Page 10 of Stolen Seconds

Yet he hadn’t known danger could come in different shapes and sizes.

Whether my father wanted it or not, I’d been exposed to violence since I could remember. I’d seen what happened in the west wing of our house when he heldspecialmeetings. I had been given strict instructions not to leave my room when they occurred, but no one ever paid me any attention, let alone the staff. Why would they when my own existence made me feel hollow?

At the age of fifteen, I’d killed someone for the first time. All it took was for a wrong touch from an employee and I hadn’t hesitated to make sure it was their last.

The experience had left me jarred, and I couldn’t grasp onto the reality of what I had done.

My mother had found me in my room, stock-still covered in blood and instead of consoling me as I had expected, she retrieved my father. That’s when my training began.

Furthermore, he had doubled down, decreasing the number of people who were allowed past the property gates, leaving me to wilt in my room with how vacant the house had become.

When I wasn’t training, I would lay in bed, longing to experience more than what I’d been molded to accept.

Even the moments that I’d shared with my parents had felt more of a chore than out of genuine interest. I couldn’t even blame them with how frequently they were away for business. Nonetheless, I’d savored them in hopes of having it forever. But it was short-lived. Time went on and yet I felt stuck.

Days blended and it became harder to live in secrecy. I had been isolated, rotting in the recesses of my mind, and I couldn’t handle the silence—the stillness of it all anymore.

When I experienced my first panic attack, my father was there, defeat and pain written across his face as we both knew I couldn’t continue living the way that I was.

At eighteen, I left home. But I couldn’t escape who I was.

I moved to America and became somewhat of a spy for him, gathering information in secret so he could gain intel on others. And as an attorney, it was easier to do so.

To this day, no one knew that my real last name was Morozov. Not even my best friend.

“Have you settled in at Aurora’s?”

I sighed at the mention of her name. “Yes.”

“What is it,Irina?” he asked, his tone laced with concern. I could picture him now, seated in his mahogany office and sipping on his vodka.

“I. . . I just feel guilty for lying to her about the reason for my visit.”

I trusted Aurora wholeheartedly, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair to have her keep this from Roman. If he found out, it could lead to an unwanted war, and I couldn’t risk it.

She was the first person I’d ever been comfortable enough to be around when we’d first met. But my true identity was something I’d never shared with her. That was a risk I couldn’t take, especially not after she’d married theDonof the Cosa Nostra.

“You know exactly why they can’t find out your realidentity,” he muttered, power ripping from his voice. “Andneverbe ashamed of being my daughter. You are the gem of the Bratva and I won’t let guilt chip away at you. . . or stop you from your mission.”

The same Bratva that hadn’t known of my existence until after I’d left Russia. It was ironic, how I’d been more valuable to them in the end than most of their other members.

I was more than capable of fending for myself. After my father found out I’d killed for the first time, he made sure I was never put in a situation that I couldn’t get out of. He didn’t doubt my skills, but I felt as though sometimes he’d forgotten I was his daughter and not his employee.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Mission?Papa,thatmissionit to bring my brother home.”

Nicolai Mancini. But I knew that wasn’t his last name. He was a Morozov, heir to the Bratva.

My efforts at finding information about him led to dead ends. It seemed that Roman had made ithismission to conceal everything about Nicolai.

The only reason we found his location was because of my cousin, Viktor, who was tech savvy to no end and our link in keeping our names clean.

“Bring him home,Printsessa.”

My father had an affair while on a business trip to Italy over two decades ago. An affair that gave me a brother I never knew about.

My parents had an odd relationship, fucked up, to say the least. It was a chaotic and an abnormal dynamic, butthey were forced to marry for a stronger alliance, so it wasn’t surprising.

They did love one another, though; I knew it when my mother passed away. I saw the way my father mourned her loss. That pain had aged him.

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