there was no such thing as loyalty. Anyone could betray them, and would for a price—including one’s own brothers.
There had been four brothers: Lazar, Rolan, Patva and Filipp. Each had become a vor in the bratya, the Russian mafia. Each ruled their own lair of shifters. All were very cruel, sadistic men. Talking about them aloud to his cousin was one thing; talking in front of an outsider was something else, but he needed to get over that. He wasn’t ruled by his father any longer. In any case, Miron had been raised in the lair. He knew quite a bit about the Amurov brothers.
“Uncle Filipp didn’t kill Gorya’s mother as everyone has been led to believe,” Mitya said. “After Uncle Filipp killed his first wife, he accidentally found the woman who was his true mate. At least my father believed that was what changed him. Filipp suddenly was protesting the bigger plan the family had and he was protecting his wife.”
“What plan was that?” Sevastyan asked, frowning. “My father never spoke to me of a bigger plan.”
“As a whole, the brothers wanted to take over more territory. I don’t think that would have been difficult, but by that time, the leopards were so bloodthirsty they would go into a territory not held by shifters and let their leopards loose on the families of the vors. They would kill everyone. Man, woman and child.”
Mitya’s head was beginning to pound. The moment Ania had slipped out of the car, his leopard had reacted, going crazy, flinging himself toward the surface, demanding to be free. Since then, he hadn’t been quiet, not for one second. Mitya’s body was already hurting. With his leopard clawing at his insides, as if he could rip his way out of his confines, his body wanted to just lay it all down.
“Mitya, did your father take you along when they invaded other territories?”
Mitya nodded, closing his eyes, but the images were there, stamped forever into his brain. When he tried to sleep at night, those memories looped through his mind, playing out like a horror movie, over and over.
“Every single time. So many nights he let his leopard loose to hunt some unsuspecting tourist who had come to the nearest town when the ships came in. Because we had the port right there, it was easy to get one of the women to lure a man away from the rest of his crowd. Lazar would let his leopard loose and hunt him. Sometimes it was a small group of men. He always insisted I accompany him. In order to keep me from being beaten, my leopard would come out and he would have to hunt with Lazar.”
There was shame in the telling. He’d been too young to protect his leopard. His father’s beatings were brutal. He would force the leopard to emerge in spite of Mitya fighting to keep him inside. Once the leopard had surfaced, Lazar would beat the cat until it complied and hunted with his leopard. Each time, the older, more experienced leopard would force the young cat to defend itself. Mitya knew his leopard was being taught to be vicious and given the experience of fighting until the animal was fast and deadly in a battle. It was one thing to teach a teen, but not a young boy.
He shoved his hand through his hair, angry with himself when he realized it was trembling. He turned away from Sevastyan’s too-close scrutiny. It was Sevastyan’s job to keep him safe. As head of security, he was the one who interviewed anyone seeking to come into their employ. Mitya had taken over a territory in the San Antonio area that had previously been run by Patrizio Amodeo, a crime lord who believed in human trafficking.
Like most crime lords in the States, Amodeo was not a shifter. The man had tried to kill their cousin Fyodor Amurov and his wife, Evangeline. Evangeline dove off a counter to cover Fyodor, and Mitya had inserted his body between the assassins and both Fyodor and Evangeline, taking the bullets meant for them.
At the time, he’d acted on sheer instinct, but he knew he had no sense of self-preservation because he was aware his time was up. He was so tired of the fight with his leopard. More than anything, he loved his leopard counterpart. Not one thing was the cat’s fault. The animal had been subjected to horrific beatings from Lazar and more from Lazar’s leopard. Both took delight