Page 10 of Sins He Taught Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 3)

Matvei

They’re gone.

I can’t get either face out of my mind—Dmitry’s or Brianne’s. So much pain in their eyes, in their open, screaming mouths. It makes me shudder just to think about. But every time I try to close my own eyes, they’re there, staring at me.

I’ve seen death. Plenty of it. But this … this is something different.

It doesn’t feel real, even as I force myself to head to their home. Nothing about today has felt real. Watching Oleg get married and then seeing Dmitry and Brianne die has made me realize how short-lived all of this can be. How quickly a day can turn into a nightmare. Even my family can be taken from me.

That’s why I have to check in on Dmitry and Brianne’s son, Nikolas. I have to make sure he’s okay. He’s the only piece of my brother left. I can’t lose their five-year-old as well.

But when I pull up to Dmitry’s home, the place is swarming with police.

I climb off the bike and approach the scene confidently, ignoring the pain from the shrapnel in my leg. I’ll have to get that checked out, but right now, I grit my teeth and walk through it. As I approach, I make eye contact with the man clearly in charge of all the other officers.

“What happened?” I ask. It’s better if I pretend I don’t know what’s going on.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to step back. This is official police business, and—”

“This is my brother’s house,” I say, cutting him off. I gesture to the woman sitting with Nikolas on the front steps of the home. “That’s my nephew. I’m not going anywhere.”

The expression on the officer’s face changes, growing sympathetic. “Oh. Well, I’m sorry to inform you, but it looks like your brother was involved in an accident.”

“What?”

“Not too far from here, actually. We think it might’ve been crime-related.” That’s when his expression changes once more. The sympathy is gone, and his suspicion is obvious. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

The look on his face tells me he knows about Dmitry and the family business. He knows exactly who I am and what I’m capable of. I narrow my eyes. “I don’t know anything about what happened. I was at home all night.”

The cops in this town are a joke. It’s ridiculously cheap to keep a few in my back pocket. I do it because I need to know when there’s trouble brewing for me. I have to keep up with every possible issue, and with the blues on high alert thanks to the vigilante, there’s been an influx of police activity in my neck of the woods.

But these incompetent idiots will never catch the Justice Killer. They’ll only get in my way and make it easier for him to escape. In order to get that bastard back for what he did to my family, I need the morons to stay out of my warpath.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll make that son of a bitch pay for what he did. He doesn’t know who he fucked with. He doesn’t know the kind of war he just started, but he will. When I’m finished with him, he’ll wish that the police had apprehended him from the very beginning.

I bite back the brewing rage. The officer continues to stare at me suspiciously, but I’ve had enough of his critical eye. On the porch, I see one of the female officers lift Nikolas out of his nanny’s arms. He begins crying, trying to get out of her grip.

“No!” I order, pushing past the other cops and rushing towards them. “No, you’re not taking him anywhere.”

The cop looks at me with surprise. “Who are you?”

“I’m his uncle,” I tell her, taking Niko from her arms. He stops crying the second he’s with me, looking up at me with big, uncertain eyes.

My chest seizes up at the sight of him. He was the light in Dmitry and Brianne’s lives. There was nothing they wouldn’t do for him. And for the Morozovs, nothing comes before family.

That means he’s mine to care for now.

“I’ll look after him,” I tell her.

Niko turns to look at me in my arms. His eyes are wide and bright blue. Just like his father’s. Just like my own. “Where’s Daddy?” he asks sleepily. “Where’s Mommy?”

I gnaw the inside of my cheek. This is as unfamiliar a position as I have been in in a long time. I don’t console; I don’t caress. But right now, I am all my nephew has left.

“Not here right now, Niko,” I say carefully, doing my best to massage the sorrow from my voice.

“You’re Matvei Morozov,” the officer murmurs, more like she’s come to the realization than like she is actually addressing me. “Sir, we need to take him in and do some paperwork. We won’t keep him long.”

I weigh my options. I could stop it, if I chose to. A few calls to the right people, a few favors cashed in, and Niko would be coming with me now.

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