Page 69 of Sapphire Tears

“Your pressure looks good. Your vitals read well, too,” she says after a few minutes. “The baby seems to be thriving. But I’ll have to do a more extensive test when we’re back at the mansion with all my equipment.”

I look up at Sara dumbly. “You talk as if you know Adrian.”

She gives me a hard smile. “I knew him way back when he was Bogdan Uvarov.”

My eyes go wide. “Seriously?”

“Deadly serious. I told you that my father worked for Kolya’s father, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I just didn’t put the two things together.” I take a deep breath, then venture, “So you were around when… when…”

“When Kolya killed Luka? Yes, I was around.”

I swallow audibly. “W-what was that like?”

“It was chaos,” she admits. “For a long time. I only found out about the politics of it all because my father was on his first bout of chemotherapy and I was the one taking care of him.”

“Didn’t you tell me that your father worshiped Luka Uvarov?”

She nods. “Like a god. When he found out what Kolya had done, he turned his hospital room upside down. He demanded I take him to confront the new don. So off we went, on what amounted to a suicide mission. At least, that’s what I thought we were walking into. My father burst into Kolya’s office, crutches and all, and told Kolya to explain himself.”

I blanche. “Kolya didn’t…?”

“Did he like it? No,” she laughs. “But did he kill him? Not at all. Not to ruin the ending, but the cancer is what got Papa. Kolya had nothing to do with that.”

I let out a tense breath. “Oh. Okay. That’s good.”

“Papa would’ve been okay with it, though, I think. He was a tough old son of a gun. Stood right in Kolya’s face and roared,Tell me why! Tell me why you did it!I was frozen stiff, but Kolya just nodded gracefully and explained.” She tucks a stray hair behind her ear and leans one shoulder against the wall next to me. “He told my father that he was freeing Adrian. That Adrian no longer wanted to be a part of this life, and Luka would have sooner killed Adrian than watch him walk away from the Bratva. So he did what needed doing. For his brother’s sake.”

“And your dad was okay with that?”

“Well, yes and no,” she admits. “He was still all spitfire-y, ready to keep arguing. But then Kolya, he… Have you ever noticed how his eyes change sometimes? It’s like they’re—”

“Splintering,” I fill in with a shiver. “Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

Sara grins. “Exactly. Splintering. That’s perfect. Anyway, they did that thing, and then Kolya started asking questions. But it was like he already knew all the answers. He asked if my dad knew what Luka had done with his wife, Kolya’s mother. My dad got weird then. He kind of shuffled in place, hemmed and hawed. But that wasn’t good enough for Kolya. Kolya made him say it out loud. Forced him to, really.”

She fades off, picking at her lip with one long nail.

I feel a sudden chill in the air. “What did he make him say, Sara? What did you hear?”

She’s still quiet.

“Sara,” I prompt, my eyes huge and pleading. “Please tell me.”

She swallows and straightens up. “I stood there and listened as my father confirmed that Luka had sold his own wife into a prostitution ring.”

The words are as sickening now as they were the first time I heard them. Like knives whirling in the air, cutting indiscriminately. I close my eyes until the nauseous feeling passes.

“He knew that my dad was one of the few who’d been privy to that disgusting little secret,” she explains. “And he made him swear never to repeat those words. Kolya didn’t want Adrian to know what happened. Even then, he wanted to protect his brother from ugly truths.”

I swallow the acrid taste in my mouth.Where does the lie end? Where does the truth begin?

Out loud, I ask, “Then what happened?”

“That was pretty much the end. Papa got the message. He understood that any other don would’ve slaughtered him on the spot. For his sins, for his secrecy, for his insubordination. Kolya was being merciful. We walked out and that was that.”

“So how did you come back into the fold?”

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