Page 2 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

A bloody one.

I drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before releasing it. The warm air cascaded from my lips into the cold air, creating a tendril of smoky condensation, basking in the brief peace.

Grief was a fickle thing.

After my mother was murdered, the psychiatrist Elias forced me to sit down with informed me that there were five simple stages to the grieving process. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and last of all, acceptance.

I snorted. Simple my ass.

What she neglected to advertise about those stages could fill a library. In hindsight, however, she’d been on Elias’s payroll, and she’d spent most of our time together talking about accepting my new circumstances rather than teaching me the proper coping mechanisms for the slew of nightmares that threatened to drown me at the time.

No wonder I turned to drinking the moment I was free.

In the week since my husband’s death, I’d cycled through every stage and back again, repeating a few of my favorites like anger and depression. I had screamed, cried, and come to terms with his demise time and time again since his death.

And it meant nothing.

Locked away in my room at Liam’s, I settled myself to cycling between anger and depression. Anger at how Matthias shielded me from being shot. Anger at Kenzi for having fired the bullet. At Vas for not being with Matthias in the ambulance.

At myself for loving him so damn much, even in the end when all he’d done was break my heart.

When the harsh, dangerous emotion would finally subside, it was replaced with the sickening crack of depression, and with it, a wall of guilt.

Those two emotions were fucking chummy.

Guilt burrowed deep inside me as the anger lessened its hold on my heart. I felt guilty for the fury I felt at Matthias’s sacrifice. A sacrifice that showed me he’d cared for me in some capacity. Then there was the guilt for blaming Vas for not dying alongside the man I loved. He didn’t deserve that anger or resentment. There was nothing he could have done, and if he’d tried, there would have been two lives lost that day instead of one.

That would have been unacceptable.

There was something darker lurking beneath the surface of thosesimplestages of grief. It ran deeper than the anger and the guilt and the crippling depression. It was something more sinister. A feeling they’d glossed over in the “guide to overcoming your trauma” pamphlet the doctor so subtly handed me when I was eleven.

It was ever present and lingered at the forefront of my mind. I thirsted for it every waking hour. Dreamed of it when the call of unconsciousness pulled me under. It was a parasite digging its way beneath my skin, creating a well of darkness that stretched across my soul.

Revenge.

That should have been a stage every psychologist added to their ridiculous therapy.

I’d never thirsted for it before. Not even when Libby was murdered. Then again, I never needed to worry about revenge. Matthias had been the sword of justice I needed. Now I needed to become my own weapon.

My rage coursed hot enough that it could burn the whole city to the fucking ground. And that was exactly what I was going to do.

Just as soon as this fucking funeral was over.

“Tomas wants to meet you,” Vas whispered. He stood at my right hand, dutifully holding a large black umbrella over the two of us. “Pay his respects.”

Pay his respects.

I couldn’t help the derisive snort that rattled through my mind. Those were the same soft platitudes I received all day from his people. Mumbled condolences and quiet murmurs of “we stand behind you” and “we’ll go wherever you lead” filtered through nearly the entire crowd as they passed us on their way to my late husband’s grave.

Vas bowed his head respectively as each person strolled up to pledge their allegiance to him, the newPakhan, but their eyes were fixed on me. Judging me. Pitying me. I was done with it. There was no doubt in my mind that my ties with Vas and his brethren would soon be severed. The string of fate cut short. I wasn’t part of the IvankovBratva, I was simply one wife among many.

Another piece of collateral damage.

But that didn’t matter.

My thirst for vengeance wouldn’t stop, even if they no longer gave me their backing. Not when my father and brothers would gladly step up to the plate. They’d already promised the manpower in helping to dispatch Christian—just as soon as their own mess was cleaned up.

Leave it to my brothers to find trouble. Our family was good at that, apparently. In the week leading up to the gala, the twins managed to secure themselves a captive after she’d witnessed them take out Jimmy Burlosconi, the man who’d tried to knife me on the dance floor of their club, Clover. The man was a two-bit thug who thought he’d kill me and walk away with a couple million in his pocket.

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