Page 112 of Kings of Cruelty

Movement in the corner of the room startles me. Somebody starts clapping.

My father steps out from the shadows. “I knew you’d show up here,” he says in Russian.

Yuri raises his arm and aims his gun at my father, and before I realize what I’m doing, I grab his wrist and force it down. “No!”

Yuri growls impatiently. “What? Kill him and be done with it.”

My father bursts out laughing. “Roman Igorevich always accuses you of being Konstantin’s lapdog, but apparently you have more balls than my son does.”

My cheeks flush beneath the helmet. “I thought…” I falter. This isn’t the moment to have a heart-to-heart with my father, but I know I can’t let him die without resolving some trauma.

Or at least trying to.

“You go ahead,” I tell Yuri. “I’ve got this handled.”

Yuri hesitates, but he nods. “Okay. Let Sierra know if you need backup. And the other men are still out there.”

He waits for me to let go of him, then jogs out of the room.

“Are you crazy?” Sierra hisses in my ear, but I ignore her as I focus on my father.

I lift my own hand, for all that it feels impossibly heavy, and aim the gun at him.

Somehow, my hand isn’t shaking.

“You can still come out of this alive,” I tell my father, defaulting to Russian—partially because I want to appeal to him, and partially because some shameful part of me doesn’t want Sierra to understand what’s being said when my father inevitably gets vicious. “You can help us.”

My father spits onto the floor. “My American son, who ignores my advice and thinks he knows better than me. If you wanted to survive, you should have left when I told you to.”

“I’m still going to survive,” I tell him. “You’re not. Don’t you understand you’re outnumbered? Comeon.” I can’t help but plead with him, even though I know he’s not going to listen to a damn word I say. “I didn’t leave because I know Konstantin is going to come out on top. If you’d been paying attention as much as you think you were, you’d know that. But you’re too busy licking Papa Voronkov’s ass to see that things have changed.”

“Changed?” My father sneers at me. “There is only one rule in this business. The strong lead the weak. And you are soft. You think I didn’t notice how you doted on that woman? How jealous you were that she flirted with me?”

My jaw clenches. “I am not soft,” I snarl at him. “Just because I know how to follow someone worthy doesn’t mean I can’t lead my own men.” I try not to react to his accusations about how I’d reacted with “that woman,” but it’s so hard to keep my mouth closed.

Because he’s not really wrong.

My father shifts his stance, and I spot the gun he’s holding. I tighten my grip on my own weapon.

“Do you know why your mother left?” my father suddenly asks.

The abrupt shift in topics has me fumbling with my grasp on the gun—the shift, and the topic itself, because this isn’t something we talk about.

Ever.

“No. Because you’ve never told me,” I spit at him. “Beyond it being my fucking fault.”

But I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s because ofhim. I wouldn’t have wanted to stick around with him, either, though the reason she left me, too? That’s less clear.

“But by all means, enlighten me,” I tell him.

“She left because she couldn’t stand the sight of you,” my father says, taking a step forward. “She couldn’t handle that her boy was so terrible at everything. Later, you tried to join the Voronkovs, and what did that get you? You were nothing but an errand boy.”

I force myself to remember he’s trying to get under my skin. “Stop moving,” I order, making sure to keep my gun aimed directly at his chest. I want to tell him to stop talking, too, but there’s a fucked-up part of me that wants to hear this from his point of view.

That fucked-up part of me that wonders, too, if he’s being honest.

“And that’s bullshit,” I add quickly. “That’s all bullshit. I’m not an errand boy.” Maybe I’d started out that way, but I’ve moved up to being Konstantin’s right-hand man.

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