m on the verge of smiling back and saying something with that smile that I cannot possibly let myself say.
Luckily, I catch myself at the last second.
“It’s late,” I say abruptly. “We should go.”
He doesn’t argue as he gets to his feet. I try and adjust the dress, but the moment I pull down the hem, it reveals too much boob, and the moment I pull at the neckline, it reveals too much leg.
“Damn you for this dress,” I tell him as we make our way to the exit.
“That dress was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.”
I keep my head down so Isaak doesn’t see the blush in my cheeks as we step into the car, which is idling out front for us.