Page 159 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

I freeze. “What?”

“We were looking in the wrong place for answers, Artem. Looking out when we should’ve been searching in.”

“Why the fuck are you still speaking in riddles? Talk straight to me, man!” I bellow.

He winces like something is physically paining him. His eyes fall to the ground between us before he sighs and fixes his gaze on me once more.

“Budimir,” is all he says.

I blink. “Budimir what?”

“Budimir has taken over.”

Silence. Footsteps shuffle past outside the door. I hear a gruff male voice—is that Olezka?—calling my name.

“Artem? Don Artem?”

We don’t move a muscle or dare to breath. Eventually, his footsteps fade away.

When he’s gone, Cillian grips my forearm. “He’s been planning this coup for a long time. The meeting you were about to go to is a trap. He was never going to let you walk out of there alive.”

My head is spinning. “You’re not making any sense.”

Cillian runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “While you were in the safehouse, he called a meeting. Demanded loyalty from the rank-and-file. Accused you of treason, too.”

My throat constricts with rage. “Treason?”

“Against the Bratva. He’s saying you killed your father. You staged the shooting at the funeral.”

“You can’t be fucking serious.”

“He has nothing,” Cillian tells me. “But he wants his takeover to appear legitimate. If he comes across like a rebel, it’s going to cause friction. Make the Bratva look weak, you know?”

I don’t even know what to say. All I can think about is wringing the light out of my uncle’s beady eyes.

“Artem, we have to get out of L.A. immediately.”

Those words snap me back to the present.

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t fight your uncle like this,” Cillian tells me. “We don’t have the men or the resources. He’s issued a kill order on you. And on me.”

“He did all of this,” I whisper numbly, mostly to myself. “Everything he’s accusing me of. He killed his own brother. Tried to kill his own nephew.”

Saying the words out loud makes them easier to process. Forces me to accept the cold reality.

It’s like a slap in the face.

But I can handle a fight, even if the deck is stacked against me. There’s a simple clarity in facing down an enemy. There’s a sense of finality to it.

Either you win or you die.

“He’s going to pay for this,” I growl under my breath.

Cillian’s hand lands on my shoulder. “We will make him pay together, brother,” he assures me. “But in order for that to happen, we need to lie low for a while. As long as we’re in this city, we’re sitting ducks. Budimir’s men are everywhere.”

The words themselves make me sick.Budimir’s men?

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