Page 107 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

And yet, I did it myself all the same. Didn’t want to know what he was involved in. I purposefully avoided the terrible truth.

I look at Mom. All of me aches to tell her, to flop onto her suede couch and spill it out to her, to sit there and let her hold me and advise me and comfort me. But I can’t.

Do that, and all this will disappear. The woman before me will shrivel, her eyes dull, her smile fade, her back hunch. She’ll die. I’ll lose my mom and for what, some moral superiority on how I did the right thing, getting away from my vicious fake husband?

No.

No, I will find a way to get through this. I brought this on myself, and I will find a way to deal with this.

“Joy?” Mom asks tentatively.

She must see the look on my face. The decision there.

“Sorry,” I say. “Have time for a movie?”

Yep, it’s distract-it-away time. That was one of Mom’s sayings back in the day when life got too hard, and I couldn’t think of any way to make it better.“Sometimes, you can’t think it out, talk it out, or fix it up. Sometimes, you just have to distract it away.”

“What did you have in mind?” Mom asks.

“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?”

Mom smiles. “I always have time for Indy.”

A few minutes later, we’re on the couch as Harrison Ford flees Shanghai in an airplane. An hour after that, Mom’s passed out, and I know it’s time to go.

I have to face what has to be faced.

I have to talk to Gavril.

But first, another walk will do me some good, I think. It’ll give me some time and space to think. God knows I need it with what’s before me.

24

Gavril

There will be blood. Lots of it.

As I leave the warehouse, I don’t know how yet. I know only that it’s high time the Bratva get back into killing season.

It’s obvious now. Clear as day. Joy has made me soft. Slowed me down. And the Skull Kings have been all too willing to take the space I’ve given them.

That ends now. It’s time for retribution. For them to remember their place. For them to learn just why the Bratva are feared most in this fucking city.

Back in the car, I text Ludmil to get rid of Damon, somewhere out of sight in the city. Then, I call up my generals, my men. The ones who I’ve been neglecting as of late.

Radovan. Maksim. Stefano.

I send them all the same message:Who’s ready to crack some Skulls?

Their replies are instantaneous. They are as thirsty as I am for vengeance on this biker filth. I smile as my phone dings again and again with pledges of loyalty. Yes, there will be blood.

Blood of the filth that oppose us. And of their leader, too, this mysterious motherfucker who thinks he can try to kill me and get away with it. Who thinks that even the tiniest splinter of this city is his.

He has never been more wrong. It’s mine—all of it. And he’s about to learn exactly what happens to those who fuck with Gavril Vaknin’s Bratva.

Ludmil’s reply comes last, in the form of a call. I’m already on my way to meet the men at headquarters.

“All good about Damon,” he says, then pauses. “Boss?”

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