Page 118 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“There’s time for that later. When I’m old enough to start worrying about preserving my legacy. For now, the only important thing is building that legacy in the first place.”

Her eyes look almost damp with tears. I’ve never seen her cry and I don’t think I ever will, but this veers dangerously close to it.

“What about love?” she whispers.

“Jesus Christ,” I spit, turning away from her. “Where did all this sentimentality come from?”

She walks around to plant herself in my line of sight again. “Does it offend you?” she asks pointedly.

“It’s unnecessary,” I say. “And coming from you, it’s hypocritical.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I don’t remember you piping after the perfect family when I was growing up,” I point out. “You were busy hiding your affairs from Otets.”

She doesn’t look embarrassed when I bring that up. In fact, her chin jerks up and she looks at me with steel in her eyes. “I took my happiness where I could find it. Believe it or not, I tried my best with your father. For a very long time. When we were first married, I was only nineteen years old. Just a girl, whereas he was a man who knew the world. But he didn’t ease me into anything. I was expected to know my role without ever asking a question. When I didn’t, he treated me like I was defective.”

She’s fiery now, and expansive, like she’s growing taller and more intense as she speaks.

“Do you know the kind of impact that has on a nineteen-year-old? I was not prepared for it. So I learned the hard way. My husband wasn’t just powerful because he was the don of a strong Bratva; he was powerful by virtue of the fact that he was a man. And let’s face it—it’s a man’s world, isn’t it, Aleks?”

I know damn well she’s not looking for an answer. I don’t give her one.

“I had to learn to survive within this nightmare. I tried very hard to please him,” she continues, her voice cracking. “I wanted so much to love him, and I wanted him to love me. But we hadn’t even been married a year before he started bringing women home with him. He never made a secret of it. It was out in the open for everyone to see. I was humiliated in my own home and I was expected to just swallow it.”

My chest clenches tight. This is all so fucked-up. So goddamn wrong.

But she’s not done yet.

“After the first few years, when it became clear that your father was not going to stop what he was doing with these other women, I decided that I had to try something else. Perhaps if I gave him a child, he would be faithful to me. So I threw away my birth control pills and did everything in my power to get pregnant. It still took me years before I conceived you,” she says. “I was twenty-nine years old and we had already been married a decade. And the pregnancy… The pregnancy was hard. I was on bed rest for the last two months. And while I was confined to my bed, trying to keep his baby safe, he was in the room down the hall, back to fucking his whores. He didn’t change. Not for me. Not even for you.”

She takes a moment to compose herself. When she looks up at me again, her unshed tears have disappeared. Swallowed back into the black hole where she buries all the other things she’s never been able to forget.

“I did want the happy family, Aleks. I tried very hard to achieve it. But there are some things you can’t do alone. So I gave birth to you and mothered you as best as I could. But I’m not ashamed to say that it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. So yes, I had affairs. But why should I have been held to a different standard when my husband spat on our vows first? I will not apologize for my infidelities. And if you ask him, I’m sure he’ll say the same thing about his.”

I nod slowly, processing everything she just said. “That was quite the speech.”

“It wasn’t a speech,” she says. “It was me baring my soul to my son.”

“Well, you did want to have a conversation with me,” I remind her with a gentle smile.

She smiles back—almost. “I have sacrificed a lot to this Bratva. I have had to make a life for myself outside of it. And Donald is a part of that life.”

She waits for my reaction to that, her eyes wide with uncertainty. History suggests I’ll turn her down.

But despite what she and Olivia might think, I’m not without feeling.

“You can continue your association with him,” I say.

Clear relief shows on her face.

“But—”

Her relief curdles immediately.

“—if anything happens that threatens the security of this Bratva,” I continue, “then I will end it myself. Is that understood?”

“You can trust me, my son,” she says softly. She lays a hand on my forearm. “I promise you can.”

I have enough regard for our relationship that I don’t answer immediately. I take a moment to really consider it.

“I trust you enough,” I say at last.

She sighs. “I suppose that’s something.”

I turn and walk away with my real answer. The one that popped into my head the moment she asked the question.

You can’t trust someone you don’t really know.

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