Page 104 of Merciless Queen

I skip forward to that part of the journal, rereading how he left the bedroom where I was tied up, screaming and begging for him to change his mind, while he was crawling back to this room like a coward. I picture him like me, sitting drunk in the middle of the room with the journal in his lap as he recounts his parental failures.

No Pakhan’s soul is ever intact. Mine started to crumble the night I lost Mama.It completely disappeared with Diana’s death.

I wonder the truth behind that statement. If I still have a soul, or if I’m another decade of darkness from losing it? Papa was a man raised by circumstance and heartache. According to these pages, he didn’t start out a monster, so what’s to say I too won’t become like him?

A knock on the door has me jumping, and when it opens, Dimitri slips inside, muttering about darkness before switching on the overhead lights. It washes the office in a brightness that my emotional, drunken stupor isn’t capable of handling, and takes a few blinks to focus on him crossing the room, gaze locked on the book in my hand.

“You found something?”

I clutch it a bit tighter. Maybe it’s silly, but I don’t want him to read it—not all of it anyway. Papa hid this book because he feared others, like his own father and Ivan, getting their hands on it, and I…I don’t know. Despite what he’s done, I feel compelled to continue hiding it. In some fucked up way, it helps me understand him better without rationalizing his actions.

The sight of Dimitri instantly brings back what’s probably the most unexpected entry: July 13, 2014. Unexpected, and sickening…and now it all makes sense.

Why Dimitri despises his father. Why he constantly disappears to Canada.

I’m the selfish bitch who never put it all together. At the time, I was away at boarding school, but when I returned for the summer, the changes in him were obvious. A shadow clung to him, like death personified. In many ways, he reminded me of his father, and I figured he embraced Bratva life after years of resisting it.

Katya Terasov.

“Van, did you hear me?” He nudges my knee with his foot, but all I can do is stare mutely. He looks past my dazed expression to the book in my hand. “What’s that?”

Of course, it’s all about Katya. His high school girlfriend who he claimed time and time again, he’d marry one day. Until that summer, when they broke up. He gave few details, and based on the cloud of despair clinging to him, I didn’t dare ask for any. I had every reason to believe his story.

Never could I have guessedthat.

What’s crueller?

Selling your fifteen-year-old daughter’s virginity for political and financial gain, or paying a group of men to kidnap your son and his girlfriend and rape her repeatedly, all to make a point to him about his mandatory enlistment into the Bratva?

“A journal,” I finally manage to answer, flipping it over so he can see the cover. “Papa wrote so much down, starting from his engagement to my mother.”

“Vanessa.” Dimitri’s gruff tone is his version of a hug as he kneels down beside me, reaching for the book, but I clamp down harder on it.

“He loved her, Dimitri. As much as he was capable of loving another person. He loved…me.” My eyes tickle, and it’s only then that I realize it’s with the formation of tears. That I’mcryingover the asshole. “He was different then. It was the loss of his own mother, and mine, that made him change.”

I flip open the book, finding the entry about loving me and let him read it. His gaze skims the page quickly before he looks up, his mouth in a downturned smile. “Vanessa, the man who wrote that and the man who you knew aren’t the same.”

“I know it doesn’t change anything but—”But it’s nice knowing I wasn’t hated my entire life.With a shake of my head, I say, “Doesn’t matter, I guess. He also wrote about the war with Zeno’s family. He knew about Serafina’s birth. More than knew, actually.” I recount the marriage deal, and how Papa used another Family within the Cosa Nostra to get ahead of the Mancinis.

When I finish, Dimitri looks contemplative, rubbing the shadow on his chin. “That information could be useful for when you wish to retaliate.”

I rest my hand on his arm, already shaking my head. “War’s over. No more. For Serafina, I’ll tell him.”

He watches me, eyes flicking in the dull overhead lights. “You connected with her.”

Did I? I hardly know her. One conversation doesn’t exactly formulate a connection. I admire her, certainly. “There’s something about her, that’s all. She’s innocent. The product of Papa’s shitty choices. Zeno will do anything to keep her safe, including give himself up.” I pause, knowing my cousin well enough to add, “That doesn’t make her leverage.”

“All right, Vanessa.”

“There’s more,” I tell him, unable to look at him as I flip to the July 13, 2014 entry, and turn the journal around so he can read.

As his eyes pass over the words, they tighten in the corners. His nostrils flare between paced breaths, and his jaw locks. He falls ashy and cold. Some of the soldiers have nicknamed him Death, for the way he can mercilessly reap another’s life, but to me, he’s always been Dimitri. Now…I see it.

“It’s always been about Katya.”

Dimitri jerks away, stalking toward the other side of the room. His hands slide through his hair, fisting the ends, and that’s how he remains. Rigid, arms over his head, trying to block everything out.

I scramble to stand, taking the book with me but not approaching. “I’m sorry. What you two endured?—”

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