Page 154 of Silenced

At my second huff in as many minutes, I retort, “Well, it’s true.”

“Maybe you’re right.” His smile fades. “Everything went wrong after Father murdered my mother. He gave her peace though. Instead of beating her and whoring her out when we couldn’t make rent…” A breath hisses from him as, staring right at me, he admits, “Still, peace or not, I had to deal with him, Cassiopeia. I’d do it again, too. I am not a good man.”

Though I blink, the only thing I can think to say is: “I’m sorry you had to do that. And I’m sorry she had to go through that.”

My situation is unnervingly like his mother’s…

Interesting how he thinks he isn’t a good man when, for the two most important women in his life, he’s Nemesis in the flesh.

“Justice is something you take for yourself, something you earn with blood-soaked hands.” He shakes his head as if sloughing off the memories. “After we were alone, more came to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Misha and Maxim would make friends and their situations would be just as bad, if not worse. At one point, our two-bedroom shithole had twelve of us living in it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

He hitches a shoulder. “What was I supposed to do—turn them away?”

“No. But how did you manage?”

“I didn’t have a choice. I made it work.”

“Were you with the Bratva then?”

“Not at first,” he mutters, and something about his tone has me studying him with more intent than before. “My Obschak now is Pavel. Remember? He’s the one who helped me find a place with the Bratva. I owe him a debt for that, never mind the brotherhood.”

“He’s your third-in-command? Maria’s husband, right?”

He nods.

“I mean, isn’t that repayment enough? You’ve given him a lot of power.”

His jaw works. “My time on the streets was… dark, Cassiopeia. I can never repay him enough for helping me out of that situation.”

Unease filters through me.

It lodges in my heart.

Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

How could a boy of fifteen earn money to feed three mouths, never mind twelve, when he lived on the streets? Pickpocketing probably wouldn’t have been enough…

My hand grips his, hard enough that it must hurt.

A man like him has his pride, so I don’t throw salt onto the wound of his confession.

“How did you find Dmitri?”

His tension shifts.

If I didn’t know Dmitri was like a son to him, his clenched jaw, the knuckles that bleed white around the stem of his wine glass—they’re telltale signs.

“Dmitri’s the son of a high-ranking Bratva brother but Fyodor beat him terribly. One day, he ran away. Maxim found him, and he stuck around until Fyodor came looking. Dmitri didn’t give me a choice about fighting for him. He disappeared.” He cracks his neck. “Then, when I was about to transfer to the US, Dmitri found me again. We stowed him away in our cabin on the shipping trawler we were brought to the States in.”

“Are you serious?” I gape at him.

“Like a heart attack. The first time he came to me, he’d been beaten black and blue. That second time…” He graces me with another shake of his head. “I wasn’t about to leave him to get killed by that butcher.”

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