Page 49 of Control

Amelia caught my teasing and furrowed her eyebrows at me. I wouldn’t put it past her to throw a punch at me too with how fired up she was right now. “Sit down, now. Both of you!”

We wordlessly heeded her order, me taking my seat while Shyam took the chair behind the desk.

“What happened with Leonid?” she asked, her voice quieter, bracing herself for the nasty truth. “I thought you had a plan?”

I explained the entire failed operation and how I had fallen for Leonid’s decoy. The two people whose opinions mattered most listened in silence as I bared the root of all my frustrations.

Leonid was no longer some business deal that went bad. He was bleeding into every aspect of my life. He had threatened my family and caused me so much stress that I had taken out my frustrations on the only woman I had ever loved.

No one said anything after I was finished speaking. Amelia looked hopeless, like her freedom had been ripped away again. Her mind was most likely preoccupied with ways to keep her children safe, like moving or hiding out.

My brother, on the other hand, just stared at me. He wasn’t a man of many words, and I could tell he was choosing them carefully.

“You need to get him yourself,” he said after some time.

“What do you mean?” I asked, grateful he was no longer yelling at me or punching me.

“No middleman. No snipers or army this time. You kill him yourself,” he said, his tone more forceful, but not out of anger. This was the voice he had always had when he strategized as the head of our drug business.

I clarified his meaning. “You mean like go to Russia and take him down?”

He steepled his fingers against his lips. “Maybe. I’ll go with you.”

Amelia snapped her head back and forth, eyes bulging in disbelief. “What the fuck?!”

We stared at her as her face reddened like she was about to burst, her attention focused on Shyam. She waved her hands back and forth in the air. “Hello? Remember me? Your wife?” She raised one hand in the air. “I’m the woman you left this world for, and now you’re going to waltz back into it?”

“Relax,jaan,” he tried to soothe her. “We need to take him down. We can’t leave this to chance anymore. It has to be us to end him.”

“Oh, hell no! Not you!” she shouted, pointing a finger at Shyam. “You have children now. We need you home safe.” Her voice was shaking from anger.

I understood her argument. Shyam had so much to live for. His children needed their father alive and in one piece, not holed up in some god-forsaken cave in Russia plotting the demise of the Russian mafia.

No, he needed to be home giving piggyback rides and reading bedtime stories.Thatwas what life was about. Not petty vendettas between men with oversized egos. “It’s okay, brother. It should be me. I don’t have a beautiful wife and perfect children who need me, like you do.”

“What about Claire?” Amelia asked quietly.

I threw my hands in the air and let them land in my lap. “I fucked it up.”

“How?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

“I took out my frustrations with Leonid on her. Now she wants space from me.” I didn’t go into details. Amelia would never forgive me if she knew what I had done to Claire. Hell, she’d probably call her immediately and tell her to run far away from me. She was protective of Claire, which was something Claire needed because she didn’t have many people looking out for her. I was supposed to be the one she could trust the most, yet I had failed her. Amelia and her friend Lana were probably all she had left.

To my surprise, my brother offered advice instead of Amelia. “Give her time, but don’t stop apologizing. You’re the one who fucked up, so you have a lot of making up to do. You need a big gesture to show her how much you care about her.”

Amelia stared at her husband with a proud smile on her face. “What he said!”

I considered my brother’s words.A big gesture.I had the perfect idea.

Chapter XX

Claire

Ididn’t want to come, but he said he had something important to show me.

His behavior the night at his place had taken me back to a dark place. A place where I spent most of my childhood. If my mother was the sunshine, then my father was the void the sun left when it set. His temper had made him a difficult person to live with.

During the time when my parents were together, my mother and I had mostly lived separate lives from my father even though we all shared the same house. He came and left as he pleased and wouldn’t tolerate questions about his whereabouts. Maman had learned to live by his rules over time, so we remained unheard and unseen as best we could.

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