“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to,” I growl as my mother turns her back on me. “As long as you choose to remain a part of this house, I am your don.”
She turns slowly, her severe features twisted with hurt. “I wasn’t aware that I was even a part of this Bratva.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask. “A certificate? We don’t do membership badges.”
“Some recognition for my hard work, perhaps. For my sacrifices. Would that be so hard?”
“Every deal you made while I was in Russia turned out to be a dud. You chose Sarkozy over Minkoff because you liked his dick better. You think that was a smart decision?”
She goes deathly still.
“That’s right.” I nod savagely. “I know about that. I know about everything that happened while I was away.”
“You had someone spy on me?” she whispers.
“I did what I had to do,” I reply. “I needed to make sure my interests were being taken care of here. And you were simply not capable.”
“Sarkozy offered better returns—”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I snap, refusing to let her finish the lie. “He had nothing to offer apart from his loyalty and a handful of ill-trained men. But Minkoff had manpower and territory that he was willing to share out of respect for Otets and the Makarova family. You turned him down because you were fucking that sleazy Sarkozy son of a bitch.”
“I… he… that was…”
“What, Mother?” I press. Her jaw snaps shut. “What excuses are you going to give me next? What justifications are you going to make? You want to know why I don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut about this Bratva? It’s because you’ve never been able to do it before. You’ve given away your secrets to men who shower you with nothing more than a little attention. And this time, I can’t be bothered to deal with the fallout.”
“What fallout?” she protests weakly. “There was no—”
I take a step forward, getting in her face until she cringes back from me. But there’s nowhere for her to go.
“My mistake was in shielding you from the consequences of your decisions,” I tell her. “I chose to recuse you from your duties and take over without telling you exactly how badly you fucked up.”
“You’re exaggerating. You would have told me—”
“I had two options: crush you or protect you. Luckily for you, I chose the latter.”
Years of pent-up anger comes flowing out of me like lava. I’ve held back for so long, out of respect for her. But I don’t have the patience to go easy on her today. Her naïvete is more than I can take.
She shakes her head, unable to accept what I know to be the truth. “I thrived while you were gone,” she whispers. More like she’s trying to convince herself than convince me.
“Ask me about Russia,” I challenge. “Ask me how it went there.”
“You dealt with our enemies and brought our business interests back home,” she says, reciting the old party line. “Because you didn’t want to stay in Russia forever.”
“Wrong,” I breathe in her face. “It was either save everything there, or save everything here. I couldn’t do both. So I burned every last resource we had abroad just to keep it out of our enemies’ hands. Then I came back here, to keep the Bratva out of yours.”
She looks dumbfounded by the onslaught of new information. What I’m saying is true: it’s been a mistake to keep her in the dark, to let her think she could play-act as don without consequence.
This is not a game.
“What happened to my son?” she whispers in a daze. “What happened to the sweet little boy who loved me?”
“You think I don’t care for you?” I grimace. “You think I have no regard for you as my mother? Love is the only thing that’s kept my mouth shut.”
“Because you were waiting for the perfect moment to humiliate me,” she says, a sob escaping her lips.
“That was never my intention,” I sigh. “But I will not let you blow up what I have built because you feel lonely and unappreciated. Hargrove is a dangerous friend to have. Especially right now.”
She bites down on her lip. “He’s not interested. He understands how things work.”
“Tell me: did his interest in you increase once you told him who I am? Who we are?”
Her eyes go wide. “That’s a cruel thing for you to say.”
“I haven’t said anything yet,” I seethe. “Answer the question.”
She looks like a trapped animal as the predator is closing in. “Our friendship is real,” she insists. “I swear it is. I won’t—I haven’t spoken about you.”
I lean in and pin her against the wall with one hand planted on either side of her face. “I forgave you for your mistakes once. I won’t do it a second time, mother or not.”
“What are you saying?”
“I expect you to end your relationship with him,” I order. “I will not allow pillow talk to be my undoing.”
“Pillow talk?” she balks. “I’ve already told you, we’re not romantically involved. I’m not his type.”
The way she says it catches my attention. As though she’s privy to some insight about Hargrove that isn’t common knowledge.
I fucking knew it. Everyone has skeletons in their closet.
“Not his type, huh?”
She gives me a noncommittal shrug, trying frantically to backpedal from her slip of the tongue. “It’s just a thing people say.”
“How did you meet him?”
“It might surprise you to know that Donald and I have been friends for a while now. We were first introduced when you were in Russia.”
“You’ve known him for years?”
“Many,” she says. “He’s been my friend and confidant for a long time.”
“Confidant,” I echo. “I don’t like that. What do you confide in him about?”
“For starters, he knows what it means to have a fraught relationship with your child,” she says.
“Oh, spare me the bullshit. We have—”
“What we have is hostility,” she interrupts. “Arguments. Rage. How long has it been since we sat down and had a conversation, Aleksandr? Just a pleasant, comfortable conversation?”
I shake my head. “What would be the point?”
“I’m your mother,” she says. “You should be able to talk to me.” She runs her hands over her face as though she’s trying to see clearly. “Honestly, I sometimes think that the biggest reason I want to be included in Makarova business is because it’s the only way I can connect with you.”
I frown. She sounds sincere, but it seems so unlike her.
“I’m not sure that’s the smartest plan.”
She sighs and touches my face with a tender hand. “You live and breathe this life, Aleks. It doesn’t leave much room for anything else. Or anyone else.”
“This is what I was meant to do.”
“I’m not disputing that. I’m just saying, there’s more to life. You could have everything, and yet you’re settling for this one little part. And you don’t even see what it’s costing you.”
“No price I’m not willing to pay,” I growl defensively.
“What about a family?” she presses. “One day, you might want one.”
“There’s time for that later. When I’m old enough to start worrying about preserving my legacy. For now, the only important thing is building that legacy in the first place.”
Her eyes look almost damp with tears. I’ve never seen her cry and I don’t think I ever will, but this veers dangerously close to it.
“What about love?” she whispers.
“Jesus Christ,” I spit, turning away from her. “Where did all this sentimentality come from?”
She walks around to plant herself in my line of sight again. “Does it offend you?” she asks pointedly.
“It’s unnecessary,” I say. “And coming from you, it’s hypocritical.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t remember you piping after the perfect family when I was growing up,” I point out. “You were busy hiding your affairs from Otets.”
She doesn’t look embarrassed when I bring that up. In fact, her chin jerks up and she looks at me with steel in her eyes. “I took my happiness where I could find it. Believe it or not, I tried my best with your father. For a very long time. When we were first married, I was only nineteen years old. Just a girl, whereas he was a man who knew the world. But he didn’t ease me into anything. I was expected to know my role without ever asking a question. When I didn’t, he treated me like I was defective.”
She’s fiery now, and expansive, like she’s growing taller and more intense as she speaks.
“Do you know the kind of impact that has on a nineteen-year-old? I was not prepared for it. So I learned the hard way. My husband wasn’t just powerful because he was the don of a strong Bratva; he was powerful by virtue of the fact that he was a man. And let’s face it—it’s a man’s world, isn’t it, Aleks?”
I know damn well she’s not looking for an answer. I don’t give her one.
“I had to learn to survive within this nightmare. I tried very hard to please him,” she continues, her voice cracking. “I wanted so much to love him, and I wanted him to love me. But we hadn’t even been married a year before he started bringing women home with him. He never made a secret of it. It was out in the open for everyone to see. I was humiliated in my own home and I was expected to just swallow it.”
My chest clenches tight. This is all so fucked-up. So goddamn wrong.
But she’s not done yet.
“After the first few years, when it became clear that your father was not going to stop what he was doing with these other women, I decided that I had to try something else. Perhaps if I gave him a child, he would be faithful to me. So I threw away my birth control pills and did everything in my power to get pregnant. It still took me years before I conceived you,” she says. “I was twenty-nine years old and we had already been married a decade. And the pregnancy… The pregnancy was hard. I was on bed rest for the last two months. And while I was confined to my bed, trying to keep his baby safe, he was in the room down the hall, back to fucking his whores. He didn’t change. Not for me. Not even for you.”
She takes a moment to compose herself. When she looks up at me again, her unshed tears have disappeared. Swallowed back into the black hole where she buries all the other things she’s never been able to forget.
“I did want the happy family, Aleks. I tried very hard to achieve it. But there are some things you can’t do alone. So I gave birth to you and mothered you as best as I could. But I’m not ashamed to say that it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. So yes, I had affairs. But why should I have been held to a different standard when my husband spat on our vows first? I will not apologize for my infidelities. And if you ask him, I’m sure he’ll say the same thing about his.”
I nod slowly, processing everything she just said. “That was quite the speech.”
“It wasn’t a speech,” she says. “It was me baring my soul to my son.”
“Well, you did want to have a conversation with me,” I remind her with a gentle smile.
She smiles back—almost. “I have sacrificed a lot to this Bratva. I have had to make a life for myself outside of it. And Donald is a part of that life.”
She waits for my reaction to that, her eyes wide with uncertainty. History suggests I’ll turn her down.
But despite what she and Olivia might think, I’m not without feeling.
“You can continue your association with him,” I say.
Clear relief shows on her face.
“But—”
Her relief curdles immediately.
“—if anything happens that threatens the security of this Bratva,” I continue, “then I will end it myself. Is that understood?”
“You can trust me, my son,” she says softly. She lays a hand on my forearm. “I promise you can.”
I have enough regard for our relationship that I don’t answer immediately. I take a moment to really consider it.
“I trust you enough,” I say at last.
She sighs. “I suppose that’s something.”
I turn and walk away with my real answer. The one that popped into my head the moment she asked the question.
You can’t trust someone you don’t really know.
