Page 80 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

Mateo isn’t finished though. So as soon as I regain my bearings, I turn around and fall to my knees. The stone is rough on my bare skin, but I don’t care. I want to look at him as he comes, to feel him. “What are you—” he starts to say. It turns into a strangled groan as I open my mouth and take his length as far past my lips as I can. He can’t help but buck his hips into me. I encourage it with my hands on his firm, muscular ass. I taste him—the tang of his skin and his salty precum, yes, but also thehimpart of him—the melancholy, the burden, the licorice-tinged sadness—and I try to draw it into me and memorize it so that he doesn’t have to carry it all alone anymore.

He lasts perhaps a minute, maybe less, before he groans once more and unleashes himself in my mouth. I bob my head again and again until there’s nothing left. When I’m finished, I let his manhood fall from my lips and I plop backwards to lean up against the shelf.

Mateo drops to his hands and knees, panting. He stays that way for a long time as he catches his breath. Eventually, he sighs, rolls over, and sits next to me.

It’s just like a week ago down in the dungeon, when he sat next to me in the hallway outside of the room where the dead bodies of the Frat Stars were stashed. Back then, I thought he was a monster, but as we sat next to each other, I saw the first glimmer of humanity in him. It scared me then.

What I’m seeing in Mateo now doesn’t scare me quite the same way. In fact, it damn near breaks my heart. I tried to take it from him, as best I could. I wonder if I was successful. I wonder if it is even possible to put that exchange into words, or if it was just something that had to be acted out with our bodies like we just did.

But there’s something else weighing on me more than that. Now feels like the right moment to ask.

“Dante told me about your brother and father,” I say quietly. I’m looking at him, but his head is hanging and he isn’t returning my gaze.

He just grunts wordlessly.

“My dad killed them, didn’t he?”

There’s a long, pregnant pause. It looks like it takes the last dregs of his effort for Mateo to raise his head and look at me. An exhaustion floats in his eyes that wasn’t there before. I wait on pins and needles for him to speak.

“Your father killed my father,” he says without emotion. “And also my brother. And my uncle. For ten years, he has hunted us like dogs. We took you because, frankly, we had no other choice.”

His words hit me like a slap in the face.

On some level, I’ve known these truths for a while now. I was just too afraid to bring them into the light, to say them out loud. But something about the way Mateo says things—so matter-of-factly, so precisely, so irrevocably—is what I needed to hear. I can’t keep running from the final truth: my dad is not who I want him to be.

He loves me. He raised me as best as he knew how to do, and he mostly did a good job.

But he has blood on his hands. It may not be innocent blood, but it’s blood all the same. And that’s a sin that must be atoned for.

22

Vito

I need to get out of this fucking castle.

Every glimpse I see of Milaya, every time I notice her lingering smell in a room she has just vacated, I blanch and feel sick to my stomach.

Fortunately, business calls me down into the city. The men need to see my presence and be reassured that they are in good hands. Our organization is sprawling, and the time is right to do a review of the troops.

But it is a delicate balancing act, because I am trying to quell their fears at the same time that I must exhort them to batten down the hatches and prepare for what comes next. We are nearing a critical point: Luka Volkov will be here soon. There is no telling what will happen after that.

The plan had come together with ease, as if it had been in the cards for us all along. Bring Luka here. Anticipate the various tricks he would stash up his sleeve and neutralize them. And then do what I intended to do from the moment his men took the lives of my father, my uncle, my brother—cut off the head of the snake and watch its body squirm.

But that will come later. Right now, it is a fine spring day. For a change, I take the time to relish it. The air is warm and lucid as it moves through the palm fronds overhead. Now that I am free of the castle walls, I feel oddly tranquil—so long as I ignore the pang of anxiety that comes from being distanced from Milaya.

I chose to drive myself, though of course there are soldiers driving ahead and behind me. The wheel of my car, an expensive convertible, thrums in my hands like a purring beast. It feels alive and connected to me just as I am connected to it. When I want to turn, to change lanes, to accelerate, it springs into action practically the instant the impulse occurs to me, like it is acting of its own accord. It is an unexpected blessing to lose myself in the simple act of driving fast. With the wind roaring in my ears, I cannot think. With the road passing beneath my feet, I cannot worry. With the sun shining down upon my head, I cannot brood.

For a moment, things are okay.

But all good things must come to an end, and eventually, as I reenter the city and slow to a halt in front of my first stop, I feel the familiar shroud of dark concern ensconce me once again. My brow furrows into its usual resting place and my fist clenches.

I step out of the car, leaving it still running. One of the soldiers assigned to my security detail will watch over it while I am inside the store. This will be a quick errand anyway.

The doorbell jingles as I walk in. It is a small mini-mart, tucked out of the way in Inglewood, far from prying eyes. The windows are dusty, cluttered with flyers, and the racks arranged in the store are filled with stale chips and a blinding assortment of candy. The man behind the bulletproof glass, a portly Hispanic male in a stained wifebeater shirt, does a double take when he sees me enter.

“Mr. Bianci!” he crows. He scrambles to his feet, knocking over his rickety stool in the process, then unlocks the door to the cashier’s area and comes waddling around as fast as he can. There is a barefooted little boy playing with an action figure in the beer aisle. The man hisses at him as he passes, “Get out!”, and the boy immediately turns tail and races into the back corner.

“Mr. Bianci,” the man says again when he faces me.

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