Page 159 of Ivory Ashes

I stare back at him. “You know damn well why.”

He groans and spins to standing, pacing across the room. “So she killed Trofim. Who the fuck cares?”

Raoul opens my office door, a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. I’m reaching for it before he even makes a move to hand it to me.

“She lied about it,” Raoul says, picking up on what we’re talking about as if he never left the room. “She should have told him.”

“Why?” Anatoly snorts. “So Mikhail could have pulled this Annie Wilkes bullshit even earlier?”

“Enough with the fucking references,” I growl.

“You’re just mad because you don’t read and aren’t as cultured as I am,” he fires back. “And I’m mad because no one in this room ever liked Trofim, so why do we care that Viviana killed him? I think we should throw her a parade. I mean, honestly, raise your hand if you cared for one single second what happened to Trofim?”

To no one’s surprise, all of our hands stay down.

Anatoly throws up his own hands like he’s made his point and then flops down into a chair.

“This isn’t about Trofim,” I snarl. “This is about Viviana. She killed our brother, didn’t tell me I had a son, and is now my wife. If I don’t stop and consider what the fuck all of that means, then I don’t deserve to be pakhan.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It means that fate brought you both together,” Anatoly says, like either answer is completely acceptable. “Viviana isn’t some mastermind working this all to her benefit. She would have kept hiding forever if you hadn’t bought Cerberus.”

I’ve almost forgotten about Cerberus… not that the board members are upset about that, I’m sure. They’re probably hoping I’ll never show up to another meeting so they can quietly reclaim their company. If the Greeks don’t want peace and I lose shipping access along the Eastern seaboard, they might as well. Taking over Cerberus will have been for nothing.

“She told you her father made her kill Trofim,” Raoul points out. “Do you believe her?”

I shrug. “We all know Agostino is a piece of shit. I wouldn’t put it past him to threaten her.”

I wouldn’t put it past him to kill Dante, either. Viviana had good reason to be worried about what he’d do.

“Imagine asking your daughter to do your dirty work,” Anatoly sneers. “What a coward.”

“Agostino threatened her, but Viviana chose to follow through. She chose to kill Trofim rather than take that flight to Russia and disappear.”

“Because she was worried that our psychopath of an older brother would come after her for revenge. Which he absolutely would have!” Anatoly argues. “Viviana was right. She didn’t have another choice.”

“I was the other choice!” I shout. I drum my fingers around the steaming coffee mug in my hands, watching the ripples move across the dark surface. “She could have come to me. I would have protected them both.”

The room is quiet and I know instantly I’ve said too much.

Raoul and Anatoly know me better than almost anyone else in the world, but they still aren’t used to getting this kind of peek into my head.

Anatoly slides to the edge of his chair, getting as close to me as he can without actually standing up. “She’d just watched you beat Trofim to a pulp the night before her wedding. The two of you had sex and then you told her to leave… She probably didn’t know coming to you was an option.”

Also, I told her it wasn’t.

Viviana wanted to know if I was there in her bridal suite that night to replace Trofim as her groom. I assured her it would never happen.

“Why don’t we sort out what is going on with the Greeks and then come back to handling this?” Raoul suggests. “We are fielding attacks all over the city. We can’t deal with what’s going on inside the family until we deal with the shit from the outside.”

I shake my head. “If we don’t deal with Viviana soon, there will be an uprising on the inside once the men find out.”

“Then no one can find out,” Anatoly offers.

“The same way we weren’t going to let anyone find out about Trofim’s murder?” I snap. “Our skeletons don’t stay buried, brother. The men rallied behind me when I exiled Trofim, but if they find out my bride killed him, they’ll think the same thing father does: that it was to ensure Dante had a clear line to power. I’ll look weak, like she manipulated me. They’ll doubt my leadership.”

“No one gives a flying fuck about Trofim!” Anatoly shouts as he jumps out of his chair. “Literally no one.”

“They may not care about Trofim, but they care about honor.”

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