Page 2 of Bound By Longing

But how can I be safe and happy when I feel like I’m slowly dying?

The best memory I have of my father is when I was ten years old, and he took me out for ice cream. Denis Morozova was a busy man. He barely gave Sofiya and Vik any attention other than when they were practicing ballet.

But he attended to me.

“My little angel,” he said as we sat at the sticky table and ate our ice cream. “I want you to remain perfect and be just the way you are forever.”

I soaked up his praise. He so rarely gave it to anyone else, including my sisters and mother. There was always tension between him and Mom. Never a full love there.

But that didn’t stop me from believing in love myself.

I licked my ice cream cone. “Daddy, why didn’t Sofiya and Vik come with us?”

“Because they’re not perfect like you are, angel. Remember to always be my good girl.”

I took his words to heart. He’d cast Sofiya and Vik to the side because they weren’t good enough. Vik was too strong-willed and abrasive, whereas Sofiya bonded with our mother more than any of us.

That left my father and me.

I knew nothing of what he did for a living when I was that age. I didn’t fully become aware of it until he died and the vultures swooped in.

I didn’t know I was a part of the Bratva, and I definitely didn’t know it would never let me go.

That’s why I remember that day eating ice cream with my father. It was the first day he ever did it.

And the last.

Even though he wouldn’t die until I was eighteen, we never went for ice cream again. He still favored me and showered me with gifts, but he kept his distance. Maybe he was trying to prepare me for a world of darkness. The Bratva is a deadly and dangerous place as I’ve learned in the past year.

I cling to the memory of my father because he was the last man I ever met who truly treated me with love and respect.

Now that I’m a single woman in the world of the Bratva, I’m worried about the men who’ll come calling on me. I haven’t met a man like my father. I’m not treated like an angel.

I want my prince charming, and the longer I’m stuck in my sister’s house, the more I long for it.

“Happy birthday!”

I smile before blowing out the candles on my cake.

“How does it feel to be twenty?” Sofiya asks, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and squeezing me.

“Not that much different from nineteen, I’ll be honest.” My words get a laugh out of the other guests—well, my sisters and their husbands.

I always loved huge birthday parties when I was a girl. My father never held back from throwing them for me. But it’s the second year now I don’t have my father and mother present for my birthday. It stings. I blink back my tears and focus on Vik’s housekeeper, Nika, as she cuts the cake for all of us.

The party, of course, is taking place at Vik and Aleksander’s house. I don’t even get to go out and have fun somewhere else.

“Thank you,” I tell my sisters, who I know planned the birthday party. “I really appreciate this.” I really do. I love my sisters more than anyone else in this entire world, especially now that my dad is dead. I never want to seem ungrateful for my life. I have two sisters who have fought tooth and nail to make sure I’m all right.

I need to put my desires behind me and focus on the present. It’s ok that I can’t leave the house. There’s so much more than that.

Or so I tell myself.

“You’re very welcome,” Sofiya says, standing back up. Her pregnant belly is really showing by now.

“You better like the cake,” Vik says, “because I helped make it.”

Everyone goes silent.

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