Page 139 of Bratva Knight

Neither did I. If she wasn’t there, then where the fuck was she? My mind went to dark, evil places. Places where unthinkable things happened. I tried to block it out.

Talon wouldn’t do that. He wanted Father to suffer by watching us die. That included Illayana. Still, she’d been gone for nearly two whole days. What had Talon done to her in that time?

“She’ll be here.” Aleksandr’s voice sounded more confident than I’m sure he felt.

“Yes. She will,” Father agreed.

The woman, Autumn, stood at my father’s side, stance strong. I wasn’t sure if she could be trusted yet. Yes, she had agreed to fightwithus instead of against us. But still, we didn’t know her. There was every chance she could turn around and stab us in the back.

“Go warm up. I don’t know when we’ll be called to the Arena, but I want you all to be ready when we are,” Father commanded.

We all bowed our heads. “Yes, Father.”

He grabbed my arm, stopping me from walking away like Aleksandr and Lukyan. I frowned, looking down at his hand in confusion.

“Give me a moment alone with my son,” he told Autumn.

She saluted him. “As his Royal Grouchiness commands.” Then she bowed eloquently before walking away.

Father shook his head, mild amusement on his lips before it vanished. He levelled his gaze on me, seriousness burning in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay with what we all discussed last night?”

Ah. We’d all had a family talk about what we were going to do when the games started. We weren’t exactly sure what Talon had planned, but there were really only two options.

He could either pit us against others. Our family versus the other fighters.

Or…he could pit us againsteach other.A fight to the death between us, where only one came out victorious.

Of course, we all hoped that wouldn’t be the option, but there was every likelihood that it could be.

If it was…well, we needed to be prepared. So, last night, we’d come up with a plan.

“I’m sure.” I gave him a small smile. “I’m not capable of killing any of you.”

“Nor am I.” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’s a father’s job to protect his children, and I am so sorry that it is a job I have failed miserably.”

“Father—”

He held his palm up, silencing me. “If I thought for even a moment it would make any difference, I would beg Talon to let you all go.”

I internally scoffed. There was nothing anyone could say or do that would make Talon let us go. He was determined to make my father suffer, and we provided him the perfect way to do that.

“But we both know that’s pointless. I wish this was never a position you had to be in—”

“Father,” I pressed, voice stern. He stopped his rambling and looked me in the eyes. That emotionless mask he always kept on his face was gone. He was showing me everything. For the first time in my life, he was sharing his emotions with me. Sadness. Hopelessness. Desperation. Love. It was all right there. He was holding nothing back, letting me see it all.

“We all agreed. If only one of us can get out of this place alive, it’s Illayana.” It had been a unanimous decision.

If, worst case scenario, Talon decided to pit us against each other for the games—something every single one of us was incapable of doing—we decided to sacrifice ourselves, so Illayana would be the last one standing.

Father didn’t want any of us to die. In fact, when Aleksandr first suggested the idea, he flat out refused. He tried coming up with other solutions, other ideas, but they all fell short.

“We’ll try and escape.”

“We’ll demand a different game.”

“We’ll refuse to fight.”

He knew as well as I did that, if we refused to fight, Talon would just kill us all. At least that way, Illayana might live. She might survive. So the plan was simple. Father would hold Illayana back while The Crimson Death took our lives quickly and painlessly—something the woman claimed she could do easily—and then Father would killherbefore finally killing himself, leaving Illayana to be the last one standing. That last bit of the plan had been organised when Autumn was asleep. We needed her to do the killing because none of us were capable of hurting each other like that. But once she served her purpose, Father would end her so that Illayana could live.

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