Page 87 of Alexei (Belles & Mobsters 4)

“Okay, then,” he muttered. “I’ll get right to the point. I’m Vasili Nikolaev.” The name prompted the old hate against a woman long forgotten. The woman I hadn’t seen since my tenth birthday.

When I didn’t comment, Vasili continued, “We are brothers. I’m sure you gathered that by now, with our resemblance.”

Brothers?

I didn’t have brothers. I’d killed them all in Ivan’s ring. Though how do you explain that to a mere stranger?

“Half-brothers, if you want to be exact. Same father, different mother. I only found out about you a few months ago.” Bitterness welled in my chest, like a bottomless pool. It tasted acrid. “I met your mother on her deathbed. She begged me to find you.”

“You found me,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“I hoped we could take you home,” he continued, ignoring my standoffish attitude. “Sasha is my younger brother, though he’s slightly older than you.” It meant absolutely nothing to me. “I’d like the three of us to work together, running the Nikolaev businesses.”

“Already have a job,” I deadpanned.

Besides, working with two brothers who had a normal upbringing would fester this bitterness inside me. I didn’t need a front row seat to how fucked up I was, by being placed next to two versions of me who weren’t. Assuming Sasha looked like his brother.

“Tatiana is our youngest sister. She’s a bit wild, though she just turned twenty-two,” Vasili added, as if that would change my mind. Though it was tempting. To protect a much younger sibling. But she already had two older brothers; she didn’t need another one.

I said nothing, the knife still in my hand and my knuckles turning white from the force of my grip. I learned early on, there was no point to any emotions nor attachments. None of them mattered. Nobody cared whether you were jealous, sad, happy, mad. They just cared about what you could do for them.

Pashka. Ilya. Kostya. They died young. They had those emotions and they clung to them. The good ones die young, they said. It had to mean I was a bad one.

Though at this moment, it was hard to ignore this bitter envy in my chest. At Vasili, my half-brother. It was better not knowing.

“You also have one other sister, the same age as Tatiana.” Something about Vasili’s voice had me focusing on his face. Was that… regret? “Isabella Taylor. Her mother, your mother, just passed away. She never stopped searching for you.” Except, she never found me. Did she? “I didn’t know it, but my father searched for you too. He loved your mother and my own mother took you away.”

I swallowed the need to spit. The fucking triangle. He should have kept it in his pants and saved all of us a world of suffering. There was nothing Vasili could say that would make me want to get to know them. Any of them.

“Isabella’s father is Lombardo Santos.” The name instantly sent a warning down my spine. He trafficked women, right along with Benito King. “He doesn’t know about her, and I’ll keep it that way. It’s the safest for her.” He paused and I watched him curiously. His jaw clenched, though I couldn’t distinguish whether it was anger aimed at Isabella or her father.

When I said nothing, he let out an exhale and ran a thoughtful hand across his jaw. Almost as if he was tired of everything. Turning around, he headed for the door. He stopped, his hand on the door handle.

“Isabella is alone and knows nothing of this world,” he uttered. “Nor her father. She’ll need protection.” He let the words sink in. “Or she’ll end up for sale if her father’s enemies find out about her.”

Protection surged through me. No sister of mine would be put up for sale. Like damn stock. She had nobody. Vasili was protecting her, but he was only one man.

She needs me, my heart whispered.

“Wait.”

And I made the right choice. Vasili and Sasha became brothers, not only by blood. Tatiana was just as wild as her brother described her. And Isabella was the vulnerable one who needed us the most.

But the discovery was even more bitter than I could have imagined. I had never bothered explaining to anyone what the fuck happened in our family history to get us here. Our parent’s triangle damaged all of us, in one way or another.

“I had a different mother from Vasili, Sasha, and Tatiana. Isabella and I had the same mother.”

An awkward tension lay between us. She wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t want to pry. I felt the tension tighten in my shoulders, but I didn’t want to deny her this. So when this was all over, she could understand why I did this. At least some of it.

“Ask, kroshka.”

“So you and Isabella grew up together?” Her voice was low, tentative.

“No.”

“But how-” Her question lingered in the air.

“I was taken from our mother before I was out of diapers, so I never knew her.”

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