Page 71 of Shattered Cradle (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Breathe through the pain.”

I roll my eyes. “Aleks told me the same thing. Do they give you a handbook or something?”

He smiles. “Yeah. On the first day of orientation, right before recess.”

I almost smile, but I bite it back. Mom wouldn’t mind if I did; she’d understand the need to find some kind of levity.

But I know Rob, Mia, and Hargrove are watching me.

“You don’t need them, you know,” Demyan offers suddenly.

“Of course I do,” I scoff. “They’re my siblings.”

“They’re just what you’re used to. The people whose shadows you’ve hidden in your whole life.”

“Everyone needs family.”

“You have family,” he says. “The Bratva is your family now.”

I turn to him in shock. “A Bratva isn’t a family.”

He looks bewildered. “Of course it is. I would die for my brothers. And they would die for me. What is that if not family?”

I frown. I’m in no state to argue with a man as stubborn as him right now. At least, I tell myself that’s why I don’t answer.

But maybe a more honest explanation would be that what he’s saying makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.

“I’d die for you, too,” he continues. “Just so you know.”

I look up at him in alarm, but his face is calm and impassive. It’s not a romantic proclamation or even an especially emotive one. It’s simply a fact. A statement like any other.

The sky is gray.

It’s eleven o’clock.

I’d die for you.

“Why?” I ask finally.

“Because you’re part of our family now.”

Our conversation is cut short when the pastor steps forward. He starts reading one of Mom’s favorite psalms from her old leather bible.

“‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down…’”

Somewhere in the middle, the words fade to the background and my attention wanders. I start watching my siblings, both of whom seem to be wrapped up in their own grief.

Rob is looking down at his shoes, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He looks the way he did in the weeks after Isabella’s disappearance.

Hopeless. Desperate. Coming apart at the seams.

We held him together then. It took everything Mia and I had, and I’m still not sure we succeeded.

But now? Who’s going to hold him together now?

The support system we built has collapsed. Dad is gone. Mom is gone. Mia and I are… well, I’m not even sure what we are anymore.

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