Page 47 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“That’s okay. I do. This thing started long before Robert Lawrence was ever involved.”

“Do you have any leads?” she asks.

“Not yet,” I lie, keeping the other details of my discoveries to myself for now.

My trust in my mother has always been somewhat fluid, to put a word on it. Ever since the moment I walked in on her fucking one of the men who came in to take care of the gardens.

I was ten at the time. She gave me explanations. Tried to convince me I didn’t understand what I saw.

I never said a word about it to anyone, including my father. I knew he fucked other women, too. So why shouldn’t she?

The cheating isn’t what bothered me. It was that she tried to sell me a different story. She tried to convince me she was eternally loyal to my father when I’d seen evidence to the contrary with my own two eyes.

I’m no saint. I have crimes and sins under my belt, and I own them both. Which is why I’m immediately wary of anyone who pretends they are above such things.

“I have to be delicate where the law is involved,” I explain. “And since Lawrence is the one who gave this case momentum with his personal vendetta—”

“You targeted him,” she finished.

“He’s nothing more than a cockroach beneath my heel,” I say. “But the FBI’s monitoring is making it difficult to operate the way I want. And I don’t like being restrained. Regardless, I’m not worried. Lawrence isn’t going to risk his sister’s life for the memory of a missing woman, fiancée or not.”

“You’d really kill the girl to make your point?”

“I think I’ve made it clear that I’ll do anything to make my point,” I snarl.

My mother nods and glances downwards as if thinking. But I know her. She had a plan for this conversation before she ever set foot in my office.

So I bide my time and wait for her to say what she came here to say.

“She wants to talk to you,” she says at last.

I snort. “I’ll bet she does.”

“She’s young and pliable,” she points out. “She’ll be easy to manipulate.”

“Is that what you saw in her?”

“You didn’t?”

“She’s scared,” I acknowledge. “But she’s smart. She’s not going to be as easy to crack as you might think.”

I don’t say it aloud—God knows my mother doesn’t need the fucking suggestion—but there are many ways to crack a person, no matter how difficult they may be. And the image in my head of a naked Olivia begging to do as I say is enough to get me very excited about a particular course of action.

“You know the reason we butt heads so much, don’t you?” she asks, interrupting my thoughts. “It’s because you’re too much like me.”

I don’t dignify that with an answer. I just wave a hand to dismiss her. “You can close the door on your way out.”

She nods and grabs the door handle. But she freezes as I give her one last order.

“Oh, and… send the girl to my office.”

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