couldn’t connect.
Vadim arched a brow at the same time she did, when their eyes met. That was probably the only thing that she took from her father—her expressions and her ability to seem indifferent to everything and everyone. Even if she was anything but …
Everything else, she’d taken from her dead mother. From her platinum blonde hair, to the ice blue of her gaze. Her angular features, soft lips, and wide eyes all came from her mom, too. She wished she remembered the woman better, but she’d been a bit young when her mother passed. All she was left with were the stories her brothers shared, and the occasional memory her father liked to tell when he was a little too drunk and free with his tongue.
Vadim, on the other hand, looked nothing like Viktoria. He was as big as a barrel in his chest, his face mean and weathered with age. Thin lips and a strong jaw that set off his roughened features.
The two of them didn’t look alike at all, but they were more similar than she cared to admit.
“I know I can’t stay here forever,” she said.
Vadim smiled a bit, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. To be fair, the man rarely smiled, anyway, and when he did … something bad was sure to follow. No one was exempt from that rule, not even his children. He had never hurt her. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that he wasn’t capable, though.
“Then, why are you still here?” Vadim asked, coming over to take a seat on the bench near the window with her. “You don’t even like Russia, girl.”
When she opened her mouth to lie and deny his statement, Vadim grinned and chuckled.
“Don’t bother with lies, yes? I know how you feel about the country.”
Of course, he did.
She wasn’t quite sure what he wanted her to say, though. The truth about why she hadn’t gone back to Chicago, where her brothers were waiting and reorganizing the Bratva that had once belonged to her father, was not as simple or as clean-cut as Vadim would like it to be. Or maybe it was Viktoria who didn’t think her answer was easy to understand.
After all, it was wrapped up in her father.
Vadim had been exiled to Russia—for good reason—by her older brother, Konstantin, after he’d taken over the Bratva. And while, sure, Viktoria had her brothers and a handful of friends in Chicago, it didn’t feel the same without her father.
Viktoria was the favorite.
The favored.
And still, she knew her father lied and hurt those she cared about, herself included. She was still struggling to connect the man who she knew had done terrible things to her brothers and the man she adored.
Because that was the thing about daughters and their fathers, wasn’t it?
Daughters adored their dads. Daughters saw their fathers as kings on unmovable thrones; as men above other men; as Gods among mortals. They put their fathers on a pedestal, and when they crashed down, it was always the daughters breaking the fall at the bottom.
Or rather, their misguided hearts and beliefs.
Squashed and shattered.
She was not exempt to the rule. If anything, she had been willing to pretend the bad parts of her father and the things about him that scared her the most hadn’t existed until she no longer had a choice but to face them head-on. By then … it was already too late.
She hadn’t been able to get out of the way when her father fell from his throne. So, she’d been crushed by the weight of his misdeeds, a lot like everyone else around her, too. Although … Viktoria, more so than others, if the way she felt meant anything at all. She wasn’t sure that it did.
Vadim gave her a look from the side, saying, “Chicago would be a far more comfortable place for you to be—especially with your brother taking over. I’m sure that extends you some grace and status. Why stay here longer than you have to?”
Maybe she wasn’t ready.
Maybe she hadn’t said the things she came to say quite yet.
She still wanted to love her father. She still wanted to adore him, even in his much-deserved exile from their family and life after all that he had done. He was her favorite, too.
“You know,” she said, “you asked about Konstantin and Kolya …”
“Mmm, my sons may hate me, but does that mean I have to hate them, Vik?”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
That wasn’t what she meant to ask.
“But you’ve yet to ask