Page 97 of Bratva Butcher

I couldn’t really blame him for that, and in a way, I definitely deserved it. But I didn’t want him thinking that. Thinking so little of me. That I didn’t care about it or him.

I got to my feet and went to my desk, pulling out my personal iPad. This one was mine. Not for business. It had photos and videos of Yekaterina. Of Aleksandr, Nikolai, Lukyan and Illayana when they were children. Babies. Videos of their first steps. Their first words. It was the only device that had them. They were for me and me alone.

Activating it with a swipe, I entered my passcode and then went straight into the files I had hidden. Security footage from around the house.

I turned the device to face Nikolai and pushed play on the video that sat waiting. “I didn’t leave your bedside for over seventy-two hours, Nikolai,” I said softly.

I didn’t need to watch it because I knew exactly what it would show. Nikolai, lying catatonic on an infirmary bed I’d had installed in one of the dining areas, several IVs hooked into his body and a heart monitor machine next to him.

Nikolai took the iPad, watching the footage with wide eyes. He pressed down to make the video fast forward. The time stamp on the bottom of it showed how long he’d been in that state. The entire time, I was there, sitting and sleeping in a chair next to the bed, reading a book, eating food from a tray, pacing the room, repositioning him every few hours so he didn’t accumulate bedsores.

I couldn’t say exactly why I decided to keep the footage. Maybe it was for that very moment. So I could prove that I wasn’t as much of a heartless bastard as I might have seemed. Maybe it was so I could alleviate the guilt I had over failing to be there for my son because I wasn’t willing to deal with my own trauma.

I truly didn’t know.

Nikolai’s hands shook as he watched me zoom around the room, taking care of him. He looked up at me, his mouth opening and closing. “I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t…remember this.”

Taking back the iPad, I locked it and put it on my desk. “No, I didn’t think you did. Like I said, the doctors said that, physically, you were in perfect health. But losing your son, the guilt you felt over not being there for Tatiana, caused you to shut down. For three days, you lay there, and I couldn’t leave you until you came out of it. When you eventually did, you had no recollection of it. I was afraid to push you on it because I feared you’d slip back into that unconscious state, and since you didn’t mention anything about what happened with your son, I thought you were just dealing with the loss the same way I had.” I shook my head. “It in no way excuses what I did. I should have been there for you after. I should have spoken to you about it. Let you know I knew so that if you wanted to talk about it, you knew you could come to me. I failed you as a father, and I’ll live with that guilt for the rest of my life—ooff.”

Nikolai hugged me, crashing into me and wrapping his arms around me so tightly that I struggled to breathe. For a moment, I sat there shocked, not sure what to do.

Hug him back.I looked up to see the ghostly image of Yekaterina standing behind him, a small smile on her face.

I raised my arms and hugged him, and I didn’t let him go until he was ready.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Dimitri Volkov

This is going tobe pure hell.

I adjusted my cufflinks, trying to mentally prepare myself to walk through the double, gold ornate doors in front of me.

It was the last place I wanted to be, locked in a room with a bunch of pretentious people who were so used to having things done for them that I doubted they even wiped their own asses.

Despite knowing what could come from the night—a possible location on Talon—I was tempted to turn the fuck around and go home. Events like that just made me want to drive a spike through my head,

Allistair Vanderbuilt was a seventy-two year-old, uber-privileged man who had a slight obsession with the eighteenth century. He held a ball at his residence, Eaghton Castle, once a year to feed that obsession, inviting all his aristocratic friendsand anyone rich and famous enough to bring attention to him and his ball.

Criminals like myself were good for that. We brought a certain flair to those kinds of events that excited the guests. The thrill of being in the same room as a murderer was something all those bored housewives liked to experience. Plus, if we were being honest, the majority of us were richer than everyone there put together.

We, of course, didn’t advertise exactly what it was thatmadeus criminals. But, rumours travelled fast in those types of circles.

I was known to the outside world as a ruthless businessman who’d done nefarious things to get to the position I was in.

Which, in part, was true.

Allistair took old traditions from back in the 1800s and incorporated them into his events, like the extravagant outfits and the dancing. But he also modernised it in other ways, insisting each year there be some sort of theme to make the night more memorable.

The year’s theme was masquerade, which was why I was dressed in a $600,000, all-black Stuart Hughes Diamond suit and holding a stupid mask that only covered the top half of my face in my hands.

“Tell me again why we can’t just kidnap this guyafterthe ball?” I grumbled, looking at Mikhail. “That way we don’t have toactuallyattend.”

He rolled his eyes, coming to stand at my side. We were alone in the hall, having arrived over an hour after the ball had officially started. “You’ve been such a grouch, lately. You know exactly why. You want to risk this guy slipping away again, and with him, any chance of finding Talon. Huh? Huh?”

“No,” I muttered under my breath.

“It’s not going to be that bad,” he said, snapping his mask onto his face. It only covered his eyes. It was black in colour, with an intricate design of lines and swirls similar to mine.

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