Page 75 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

“Then your brother still has our son and absolutely no reason to give him back,” I finish. “Lukas is blackmail. A final chip Ilyasov plans to play in case all else fails. We need him back with us now.”

Dima’s jaw shifts back and forth, his teeth grating together. “You’re not wrong, but I still think it will pay to play his game at least a little bit. If I disregard everything—”

“We’ve been unknowingly playing his game for weeks! How many men did you kill on his call? How much time did we waste helping him take over your Bratva?”

“If I disregard everything,” Dima continues as though I never interrupted, “Ilyasov may think I don’t plan to follow protocol, and he may pull the Lukas card way earlier than he would have otherwise. We don’t want that. We want Lukas to be safe.”

The Lukas card.As if my baby is nothing more than a pawn in this sick game.

This is what I wanted to avoid. This is what I wanted to escape from.

“We don’t even know if he’s safe now,” I say. “He could already be—”

Dima stands up, head shaking violently. “Shut up!”

I freeze at Dima’s outburst.

“Just… don’t,” he says, softening. “Don’t. Lukas is fine. My brother is a lot of things, but he isn’t—”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “A murderer? I beg to differ. A liar? Again, he has a track record. We can’t trust a single thing he says. If he tells us he has Lukas with him, we should assume the exact opposite. If he says Lukas is alive…”

“He wouldn’t kill his own fam—” Dima seems to stop himself and take a deep breath. “He wouldn’t kill a baby.”

“How do you know that? You didn’t think he was capable of betraying you. How do you know he isn’t capable of hurting a child? Why should I trust you? Why did you ever trust him?”

Gennady sits up now, and I had almost forgotten he was in the room. “Arya, come on. Dima is trying. He—”

Dima holds up his hand. Gennady goes silent immediately. When he turns back to me, his expression is blank. “You barely know my brother. I grew up with him.”

“That’s what’s blinding you!”

“No,YOUblinded me!” he roars.

The carefully curated mask cracks in half. I can see Dima’s rage now. His desperation to find Lukas. His frustration with me. With his brother. Every emotion he’s been bottling up and pushing down.

It’s like staring straight into the sun.

He takes a rattling breath. And then another. And another.

“What in the hell does that mean?” I bite out quietly.

Gennady stands up and hitches a thumb over his shoulder. “I think I’ll head out for some ice.”

Dima waits until his second-in-command is out the door before he looks back at me. “Everything I did for Ilyasov was because I wanted to get my Bratva back—foryou.”

“Bullshit. I told you to leave it! I asked you to abandon everything and leave with me. How was this for me?”

“For your protection,” he says. “And Lukas’s. I knew the only way I’d be able to protect either of you was with my Bratva, so I did what my brother demanded, no matter how dangerous. If anything blinded me, it wasn’t my love for my brother. It was my love for you.”

In another situation, maybe his admission would be sweet.

But right now, it feels like a slap in the face.

Love is a weapon,he’s said before. Does he think I’m the one pulling the trigger?

“Great. So it’s all my fault that Lukas is gone. Makes total sense that I’m the one to blame.” I cross my arms over my chest tightly, trying to hold my chest together so my heart doesn’t come jumping out. “Even though I said again and again I wanted my son out of this life. Even though I was making moves to get us both out of the country. Glad we cleared that up.”

Dima growls. “It’s not your fault.”

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