Page 63 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

I sigh and pick it up, smoothing my hand over the flowered fabric cover, Maybe it’s morbid curiosity or some ridiculous masochistic need to hurt myself more than I already am, but I open the album and stare at us.

Tomas was always beautiful, but back then he was carefree and loving and mine. My Tommy. He taught me how to swing from a rope into the pond without landing on my back. And we learned to kiss together. Other things, too. This book and these pictures document it all.

This album is our history from our earliest days to the day before he left. Anger flares in my stomach. Burns. So I run, not walk, to the living room and flip on the gas fireplace. The flames poof to life, and I rip the first photo out of the album and throw it in. Then another and another. The images bubbles, the edges scorch, and…

Fuck!

I reach in and drag the pictures out. Two survived. The third—one at the lake the summer he taught me to drive a stick shift—is gone. And my hand is burned. But I’ve stomped out the flames on the pictures and my hand will heal. The copious ointment I put on it, and the amount of wine I drink to wash away the pain lets me fall asleep before the heartache and the hand pain work together to form more tears.

19

Tomas

I can’t believe this shit. Can’t believe Katerina found me here. Tonight of all nights. Fuck.

I push her away and am about to race out to catch Corinne when, for no reason at all, I look to the left. Holy shit. Seated in the private room—out of the way so I hadn’t seen them when we entered—is an entire table of Kuznetsov Bratva men.

They’re all looking at me.

I’m swarmed by too many thoughts and feelings to categorize. Duty. Loyalty to the Bratva. Respect for Leonid. Honoring my father.

But none of that is as important as the shock and pain I forced on Corinne. The misery twisting like a knife in my own gut.

But I go because of duty and loyalty to my family and because I cannot afford to offend Leonid. He smiles, claps twice as he motions for silence, then presents me like I’m a fucking prize on a game show and he’s Vanna White.

“The future of our business, this boy right here,” he announces.

He grasps my shoulder like he’s my long-lost father—the way my real long-lost father never has—and gives a squeeze. My gut churns. All I want it to get to Corrie.

Leonid hands me a drink—whiskey, neat—and I drink it down in one burning gulp. I need the pain and the courage.

Some of the men seated around the table look at me strangely, but I don’t give a fuck what they think about me. I’m my own man and I know who I am. And right now, I’m a man who wants to get the fuck out of here and find Corrie so I can explain. And apologize. And apologize more.

Leonid throws his head back. “You are Bratva through and through. When your father and I were boys in Russia …”

Leonid and my father each have a thousand‘when I was a boy in Russia’stories. I’ve heard all the hoopla about life after the czars and Stalin and when the Soviet Union became known as the former Soviet Union and life as they knew it splintered into pieces. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard my father start a sentence with, “Fucking Reagan...”

They were children for most of it. But in Russia, history is rich, also tainted by propaganda spewed by whoever came into power. The real truth came from those who lived it. Leonid. Bogan Dubrovsky. Men like them who’ve seized power in America and made names for themselves that are the whispers of legends back in “the motherland.”

My name is going to be on that list. Someday. Because I’m supposed to marry Katerina Kuznetsov and unite two powerful families, then have children to ensure that power remains in the family. Those children will have Katerina’s hair and cat eyes.

Not Corrie’s. Katerina’s.

I try to focus on Leonid’s story, but my mind is pinwheeling down memory lane.

Corrie and me riding horses as the sun sets in the distance…

Peach cobbler at the Boulevard Diner, the way her eyes light up when the sugar hits her tongue…

Kissing her beneath the apple tree in front of her parents’ house…

We had a life planned. Things could’ve been different.

But I left. I left her. Broke her heart.

And for what? To come to the city and be a killer.

I have a chance now to fix things. Or rather, I had. But I’ve fucked it up now. Right when it all seemed so possible. So plausible.

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