Page 21 of Viparious

I focus on straightening out the strands that have got trapped under her shoulder. My voice lowers to prevent her from losing any sleep as I continue combing my fingers through her hair.

“Physical pain is easy. It doesn’t hold any weight — you heal and move on.”

It has the opposite impact, and she twists her body to face me. Her knees are tucked up to prevent her feet from dangling off the side of the bed as she lays sideways. The low lights are making it more intimate, and my fingers don’t leave her hair.

“What isn’t easy?” she asks. I don’t answer, and she lowers her voice, giving me an option. “Emotional pain?”

Grief.

I just nod so she doesn’t latch onto the topic. But she continues, “Have you ever felt that?”

My voice comes out haunted as I take a deep breath. “Once.”

She’s examining me as I twist the strands of her hair, forming a braid without realizing. I can hear her thinking and pause, knowing it isn’t the end of the conversation.

“The tattoo on your back?” she asks so hesitantly and quietly that I almost don’t recognize the sound.

I forgot it exists after so many years, and I laugh because I know what she’s thinking.

“I’m not gay if that’s what you’re trying to ask me.”

She could have just said it plainly rather than the weird tone and slow speech. A small crease forms between her brows and my mouth opens as I smooth it out with my thumbs.

“Len was in prison until I was nine. When he got out, he found the recordings Anika made and pinned me down with his knee in my spine because I needed marking for what I’d done.”

No one knows that other than the fucker who gave me his DNA. The other two guards who helped him are dead and are known as the first people I killed.

Disgust fills the air as my finger lifts, tapping the side of my thigh. It’s not aimed at me as Inessa shuffles closer and wraps her arm around my hips.

“Why do you let them live?”

“Why should I allow them the peace of death?” I counter.

It’s easier than saying I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for why I didn’t kill them before leaving that house, I could have. I had the papers ready for us all to move but I didn’t kill them. I could have built a new life, away from the Bratva, away from them, but I didn’t. I’d have to break the only promise I refuse to in order to do that, and vengeance is more life-affirming than living with no end, no goal.

I’m pulled from my thoughts with a venomous plea.

“When we have a kid, I don’t want them anywhere near it. I will kill them myself if you don’t respect the decision.”

My brothers were kept away from them as much as I could, the only times they weren’t were when I had fights out of the area and I couldn’t take them with me. Her child will have something more because its existence marks the end of anyone who could possibly harm them. As soon as she’s pregnant and Maximoff confirms that he’ll give me his vote as Pakhan, then it all crumbles. Everything will bleed and turn to soot.

Part of me wars with the other to tell her. That maybe she’ll understand but I’d rather have this moment than see hatred in her dark eyes. I comb my fingers through her hair, undoing the braid before she can see it, and ask more questions about how I know how to do them when, publicly, there was no female in our lives. Anika doesn’t count as human, she’s reptilian like her husband.

I lean over her and stroke her cheek with my thumb as I ask, “Do you know how you teach a child that the fire is going to hurt them?”

She doesn’t look away from me as she turns on her back, answering, “Let them get burnt?”

Gently tapping my thumb off her cheekbone, I correct her.

“No, let them see it burns you.”

Valentin will raise the child. He’ll do a better job than I could. Viktor will treat them like a sibling, and Inessa will remain in their life. If they don’t allow something as fickle as biology to sway them, they’ll all be happy, safe, and free. I’ll burn so they never feel the lick of the flame of grief.

“You’re really something under the whole I am Vlad the monster.”

I blink and look down at my wife. She’s smiling softly and curls her hand around my wrist.

“Something, hm?”

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