Page 62 of Vicious Knight

On our way to finding a hiding place we’d already passed several members of the house staff who were dead. I thought we were going to die.

I was about to get out of the closet to get help for Caspian when two of our guards came rushing into the hallway. But they were shot. I didn’t see who shot them until they fell to the floor in a bloodied heap.

Through the keyhole I watched a man with a deep-set knife scar on his face walk over to them. He was a scary motherfucker. The stuff nightmares are made of. Sometimes that man still haunts me in my sleep.

He pulled out a knife from some old-fashioned sheath and stabbed the guards through the heart. Then the motherfucker carved out their hearts. It was like watching something from a nightmare come to life.

He muttered some strange, foreign words as he effortlessly harvested the hearts. Terror robbed me of everything that night, so I didn’t know what the hell he was saying. I couldn’t even try to repeat what the words sounded like. I still can’t.

At the time I only spoke Russian and barely any English. What he said sounded like Russian, but it wasn’t. I always knew, though, that if I heard it again, I’d know it.

The man put the hearts in a bag and walked away, never knowing I was hiding in a closet breaths away from him.

The only person to survive the attack was me.

Anyone else who could have been guilty or witnessed anything died.

When I told my uncle about the man, no one could identify anyone by that description. Aleksander and his men searched the planet to no avail.

The man became a mystery until years later when Gustave Bershov was found guilty of his crimes and reported seeing the same man at the palace he was working at.

My uncle kept Gustave alive because he was the only person to mention that man besides me.

The attack on the palace also mirrored what happened at my family’s home with men stabbed through the heart or missing their hearts. There was too much evidence that proved Gustave’s guilt, so Aleksander linked him to both attacks. But he was only interested in what happened with my father, which still remains a mystery to this day.

Gustave is alive because Aleksander views him as a link. A lead. Even if that lead is leading nowhere, he’s still alive because Aleksander is hoping that one day something will come up. He doesn’t want to go down as a leader who couldn’t even resolve his own brother’s murder. It makes him look weak.

I’d put it all behind me as a dead end, but the revelation about Ivy has taken me back to my nightmares. It’s made me wonder if Gustave truly had anything to do with my family’s deaths.

He’s always maintained his innocence. Always.

He was accused of being part of the plot to murder fifteen senior Knights and ten Bratva leaders. Such a massacre carried the death penalty for Gustave and his family.

Even though Gustave is being kept alive, his family would have still been executed without question. I saw the order for their deaths issued by my uncle when I was digging around.

I don’t know if Gustave arranged with Levgen to get Ivy and her mom out of Russia. Or if Levgen did that on his own accord. But they’re here now.

Their secret was well hidden and safe until the little deer ventured into the dark woods and ran into me. The Big Bad Wolf.

The question is: What do I do now?

The fact that I’m sitting here contemplating that question and haven’t called my uncle yet says a lot.

But it’s not a simple decision.

They’ve been in hiding for nine years, and the truth came out tonight.

It could come out again and if it was discovered that I knew, I could be killed, too. And my uncle has always been looking for a reason to eradicate my ass.

I have to think about this.

Two nights later my mind is still a fucking mess. I’m still conflicted and torn on what to do.

If I’m like this, I can just imagine that Ivy must be losing her mind over what I’m going to do with her secret.

For now, I’m putting the shit on pause so I can focus on having dinner with the man I need to keep the secret from.

Caspian and I just arrived at Aleksander’s new home for dinner. He lives closer to Raventhorn now. When we were younger he lived in New York, near Raventhorn Academy. It’s like he wants to keep tabs on us.

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