“So, tell me, what’s been going on at home?” I asked the following day, trying to keep myself distracted. Autumn’s words from the night before had calmed me down somewhat and helped me to see things with more clarity.
She was right. If Talon was going to do anything to Illayana, he would make me watch it, knowing how powerless the whole thing would make me feel. He took her to fuck with my head, and I wasn’t going to allow it.
Still, the thought of my daughter with him made me feel uneasy. I needed to keep my mind busy and occupied, or I risked spiralling back down into that deep, dark pit of despair and hopelessness.
Aleksandr, Nikolai and Lukyan stayed silent, exchanging awkward glances with one another. I knew that look and what it represented. They did that whenever they had something they didn’t want to tell me.
It was like an unspoken rule amongst my children. That if one of them had something they didn’t want me to know, they would all keep quiet about it, presenting a united front against me.
However, there was always one weak link.
I stared down my youngest son. He avoided my eyes, looking everywhere but my direction. He glanced at the ceiling. Inspected his fingernails, acting shocked like he’d never seen them before. Played with the hem of his black trousers. Fiddled with his shoelaces.
I continued to stare, waiting him out. I didn’t mind. I had all the patience in the world. Lukyan wouldn’t be able to help himself. He would look at me eventually.
His gaze flicked to me from the corner of his eyes.
“Lukyan. Is there something you’d like to say?”
His eyes moved to Aleksandr and back to me quickly.
Something about Aleksandr, then.
Lukyan pinched his lips together like it was taking everything he had not to just open his mouth and tell me whatever it was.
Aleksandr glared in warning. Nikolai shook his head at Lukyan, eyes wide.
Lukyan’s face turned red.
Any minute now. Any minute—
“Aleksandr got married!”
I whipped back in shock. What?
Nikolai slapped his palm against his forehead.
Aleksandr growled. “You’re such a tattletale!” he barked, thumping his fists against the cell bars.
“What? You saw the way he was lookin’ at me, all evil-eyed and shit. I’m not chancing a round in the ring with him!”
“A round in the ring,” Aleksandr blew out, aghast. “We’re most likely going to die here, you idiot. You’re never going to get to the ring.”
Lukyan stayed quiet for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Huh. I didn’t think about that.” He laughed softly to himself. “Whoops.”
Aleksandr spun to face me. “Lukyan’s the one who crashed your Bugatti last year.”
Lukyan gasped in outrage. He jumped to his feet. “Yeah, well, Belka didn’t smash that upstairs window, Aleksandr did!”
The dog? What the—
Aleksandr snarled, glaring daggers at his younger brother. “Lukyan fucked someone in your office!”
My office? No, not my office. That little—
Lukyan spluttered, his gaze whipping around the room. “Nikolai broke that coffee table three years ago!”
The coffee table they all denied smashing?
“Hey!” Nikolai yelled.
Lukyan covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else for Aleksandr.”
“So you threw me under the bus?! You dick.”
They all began to yell at each other. Again. I sighed. They switched between English and Russian, pointing and gesturing with aggression.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Soft laughter came from behind me, and I turned to glare at the culprit. Autumn sat cross-legged on her cot, picking at what was left of her breakfast that had arrived an hour or so ago.
“Not one word,” I warned.
She zipped her lips shut and pretended to throw away the key.
Funny.
I put two fingers in my mouth and blew a loud, ear-piercing whistle. All three of them shut up. I ignored all the bullshit secrets they’d blabbed about and focused on the only one that mattered.
“Aleksandr.” He turned to face me, expression guarded. “You got married?” The hurt cut deep. My firstborn child had gotten married, and he didn’t even want to tell me?
Was I more like my father than I thought?
“Who?” I asked. “That cartel woman?”
“Drea, and I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how it’s too quick and I barely know her. She’s strong and fierce and utterly loyal. Her soul is like the sun. Beautiful and bright. She’s magnificent, and there’s nothing you can do or say to make me give her up—”
“Aleksandr,” I said softly, interrupting him. “Does she make you happy?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
I nodded. “Then that’s all I need to know.”
He blinked, surprised. Did he really think so little of me? All I cared about was if my children were happy.
If we did make it out of there alive, I would need to find a new place to live. A married couple needed their privacy. The family house would have gone to him eventually, anyway, might as well do it now.
I blew out a tired breath, running a hand through my hair. “Fill me in on everything else I’ve missed while I’ve been gone. Everything.”
And they did. Aleksandr told me all about the aftermath of the attack Dominik launched. The one that led to my incarceration. How many men we lost. The damages caused to the house. Dayton.
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t really like the kid much, if I was being honest, but he should have been safe in my home.
Instead, he’d died.
Poor Mikhail. He was my oldest friend. He sent his son to me to be trained, and he’d returned in a body bag.
Jesus. How did everything get so fucked up?
Nikolai spoke next, telling me about his trip to New York to canvas for new clients—an order given to him by Aleksandr, the new Pakhan in my absence. It had come as quite a surprise to me. It was Valentino’s territory. Even after hearing about what happened to him—that he’d been caught by the police—I still might not have done the same, perfectly content to keep things as they were.
Aleksandr was thinking ahead. Expanding the business and doing it the correct way, making sure to vet clients first and put them through rigorous testing before committing.
It showed me what I already knew. Aleksandr was ready to take my place.
I thought perhaps it would bring forth feelings of sorrow and grief, knowing my time was coming to end.
But it didn’t. Pride bloomed in my chest instead.
Nikolai also told me about Tatiana, and I had to act like I didn’t already know about their relationship because the conversation we needed to have was one to be had in private. Just the two of us.
It killed me not to say anything. I had already left it too long, and regret slithered down my spine at my decision to wait for him to be the one to bring the topic up.
Lukyan had a stalker—a female stalker—which was a bigger surprise than the initial news itself. But of course, Lukyan was excited about it, though he tried his best to hide it. There was no denying the way his eyes lit up with anticipation as he talked about it, though. He couldn’t wait to find out who it was, and most likely, stalk them back.
Then, there was the news about his engagement to Anya Tarasov instead of Aleksandr. I suspected that was because of the cartel woman. And that my father, upon hearing the news about Dominik’s attack on my home, had garnered nothing but some amused one-liner.
Fucking asshole.
All in all, everything seemed like it was going fine without me. Better than fine, actually. They all seemed to have everything under control.
But that left me wondering who was the one running the shots now that they were all there with me.
The time had come.
Aleksandr, Nikolai, Lukyan, Autumn and myself were all standing in the middle of the training area, anxiously waiting for the next round of Talon’s games to begin. We’d been dragged from our beds, cuffed and shackled from head to toe and marched down into the depths of the colosseum in single file. We could hear the crowd behind the stone walls, cheering and chanting, demanding the show they’d come for.
I had no more time. I needed to tell my children I loved them. Illayana was still missing, but I had three others standing right there in front of me, and knowing what our odds were, I couldn’t let it happen without saying the words.
“Go warm up. I don’t know when we’ll be called to the arena, but I want you all to be ready when we are,” I commanded.
“Yes, Father,” they all parroted back.
But when Nikolai went to turn, I grabbed his arm, stopping him. He frowned, looking down at my hand in confusion.
Autumn was standing at my side. “Give me a moment with my son,” I told her.
She saluted me. “As His Royal Grouchiness commands.” She bowed eloquently and then bounced away. Humor trickled through me, and I had to refrain from letting a smile slip free.
I focused on Nikolai. “Are you sure you’re okay with what we discussed last night?”
When the lights had gone out, we’d all had a family talk about what we were going to do when the games began. Talon might have said he wasn’t going to make me fight my children, pitting us against each other, but I wasn’t going to take his word on that. There was every chance he might change his mind, shove us all in that arena and tell us to fight it out. That only one person could leave alive.
If that was the case, we needed to come up with a plan.
And we had.
Nikolai smiled sadly. “I’m sure. I’m not capable of killing any of you.”
“Nor am I.” I squeezed his shoulder softly. Guilt smothered my chest, making tears burn behind my eyes. “It’s a father’s job to protect his children, and I am so sorry that it is a job I have failed miserably.”
“Father—”
I held up a palm, silencing him. I needed to get it out, and I needed him not to interrupt me. “If I thought for even a moment that it would make a difference, I would beg Talon to let you all go.” And I meant it.
I would get on my hands and knees and beg Talon, tell him anything he wanted to hear if I really thought it would make a difference. But I knew it wouldn’t. Talon was never going to give up the opportunity to watch me suffer.
“But we both know that’s pointless,” I continued, overwhelmed with so many emotions that I felt like I was going to explode. “I wish this was never a position you had to be in—”
“Father,” Nikolai pressed sternly, cutting off my rambling. I looked him in the eyes and held nothing back. I’d learnt from such a young age to hide my emotions. Not to let anyone see what I was feeling. Whether I was happy or sad. Scared or surprised. I got so used to it that it became hard for me to express anything anymore.
But at that moment, I wanted Nikolai to see it all. To see everything I felt. The sadness. The hopelessness. The desperation. And most importantly, the love I had for him.
“We all agreed,” he whispered softly. “If only one of us can get out of this place alive, it’s Illayana.” There was no resentment in his voice. No anger or distress. Just conviction. And it made me feel ten times worse.
I could never pick between my children. I loved them all equally. I might favour Illayana a tiny bit because she was my little girl, but that didn’t mean I loved my boys any less. They were all my everything. Every single one of them.
But if, worst case scenario, Talon decided to make us fight each other to the death—something none of us were capable of doing—we all decided to sacrifice ourselves so that Illayana would be the last one standing.
I’d flat out refused the idea when Aleksandr first suggested it. How could I possibly let that happen? How could I just stand by and let my sons die? But none of the other solutions I’d managed to come up with would ever work.
So, the plan was simple.
Autumn had agreed to end my sons’ lives, quickly and painlessly. Then, I would kill her. She wasn’t privy to that specific detail of the plan, though. It was something Aleksandr, Nikolai, Lukyan and I had discussed while she was asleep. In Russian, just in case she happened to wake up and overhear us. After she was dead, I would slit my own throat, leaving Illayana as the sole survivor.
It was a horrible plan for a thousand different reasons, one of which being that the idea of killing Autumn made my stomach churn. Made me feel so sick I felt like I would throw up. But I had no choice.
I could never kill my children. Never. And I already knew from experience that if I refused to fight, Talon would just kill us all anyway. So, after Autumn took care of my sons, I would take care of her so that at least one of my children would survive.
I leant forward and rested my forehead against Nikolai’s. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath in. Images flashed behind my eyes. The day he was born. His first laugh. The first time he’d called me “Dada”. Him running around the house at two years old, giggling and smiling.
“YA tebya lyublyu,” I love you, I whispered.
He stared at me, completely dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open, and it made me feel like the worst father in the world. Does he not know that I love him? More than anything?
Before he could respond, I moved away, leaving him to stare after me in complete shock. I had two more sons to talk to, and I was even more determined than ever to make sure they knew exactly how important they were to me.
“Aleksandr.”
My eldest son straightened from his stretch, standing tall with his hands behind his back, posture perfect. My little soldier. God, the guilt smothering me… I could hardly fucking breathe.
I stared at him, wondering where to even begin. There was so much to say. So much I felt he needed to hear. That he deserved to hear.
One thing, though, stood out from all the rest.
“I’m sorry.”
He whipped back in shock, eyes wide.
I continued on like I didn’t notice. “I put a lot of pressure on you. Was tough on you. Expected more from you than anyone else. Blamed—” I sucked in a harsh breath, finding it hard to voice my next words. “Blamed you for things that weren’t your fault, and I am so sorry. You deserved better. You all did. I struggled with what happened to your mother, but that doesn’t excuse my behaviour. I never should have treated you the way I did all those years after her death.”
I remembered it vividly as if it only happened yesterday. The way I ignored him whenever I called the house to check on things. They way he would try to talk to me, and I would just shut him down. He held everything together when I left to avenge Yekaterina, and I never thanked him.
Aleksandr swallowed, visibly upset by what I was saying, as was I. But I had to keep going, no matter how much it hurt me to acknowledge what a terrible father I had been all those years.
“I treated you unfairly. Said things I regret. That I wish I could take back. I can’t change the past, but I want you to know, I couldn’t be more proud of you, moy syn, my son.” It took everything I possessed to keep my voice steady. “You’re everything I wish I was and more, and I love you with every fiber of my being.”
His whole mouth dropped open at my revelation, much like Nikolai’s had done. He spluttered, completely at a loss for words, and that was okay. I wasn’t sure I was prepared for whatever he would say, anyway.
So, I gave him a small, sad smile and moved on. I wished I was stronger than I was, but the truth of it was that I was fucking coward. Aleksandr was the type of man who would forgive me for my sins, despite the fact that I didn’t remotely deserve it. He would do it because family meant everything to him, and he constantly put those he loved before himself.
Lukyan looked at me when I approached, pausing in his movements of sparring with an invisible opponent. “Don’t worry, Father,” he said, coming to a stand. “I know the plan. I won’t let you down.” His face was a mask of complete and utter seriousness, absolutely no sign of the jokester personality he possessed.
It was a side of him that rarely made an appearance. My youngest son was carefree by nature. He liked to laugh. Make other people laugh. Crack jokes during awkward and inappropriate times. He always saw the best out of bad situations and never let anything drag him down. He was wholly himself, every second of every day, and he didn’t give a fuck if people didn’t like it.
The truth of it was… I admired him. He was everything I was not.
He deserved to know that.
“You know, I always wished I was more like you.”
His jaw gaped open.
I internally sighed. Looks like I am surprising all my children today.
“You have this way about you, Lukyan. This fun, devil-may-care attitude towards everything you do that used to drive me absolutely mad. Until I realised the reason why it made me so crazy was because I wished I could be a little more like you. I wished I could see the fun side of things. Wished I enjoyed my life the way you do.”
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. His jaw remained open like those stupid clowns at carnivals that you try and throw a ball into to win a prize. I tapped under his chin, and he closed his mouth, still looking at me like I’d grown an extra head or some shit.
“We most likely won’t make it out of this alive, so I want you to know how incredibly smart I think you are. I think you’re so smart, you sometimes get bored because you’re not being challenged enough, and that’s my fault. I should have given you more responsibility. Trusted you more. You have so much potential, moy malen’kiy ogonek, my little light, and one of my biggest regrets in life will be that I never gave you the proper opportunity to show that.”
Lukyan sucked in a breath, his lip quivering. “You haven’t called me that in a long time,” he murmured softly.
Another kick to the gut.
Lukyan in Russian meant “light”, and when he was a toddler, running around the house with a smile that would just light up the entire room, I used to call him that. But he was right. I hadn’t done it in a very long time.
“I love you, Lukyan. So much—”
“Oh my god! I love you, too!” he screamed.
I grunted when he slammed into me with so much force that I stumbled back, his arms coming around to lock me in a tight bear hug. Chuckling softly, I patted him on the back, a smile pulling at my lips.
“Ladies and gentleman, are we ready for the next round of the Til Death Games?!” My spine stiffened at the voice that came blaring from the TVs hanging on the wall.
I pulled back, seeing a man dressed in a tuxedo and holding a microphone displayed on each screen.
Aleksandr, Nikolai and Autumn joined me and Lukyan as the man introduced himself and the events that would be taking place tonight. Tension filled me.
Here we go.
But where is—
“Father!”
I spun around quickly, seeing Illayana running towards us. The huge pressure disappeared completely from my chest at the sight of her.
“Illayana!” I caught her when she jumped into my arms. Overwhelming relief made me exhale a deep breath as I squeezed her tightly. She’s alive. She’s okay. She’s alive. The words chanted in my head over and over again.
When I hadn’t seen her there when we first arrived, I had started to panic. I thought perhaps Talon had done what I feared he would do all along. But she was there. She was alive, and she was okay.
Her brothers swarmed us not even a second later, pestering her with question after question that made her laugh at their fretting.
“I’m fine,” she said, stepping out of my embrace. “Talon didn’t touch me.” Thank fucking God. “That’s not what he wanted me for. He just wanted to fuck with you all. Rile you up for the games. Plus, I told him I’d die before I let any of his men touch me, and he said that would interfere with what he had planned, so he just left me locked up in a room the whole time.”
My gaze sought out the pair of fiery green eyes at my side. Autumn looked up at me, a happy smile on her face. She was right. Talon just took Illayana to fuck with my head, and she’d called it. She was able to see what I had been too distraught to see myself.
For that, I felt indebted to her, more so than I already was.
Before anything else could be said, Talon’s soldiers surrounded us, barking out a command. “You two, against the wall” –he pointed to Autumn and myself– “You four, over near the door,” he said, signalling to my children.
Nobody moved.
“Now!” he demanded, waving his machine gun around like a lunatic.
I couldn’t speak for Autumn, but my children wouldn’t move unless I gave the order. They were loyal like that. They all looked at me, and I chose to wait a few extra seconds to show that they weren’t moving because he had ordered it, but because I had.
I gave the slightest nod, and they all moved to where the guard indicated.
Autumn and I went to the wall and placed our palms against it, our legs shoulder-width apart. We’d done that dance before, right before our first round of the games. That was when they’d finally remove the collars, and that was something I wasn’t going to fight them on.
The guard approached from behind and used a key to unlock my collar. I may have forgotten I was wearing the thing half the time, but I was glad to no longer have pounds of explosives around my neck. The moment it left my skin, I stretched out my neck, moving it left to right. Autumn did the same.
We were herded back over to Aleksandr, Nikolai, Lukyan and Illayana, the roar of the crowd getting louder and louder with each passing second.
I hated the fact that I didn’t even have a second to talk to Illayana like I’d spoken to my other children, because the next words out of the presenter’s mouth signalled the start of the games.
“Introducing the next competitors of the Til Death Games, The Crimson Death and the most notorious family in the Bratva, the Volkovs!”
