Page 154 of Bratva Butcher

“Why? Why can’t you?” A horrible thought crossed my mind. “You’re not using Autumn as some sort of twisted replacement for Mother, are you?”

“What? Of course not.” The way his voice pitched that little bit higher told me how offended he was with that question. “Your mother and Autumn arenothingalike. Nothing. Yekaterina was elegant. Poised. When she stepped into a room, the whole place brightened. Lit up like the sun. When Autumn walks into a room, she lights it on fire. She’s rude. Rough around the edges. A complete and total smartass who says whatever the fuck she wants to say, no matter the consequences. She eats like a goddamn barbarian. You’d think the woman had never seen a knife and fork in her life. She talks in her sleep, and nine times out of ten, it doesn’t even make sense. She—”

The smile on my face got bigger and bigger the more he spoke. He was no longer comparing them to each other. He was simply just listing things about Autumn as if all those things were plaguing his mind. I’d never seen him so animated before.

“And!” he continued, not even noticing how much he’d come back to life from just the topic alone. “She’s incapable of saying thank you when someone helps her. It’s maddening—why are you smiling? This isn’t funny.”

“Father,” I said sternly, staring him deep in the eyes. “Whether you can see it or not, it’s clear your heart has moved on. It’s your mind that’s holding you back. Tell me why. I want to help you.”

He frowned and looked away, back into the flames. “I promised her.”

“Promised who what?”

“Your mother.” He took another pull from his vodka. Then another and another. “I stood over her grave and promised her that she would be the only one to have my heart.”

Ah.It all clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle. “You feel guilty.” I should have seen it. Now that I realised what it was,it was so obvious, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to notice it.

Guilt was a powerful emotion, capable of bringing even the most powerful man to his knees. My father had spent a decade keeping his promise, pushing away anyone who even tried to get close to him. Then Autumn came along, and it wasn’t as easy to keep her away. She’d managed to worm her way inside his heart, and he felt guilty for letting her in. For not keeping her out.

I tried to think of the best way to approach the situation, a nervous tightening taking hold in my throat. If I told him to get over it, push past the guilt, he would just double down and push back. I needed to make him see that the guilt was his enemy, not his friend.

“If Mother were here, what would she say to you?” I squeezed his hand supportingly. “If she were here, do you think she would agree with what you’ve done? Or do you think she would want you to be happy?”

His gaze moved behind me. I thought perhaps one of my brothers had decided to come in, but when I glanced over my shoulder, there was no one there. I looked back at him, my brows lowering into a tight frown. He was still looking behind me, an almost vacant expression on his face. He was definitely looking atsomething, but it was almost as if whatever he was looking at… He was the only one that could see it.

He’d done stuff like that a few times. While I was growing up, every now and then, he would just zone out, staring off into the distance. Sometimes, it would be for a few seconds. Sometimes, a few minutes. And then,bam, he would just snap back into himself and act like nothing happened.

I didn’t understand it then, and I didn’t now.

“Father,” I pressed, bringing his attention back to me. “What would she say?”

He exhaled heavily. His head hung forward. “She would tell me to be happy.”

“She would tell you youdeserveto be happy.” I took the bottle of vodka from his hand and sat it on the ground in the middle of all the empty ones. “You’ve mourned her for ten years, Father. While the world continued to go on around you, you stayed frozen, unable to move on, barely existing. Just a shell of your former self. Autumn brought you back to life. She made youfeelagain. Smile again. Laugh again. And while it will be a little weird for me to see you with another woman, you deserve to find someone to spend your life with.”

Even though he knew I was right, I could see him retreating, refusing to believe the words coming out of my mouth. He was looking at me, but I could see it in his eyes. I was losing him to the guilt.

I couldn’t allow that.

“You know, she saved my life.” He frowned slightly, not knowing what I was talking about. “In the arena. On Talon’s island. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of his soldiers was sneaking up behind me when I was smashing some guy in the face with a rock. Then, out of nowhere, this knife came soaring through the air and took him down right before he stabbed me in the back. It was Autumn. She saw it and saved me. Lukyan, too. Not even a second later, she got tackled by one of Talon’s soldiers and stabbed in the shoulder for her trouble. She made herself vulnerable to save us.”

“I didn’t know that,” he murmured softly.

I held his gaze, urging him to see how important my next words were. “She didn’t do it for me, Father. She didn’t know me. Didn’t care about me. We hadn’t even said a word to each other prior to that moment. She did it foryou. She risked herself…for you, because she knew how muchwemeant toyou.”

He processed my words, so many emotions flickering in his eyes.

“All I want is for you to be happy.Autumnmakes you happy. Stop denying yourself your chance at happiness because of some promise you made ten years ago. Mother wouldn’t want it.Wedon’t want it. For the last decade, we’ve all watched you shut yourself off from everyone around you. Watched you deny yourself any chance of happiness because you can’t let go.” I got to my feet and stared down at him. “It’s time to say goodbye, Father.”

I stepped into the kitchen after leaving my father’s office to find Nikolai, Tatiana and Lukyan sitting around the island bench. “Mentally exhausted” was an understatement for how I was feeling.

The talk with my father had stripped me raw. Broken me down until there was hardly anything left. My soulhurtseeing him like that, but the pain would be worth it if he took what I was said on board.Ifhe listened to me.

The jury was still out on that one, though.

“I need food,” I groaned, plopping down into the seat next to Tatiana.

My best friend offered me a sympathetic smile. “How did it go?”

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