Page 10 of Ivory Oath

MIKHAIL

A trail of water and mud follows me through the mansion. Normally, I’d try to clean up after myself for Stella’s sake, but she’s dead, so fuck it. The mess stays.

It takes all the energy I have left to lumber up to my office anyway. My clothes are heavy and my muscles ache from too many hours in the gym. I should go to bed, but even as weary as I feel, I can’t imagine sleeping.

My office is dark when I push through the door and head to the bar cart. I need a drink more than I need clean clothes or a shower. I need to clear my head for a few blessed hours and?—

My senses kick in all at once and I whirl around in the middle of the room. “You must have a death wish,” I snarl.

“And you must be distracted,” my father remarks, stepping out of the shadowy corner. “I could have killed you if I wanted.”

I wish you would have.

I’m in front of him in an instant, my soaked sleeve barred across his throat. “You missed your chance. I won’t miss mine.”

“You want to kill me?” he rasps through his closing windpipe.

“Honor demands it after what you did.” I punctuate the point with a hard shove into his throat. “You sent a spy into my house. You kidnapped my wife and child.”

“I gave Dante back!” he points out like it matters.

It doesn’t.

“You betrayed me and you deserve to die. Plus,” I add, leaning all my weight on his chest, “it would be fun for me.”

He stretches onto his toes to suck in a desperate breath. Then, unbelievably… he smiles. “You’re finally ready, Mikhail. I’m so proud.”

I’m still drunk and tired enough that the words throw me off balance. I stumble back.

“Really, I knew you were ready when I heard you sent Viviana away,” he continues. “I spent years preparing you and I wasn’t sure it would ever be enough, but here you are: the leader I knew you could be.”

I shake my head, but his words rattle around, refusing to fall into any meaningful order. When he takes a step towards me, I shove him back against the wall. “You raised Trofim to be pakhan. He was always going to be your heir. The only reason I’m here is because I took it for myself.”

“There are some things in life that even we can’t control, Mikhail… like which son is born first.” He gives me a knowing look, but I stare blankly back at him. He sighs. “As a father, my duty goes beyond helping my children survive. I need to help you thrive. There’s a reason animals kill the weak offspring to help the stronger survive. Humans like to think we’re more evolved, but you know as well as I do that it’s survival of the fittest out there. It’s why I cut Anatoly loose when he was young. I needed to focus my energy on you and Trofim.”

“Anatoly would have made a better leader than Trofim.”

“But he didn’t have the lineage,” he insists. “His entire reign would have been questioned. He would have been dodging assassination attempts left and right. I didn’t want that for him.”

I snort. “Don’t act like you did him a favor.”

“But I did,” he argues. “Everyone has their faults. Anatoly’s is that he was born to the wrong woman. And Trofim… well, he had more than most. But the one I needed to correct the most is that he let his pride cloud his decision making. The same way your heart clouds yours.”

I dig my fingers into his chest as if I’m going to tear into him and come back with his own still-beating heart in my chest. I’m tired, but I might be able to summon the energy for that.

“I spent all of my time shaping both you and your brother for leadership,” he explains. “You weren’t just the spare. You were always a very plausible Plan B. If I could make you ready for this world.”

“I was always ready,” I growl.

He shakes his head. “If that was true, you never would have married Alyona.”

The mud from her grave is still under my fingernails. What would my father think if he knew where I was tonight? Would he still think I’m “ready”?

“She wasn’t strong enough for our world, Mikhail. You knew that. It’s why you kept her away from me. It’s why you hid her away in that house, isn’t it?”

I don’t answer.

I don’t need to.

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