Page 4 of Beautiful Deception

“I’ll miss you too.” Letting my baby sister go will be a test of my will. But I am willing to make the sacrifice if it means she’s out of harm’s way.

This way, the only one who can be hurt is me.

Inessa

My dad barges into the house in such a commotion, it makes me jump up from the couch. “Are you ok?”

He looks frantic, his hair a mess and his clothes wrinkled. Sweat stains his back. “Inessa. Oh my god. Inessa.” He grabs my face and kisses my cheek. “You’re all right. I’m all right. Oh my god.”

“Dad? What is it?”

He paces around the room, running his hands through his black hair. It’s the opposite of my blonde strands. I got my hair from my mother. In fact, I got most of my features from my mother.

“I’m in trouble, Inessa.”

Panic squeezes my heart. “Trouble? What trouble?”

“We’re running out of money.”

My eyes flick to the peeling paint on the walls. I know we need money. We’ve needed money for quite some time. The little house I grew up in used to be cute when I was a child but in recent years, it’s been showing its wear and tear.

“I know that,” I tell him.

“We’re going to lose the house,” he mutters.

That’s something I also know. My dad likes to think I don’t know things but I know a lot more than he tells me.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, hugging my arms around myself.

“I tried to get us money tonight. I tried to make us rich. But…”

“Dad… what did you do?” My father can never seem to learn his lesson when it comes to money. Ever since my mom passed away a few years ago in a car accident, he spiraled down a dark path that has led us here.

It’s been up to me to keep my dad going but I’m only twenty. As a Bratva daughter, I was taught that my only job was to marry well when I got older. But since my dad doesn’t have anything to offer any high ranking men, I’ve started to think that I’ll never marry.

I don’t have any job experience but that’s going to have to change if we don’t want to become destitute.

“Dad?”

He flinches. “I… tried to steal from Viktor Smirnov.” A gasp escapes me and it makes his face crumble. “I know. He’s Viktor Smirnov. He’s not a man you mess with. But we need the money.”

“You’re not dead. That’s good. What happened?”

“He caught me but I managed to run. I came straight here. We need to leave. If he doesn’t already know my address, it won’t be hard for him to figure it out. We have to go somewhere else.”

“Where? We don’t have any money.”

“A motel. At least for a few nights. Until I can figure out how to get us more money. I don’t want him coming here and finding you. Hurting you.”

My chest constricts even tighter. “You think he’d hurt me?”

“I’m not sure what Viktor would do. I don’t really know him. I just know that a lot of people fear him.”

My best friend, Elena Romanov – now Elena Murphy - was once engaged to Viktor. She told me that he was kind enough but then again, she didn’t really know him.

I’ve never met the man. Never even seen him before.

I’m not sure if Elena was right or not.

---