Mitya brought Ania’s knuckles to his mouth and kissed them. “If you don’t mind, kotyonok, I would very much like to speak to my cousin alone.”
“Of course, honey, just know that I love him dearly, and I want to be able to have both Sevastyan and Flambé to dinner at our house sometime in the future.” She went up on her toes, brushed a kiss on her husband’s jaw and left the den.
The office was spacious, but when two large men with big male leopards in their primes faced off in adversarial positions, that space became small immediately. Mitya put the length of the room between them.
“This has to do with Rolan? Your father?”
“You know very well Rolan is not my father,” Sevastyan accused. “When I was a teenager, I told myself you didn’t know, that I was protecting you from that knowledge. I quickly came to realize after habitually being subjected to beatings by both Rolan and Lazar, and their lieutenants, that there was no way Lazar, in his cruelty, wouldn’t have informed you or your mother of what he had done.”
Sevastyan’s gaze, banded with heat, never left Mitya’s. Shturm was close. They trained with the best every day. They never stopped. He loved Mitya, but betrayal was an ugly thing. In their family, fathers turned on mothers and daughters and even sons and nephews, killing them. It was the norm in his world.
“Yes,” Mitya admitted softly, “I knew. Lazar rubbed it in my mother’s face one night when Rolan’s wife came over pregnant. Rolan was out of town and Tatiana, your mother, was staying with us. Lazar kept taunting her, saying he was going to tell Rolan and Rolan would beat her until she lost the baby. His laughter was so ugly. I remember thinking how disgusting he was and how lucky she would be if she lost the baby. He wouldn’t have anything to hold over her head.”
“But he didn’t tell Rolan.”
“No, he didn’t. So, after she had you, Lazar forced Tatiana to sleep with him. He’d make her come to the house and bring you. I’d have to take care of you while he took Mom and her into the bedroom. Sometimes he wouldn’t go into the bedroom so he could show me what two women could do together to pleasure a man. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about killing you, killing us both, so those two women would be free of him. So we would be free of him.”
Mitya turned away from Sevastyan, balling his hands into two tight fists. “When you were not even a year and half, he liked kicking you around in front of the women. Hard. Beating you with his fists. He wanted me to join in. He would let his leopard out to threaten to eat you. When I wouldn’t help him, he let his leopard loose on me or the women. He was a fucking dick. A monster.” He turned back to Sevastyan. “He didn’t get much better as you got older, although he never beat you when Rolan was around. When did you find out?”
“I was a teenager. Lazar told Rolan. He was so smug. Rolan made the mistake of having his lair be too prosperous and other lairs took note of it. We’d swallowed two smaller territories that were right on the harbors and that gave us more control than Lazar. We also had taken a small but very critical piece of land that bordered the main highway controlling the railway.”
Mitya studied his face for a long time before speaking. “You were fifteen years old and you were already that fucking smart, Sevastyan. You told Rolan exactly what he needed to do to get the advantage over the other vors, didn’t you? You were the one running the business. That’s why the arms deals were suddenly going so smoothly and no one could figure out where the weapons were being kept. Lazar was going crazy. He tried to bribe so many of Rolan’s top men, but by the time he hit the location, the weapons were gone.”
Sevastyan couldn’t help but hear the pride in his voice, but that didn’t matter to him now. He hadn’t once taken his eyes from Mitya. His gaze hadn’t wavered, the heat still as white-hot as ever. Trapped inside his soul, a crimson rage blazed a molten fire so deep and strong he knew it would never be put out. He waited for the answer. He