Page 126 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

So close…

But the words don’t come out.

Maybe some pain is too deep to ever see the light again.

Instead, Artem reaches for the whiskey instead and takes a long draw. When he puts the bottle back down, he looks even more troubled than he did when he picked it up.

I understand that reaction instinctively. He thinks the alcohol will save him from facing his trauma. Thinks it will quiet his demons, blunt his pain.

But for some reason, it’s not working today.

Part of me pities him for that. It can’t be easy to live with grief constantly threatening to tear you apart. Everyone needs a coping mechanism.

But the bigger part of me wants to tear that mechanism out of his hands and make him reveal his pain to the light. To me.

That’s the only way anyone can ever heal.

“Tell me their name,” I say softly. I sidle a little closer to him.

He stiffens.

“I’ve lost too many people to name,” he rumbles.

“That’s a cop-out and you know it.”

“It’s all I’m giving you.”

I sigh tiredly and stare out at the ocean for a while. This man is so fucking frustrating. My hair flutters in the wind, long dark ribbons tossed across my face.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks after a minute has passed.

“Just wondering if things would have been different if my brother were here.”

“Meaning what—he could have saved you from me?” he practically snarls.

I don’t cringe back from the venom in his words the way he thought I might.

Instead, I just nod. “Maybe.”

“Then you’re more naïve than I thought.”

That gets the reaction he wanted. A pang of hurt lashes through me. I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them for what little comfort I can find.

“You didn’t know him,” I say in a whisper.

“I didn’t have to,” Artem growls back.

“Meaning what?” I snap, throwing his own words back at him. I keep my features calm but I can’t keep the undercurrent of fury out of my voice. “You would have killed him like you killed my father?”

I thought I wasn’t moved by Papa’s death. That maybe I was even happy he is gone. “Relieved”—wasn’t that the word I’d used?

It’s not until this moment that I realize it’s much more complicated than that.

I hated my father. A part of me was scared of him—rightfully so.

But he was the constant presence in my life that had been snatched away in the same kind of violence that had taken my brother.

Artem stares at me. Like he’s weighing what to say next. Whether to keep lying, keep hiding…

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