Page 55 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

Something inscrutable passes over his face, like a rain cloud moving over the sun. I don’t know him well enough to be able to say for sure, but on anyone else, I would say that it looked like the grief of seeing the ghost of a loved one. Since that doesn’t make even a lick of sense, I’m left grasping at straws. Maybe it’s just the shock of seeing his prisoner tarted up in a gold dress like an expensive hooker. Who’s to say? I don’t know this monster, and I don’t want to. Psychoanalyzing my captors isn’t high on my to-do list. At the moment, it mostly consists of one, get the hell away from here and two, see number one.

Vito is frozen stiff for just a second, maybe two. But it is long enough to leave an indelible mark in my head. I see his expression and I know at once: this is a haunted man. He is irretrievably broken in some deep, essential way. I feel like a crackpot for even thinking those words, but they’re so powerfully true that I know I’m right. This man has suffered. Immensely. How, when, why, I don’t know. I just know it’s true.

The look on his face is gone as quickly as it came. The cloud passes and his careful mask of self-control settles right back into place.

He clears his throat. “Good evening,” he repeats. “It is time for dinner. Come with me.”

He offers me his elbow, which I take, not ungratefully. It makes walking through the doors out into the hallway much easier. He is so solid, so muscular, that I feel like I’m floating. He’s careful to walk at my pace too, unlike Leo, who could barely be bothered to check over his shoulder and make sure that I hadn’t cracked my head open on the flagstone floor.

We pass through the common area where the five hallways join up. It occurs to me that there is one hallway for each of the brothers, but with one leftover. I wonder what the significance of that is. We don’t linger long enough for me to figure it out.

Vito guides me into the main hallway and back towards the great room with the fireplace. As we round the corner and emerge out under the high arched ceilings, I see that there is a large banquet table that has been arranged.

Strange—I haven’t seen a single household staff member since I arrived here. But there must be some somewhere, or else the place wouldn’t be so clean. I picture these four animals mopping the floors and start laughing silently. Then I picture Vito in a frilly French maid’s outfit with a feather duster and fishnet tights and snort out loud.

“Is something funny?” he asks soberly.

“No, I just, uh—it’d be too hard to explain.”

“I didn’t think you’d be in much of a laughing mood, given your … circumstances.”

I sigh. The laughter fades away, though I file away the image to chuckle at again later. If there is a later, that is.

“I’m … I’m not, I guess. I don’t know. Nothing feels real anymore.”

“I don’t feel real to you, Milaya Volkov?”

“You do, you just—shit. I mean, shoot. I don’t know.” I pause. “Why do you say it like that?”

“Say what?”

“My name.”

“Is that not what you are called?”

I wrinkle my eyebrows. “It is. It just sounds like you’re saying it on purpose. Like, forcing it.”

“I don’t want to forget who you are.”

I think about that. On the face of it, it sounds stupid. That’s what names are for, right? Remembering who people are?

But I know that that’s not what Vito meant by his phrasing. There’s a deeper meaning lingering below the surface. Like he wants to remind himself ofwhatI am. Where I come from or something.

The question remains: why? What do I mean to him?

“There she is!” crows Dante, interrupting my thoughts.

He’s seated at one end of the long, white-cloth-covered table. He, too, is wearing a tuxedo, though he’s opted to leave the bowtie hanging untied around his neck, unlike Vito, whose tie is knotted perfectly.

“The guest of honor. Or is she the main course?”

He laughs when he sees me blanch. They’re not that sick … are they? To go through everything they’ve put me through, only to beeaten—it seems wrong. Not to mention a serious violation of the “don’t play with your food” edict. Still, I’ve looked right into Dante’s eyes and seen the craziness there. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.

“My brother is kidding,” clarifies Mateo, who is seated across from Dante and scowling at him. “He has a twisted sense of humor sometimes.”

“Am I, though?” Dante muses.

I see Leo in another chair. His tuxedo is a bold navy that brings out his eyes. No tie at all for him, and like before, the top few buttons of his shirt are undone. If I had to guess, I’d say he thinks it makes him look sexy and dangerous. He’s not wrong.

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