Page 110 of Vow of Silence

I can’t stomach the tears threatening to spill from my father’s eyes.

He hasn’t heard the worst of it yet.

“Where is?—”

I lift my hand to silence my father and switch to the second recording made after Ignazio broke my phone. Turns out Ionly need sixty percent of the screen left working for me to find the record button and seal my goddamn uncle’s fate. His ego grew too large, his complacency too dominant. He became comfortable these past years, precisely as I hoped he would, and given time, he did it—he slipped up and fucking voiced the things I can’t.

Papa’s hands clasp before his mouth, elbows on the chair’s arms while he listens as Ignazio admits his intention to ruin us all.

Pietro doesn’t repeat the second recording.

I could hear a pin drop.

The silence is deafening.

Arseni flinches when one of the double doors clicks open.

“Boss?” Manny leans in the gap. “Aleksy needs to speak with thevor.”

My father raises one hand above his head, waving him in.

Arseni’s guard steps inside, taking stock of the sullen men before him.

“What is it?” Nastasya’s father barks.

“Dmitry called.”

Thepakhanlifts his eyebrows as though to say, “And?”

Aleksy swallows, eyeing Papa and me before saying, “Ignazio is at the house.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Nastasya

“Are you listening to me?” Lana snaps her fingers before my face, slipping to the edge of her seat. “What the hell did that woman do to you this morning?”

I stare at the wall past her shoulder and utter, “Nothing.”

Nothing other than shine a light on the twisted and ruthless world I’ve deluded myself into thinking I can escape these past years.

I can’t escape who I am any more than I can deny the shape of my body or the hint of the motherland on my tongue. I can’t escape my fate any more than my mother could.Fuck.I’m a goddamn Bratva princess. One who vehemently denied that the life defined my future until now.

It would always catch up to me—it was only a question of when.

“As I was saying,” Lana pointedly states, “the caterers have agreed on the date. They’ve given us a few options, but at the rate you’re paying them, they can cook whatever the fuck you want.” She huffs a dainty laugh before her brow dives into a frown. “Who is paying for this?”

I turn my head and stare at her.

“This is where you answer me,” she teases.

“I actually don’t know.” I assume that Papa would foot the bill for most of it, but then Benito’s family has very much been in charge up to this point. “Shit.” I widen my eyes at the realization. “We’re too poor to pay for all this. It must be them.”

“See.” She leans back in her seat, arms folded high on her chest. “Still controlling everything we do.”

She sounds as jaded as her father. Distrusting and angry toward the family who supposedly oppressed ours, relegating us to nothing better than dirty foremen. Only, I don’t think it’s the De Santis who are wholly to blame for our gradual decline into ruin.

The paranoid control freak at the head of our table is a large part of why our name languishes.

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