Page 108 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

“I’ve seen you drive,” Leo scowls. “You wouldn’t even make it to the end of the street without wrecking the damn thing.”

“You couldn’t outdrive me in your wildest dreams.”

“Luckily for me, you never set so much as a goddamntoein my wildest dreams. If you did, it’d be a nightmare.”

“My nightmare is listening to the two of you bicker,” Mateo cuts in.

I just laugh again. With the door closed and the voices somewhat muffled, it’s hard to tell who is who, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Because they’re all mine.

I’m not eloping with any of them; I’m marrying all of them.

It’s still hard to wrap my head around. A year is a long time in certain regards, but it’s not so long in a lot of other ways. And it’s only been a year since these very same men came barging into a hotel room disguised as cops and dragged me out kicking and screaming. Couple that with all the horrors that happened from that point forward, and part of me thinks I’d have to be insane to go forward with the ceremony today.

But another part of me knows I’d have to be insanenotto go forward with it, too.

Because the truth—a truth that we’ve only recently begun to actually acknowledge between us—is that I love the Bianci brothers. All of them. And they love me. They’re my princes; I’m their queen.

Marrying them has another purpose too. It ends a war that has already cost far too many lives.

I still remember the night all this was decided.

* * *

Three days had passed since the Bianci Castle went up in a torrent of flames. Dad was seated at the kitchen table. He was still in pain, but thanks to the supplies in the Bianci safe house where we were all staying, he was stable for the time being. The plan was to get him to a hospital back on the East Coast as soon as the arrangements could be made to transport him safely. That would come soon, perhaps the next day. For right now, he was stable enough for what had to happen next—which had yet to be determined.

Seated across the table from him were the four brothers. Vito was in the worst shape, but like my dad, he was somehow finding a way to stay awake and alert. Mateo, Dante, and Leo each had some horrific-looking injuries of their own, though those too had already begun to heal.

So much had happened since we escaped by the skin of our teeth. The lies and betrayals Sergio had wrought had all been brought to light. He’d been planning his coup for a long time, driven by hatred for his father and envy of Vito’s birthright. By convincing a faction of Russian troops to turn on my dad and follow his traitorous lead, he’d found himself a rogue army of men thirsty to inherit the wealth and power of two empires at once. Watching the brothers’ faces as they figured out the ins and outs of Sergio’s betrayals nearly broke my heart. But it had to be done. Like ripping a Band-Aid off, like blowing up the castle—some things are painful but necessary.

There was still one thing left to solve though, the question we’d all been thinking in one form or another:what happened next?

Too much had happened to simply return to the previous equilibrium. Were the Volkovs and Biancis supposed to simply part ways, each retreating to their old haunts, and pretend like none of this ever transpired? How couldIpretend like this never happened? The truth of the matter was that they had kidnapped me, twisted me, and come perilously close to permanently breaking me. My father could not easily forget that. Neither could I.

And the brothers couldn’t forgive decades of hatred towards my dad and his organization. They’d spent years believing that he had murdered their uncle in cold blood and thrown his body on the steps of their home like roadkill. Even if that turned out not to be true, it was proving awfully hard to let go of those feelings.

So we’d all come to sit at this kitchen table in this ratty LA apartment and try to answer the question of how our futures should look.

The conversation didn’t start well. Clipped threats turned to angry yelling and before I knew it, blood was dripping on the table as my father and the brothers both reopened wounds they’d suffered during our captivity and escape.

“You fucking Russians always want—”

“As if you Italian cocksuckers could even hold a candle to—”

“Sit the fuck down!”

Everyone fell silent when I stood up and interrupted. I think part of the shock was that they weren’t used to women interfering in business discussions. But if this was how they intended to conduct themselves, then they had another thing coming, because I wasn’t about to sit idly by and let the two sides of my heart go to war with each other right in front of me. Their way was what caused all of this in the first place. So fuck their way. The time for that was gone.

It was time to do things my way now.

“I’m the only thing holding all this together,” I began. “Don’t you see that? And I’m the only thing stopping you from spending the rest of your lives—whatever is left of them—going at each other’s throats. But let me say this clearly, because I’m only going to say this once: that’s not going to happen anymore. The old guard is gone. Your father is dead. And you, Dad—it’s time for you to retire soon. That means I’m going to be in charge. And that means I’m deciding what happens next. So listen closely.”

Five pairs of stunned eyes drank in my every word silently and obediently. I still don’t know where the forcefulness of my manner came from. Maybe I had more of my dad in me all along than I’d ever suspected. Mom would disagree—she’d always had more fire than people realized when they first met her, so she’d probably argue that she was the source of this. But whether it came from my parents or from my time in the Bianci dungeon or somewhere else altogether, it was here to stay now.

“You, you, you, and you,” I said, pointing at each of the brothers in turn. “Get on your knees.”

“Why?” blurted Vito, but his voice died when I shot him a withering stare.

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