Page 183 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“Aleks—”

“The answer is right there for you to see. You’re just blinded. And don’t give me that spiel about ‘friendship,’ either. Because there’s more to this. Denying it won’t make me believe you.”

“What do you want me to say, my son?” she whispers. “That I have feelings for him?”

“Do you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says tearfully. “He doesn’t feel the same way.”

“So you’ve had a conversation about this?”

“Of course not,” she says. “But it became clear early on in our friendship that he wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship with me.”

“And you decided to stay involved with him regardless?”

She twists the ring on her finger uncomfortably and says nothing.

“I told you. For fuck’s sake, how many times did I tell you? I should have put my foot down once and for all.”

“You must have gotten the wrong information, Aleks,” she says desperately. “It can’t be him.”

“It absolutely can be,” I snarl in her face.

I stride around my desk and rip open the packet Demyan and Jennifer prepared for me. I thrust the first page into my mother’s hands, then the next, and the next.

“Do you know what these pages say?” I demand. “These are sworn testimonies and physical evidence confirming that Donald Jeremy Hargrove raped a pair of fifteen-year-old prostitutes, then threatened them into signing non-disclosure agreements so they wouldn’t dare say a word to anyone. Does that sound like the kind of thing a ‘good-hearted man’ would do, Mother?”

“There… there must be some sort of misunderstanding…”

“Look at the bruises,” I order. “Look at them! Right fucking there.” I smack the photograph in her hand of a poor young girl’s mottled throat and my mother jumps in her seat. “The only misunderstanding here is yours. The man isn’t interested in fucking you, but it isn’t because he doesn’t like you. It’s because you’re fifty years too old for his depraved fucking tastes.”

She drops her head in defeat. Her shoulders sag under the weight of the revelation.

“He befriended you for a reason.”

Her head snaps up again. “What are you saying?”

“I would have thought it was obvious,” I tell her. “He knew who you were from the beginning. And he knew who your son was. He’s found out enough about me and the Bratva to justify pinning his crimes on me.”

“But—”

“The FBI was closing in on the sick son of a bitch. So he re-routed them in my direction. And you helped him do it.”

Her eyes go wide. “I would never ever help him hurt you or the Bratva. How can you even say something like that?”

“You sacrificed a lot to this Bratva. It took a lot from you and gave little in return. Perhaps you’re bitter.”

“That doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I may have resentment in me, but nothing could ever justify turning on my family.”

I look at her, and I see an old woman. One who’s lonely and desperate and sad. Who saw what she thought was a light at the end of the tunnel and reached for it with hope that maybe things could be different.

But there was never a light.

There was just a devil waving a torch amidst the darkness.

I breathe and close my eyes. “Starting now,” I tell her, “you will sever any connection you still have with Donald Hargrove. You will see no one without my explicit permission. You will do your goddamn part to keep this Bratva alive. Do you understand me?”

She nods fearfully. “I understand.”

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