Page 45 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

My heart leaps into my throat. I’ve known for a long time that my dad isn’t like other dads. He does …things… that other dads don’t do, won’t do, couldn’t do. He’s quiet about it, but I know that he and Mom argue a lot about what I should or shouldn’t know. I try to keep quiet and listen during those arguments. I learn more by doing that than I would ever learn from what they actually compromise on telling me.

Dad wants me to know things. He says living with your head in the sand just makes you an easy target for people who are more aware. But Mom says I’m too young. She says I’m just a little girl. She’s just as hardheaded as Dad, in her own way. So I decide to keep doing what I’ve been doing—stay quiet and listen. The whimpers are fainter now, though. I need to get closer.

I keep my breath hushed as much as I can and pad up the stairs, turn the corner, and head down the hall in my bare feet. Pictures of the three of us line the wall. The Volkovs—picture perfect, pretty, happy together. Me playing softball and violin, Dad accepting some civic award, Mom in her chef’s whites at the opening of her restaurant. As I glide down the hall towards the source of the whimpering, my eyes trail along the shadowy picture frames. It’s like watching me grow up again, from baby pictures of a plump bread-loaf-sized Milaya, to a toddler chasing after bubbles in the garden, to a lanky young girl with green eyes that seem too old for her somehow.

I see that one of the doors about halfway down the hall is cracked open. It’s a door that Daddy keeps locked most of the time. He says I’m not allowed to go in there. It’s for work, and there are some things he keeps inside that only he’s permitted to see. I snuck in once when he had to leave the house in a hurry and left the door unlocked behind him, but there was nothing interesting inside. Just a couple of filing cabinets, a small desk, and some file folders. I peeked through them, didn’t see anything I cared about, and left quickly. It wasn’t anything worth getting in trouble over. The only memorable part of the whole room was the lattice of steel pipes crisscrossing the ceiling. That seemed out of place, but I couldn’t puzzle it out, so I just forgot about the whole thing.

Dad must be in there now, though, along with whoever is doing the whimpering. And, as I get closer, I hear a meaty thwack and freeze in place.

It sounds like somebody getting hit.

The whimpers spill over again. Pained grunts come one after the other as the sound of fist on flesh continues. I’ve only ever seen one fight in person, between my classmates Mitchell Cook and Trevor Hawkins after Trevor poured milk on Mitchell’s head during lunchtime at school. Mitchell punched Trevor in the face and broke his nose. There was a lot of blood.

The sound I hear now is like that, but way worse. When I sniff, I can smell the tang of blood again, just like I did that day on the playground.

I peek around the corner and see something that makes me stiffen up like a board.

There’s a chain fastened to the steel pipes in the ceiling of Dad’s office. Hanging from the chain by his wrists is a man. He has dark, oily hair and a strong, proud nose. The rest of his face, though, is an ugly mess of blood, cuts, and bruises. He’s shirtless and I can see that the rest of his body is also bruised really badly. There’s another man I recognize—one of Dad’s employees, a guy he told me to call “Uncle Alexei”—with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hands are slick with blood. As I watch, he winds up and slugs the upside-down man in the gut with a compact fist.

The chained man cries out. “Please, God, stop,” he begs in a foreign accent. “Per l’amor di Dio!” He’s speaking Italian. I recognize it from one time when I overheard Mom speaking Italian to some distant cousin or something like that.

Dad has always said that he doesn’t trust Italians. So why is there one hanging from his wrists in his office? And why is Uncle Alexei hurting him so much?

My eyes swivel to the far corner and I see my father standing there. He’s still wearing the suit he left the house in this morning, the dark navy one that I think looks best on him, with a clean white pocket square. His arms are folded across his chest and there’s that look in his eyes, the one I know means “Stay away.”

Why isn’t he doing anything to stop Uncle Alexei? Why is he letting this happen?

Uncle Alexei punches the man once, twice, three times, and then I decide I’ve had enough. This must all just be a bad dream. I’m going to go back to bed now and try to forget this ever happened.

As I turn to leave, I hear my father’s voice ring out softly into the dark quiet of our house. “Have you had enough, Marco?” he asks. “Or will we need to continue?”

I plug my ears and run away before I can hear the man’s answer.

14

Mateo

I open my eyes. Another day in hell begins.

It has been scarcely a week since we lost Sergio and Father to the warehouse debacle. Yet the days and nights creep past like panthers in the underbrush, slow and fast all at once. There is not enough time to do all the things that must be done to ensure that the Bianci family retains its spot—both literal and metaphorical—atop the hills of Los Angeles.

And yet, there is too much time—too much time to think. Too much time to ponder. Too much time to consider,What if?

Such questions will not resurrect my dead father and brother. Nor will they help devise a plan to snatch back what we have lost to the Russians. Eye for an eye, blood for blood—these things are soaked into the DNA of our family, programmed into us like computer code. However, if I cannot even find my enemies, how am I supposed to take from them what they owe me? The Russians remain stubbornly elusive, like smoke in the wind.

Finding the Volkov girl was an unbelievable stroke of luck. A whispered rumor from a source who refused to step into the light. I still don’t quite understand how it bore out to be true, but it did. She is who we thought she was, and now she is ours to do with as we please. A gift I never expected. A blessing we surely did not deserve.

When I sit to drink wine and ponder, as I am doing now, what I come back to again and again is that we brought this apocalypse down upon ourselves. Each of us saw the signs of madness brewing in Father. But we did nothing to combat it. We let him spit and swear and work himself up into a rage night after night. In the end, we let it kill him. We let it take our baby brother to the grave too.

“We earned what we have been given,” I murmur to myself.

The study in the west wing is quiet. This is my area, my thinking place, the only little corner of the Bianci Castle that none dare disturb, not even my brothers. It is filled with rows and rows of books reaching up to the high ceiling, save for one wall that is a cacophony of computer screens and complicated technology.

It is an underappreciated room. Dante thinks that our wars are waged on the streets, with guns and knives and spilled blood. Leo thinks they are waged in the bedroom, with seduction and betrayal. Vito thinks they are won in the boardroom, negotiated between enemies like we are diplomats or lawyers.

Only I know the truth: war is a state of mind.

To win it is to occupy your enemy’s head and know what he will do before evenheknows it. Information is not merely an advantage to be weaponized—it is the only weapon that exists at all. Our wars are won before a single Bianci soldier takes up arms.

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