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Looking back, I ran my mouth without much thought as to how I was going to do that, but it felt good at the time.
In fact, it felt amazing.
I’d watched his face relax in shock and the realization that I finally had some kind of power over him. I knew his secret. His filthy secret that would mean his end.
Staring at his desk, a tremble shoots down my arms and legs. I close my eyes, and the last conversation I had with my father floods my mind.
He threw his drink at me and it smashed against the fireplace. He cursed my existence and everything about me, told me how often he’d thought about smothering me in my crib as revengefor what I did to my own mother. He told me he was going to sell me for a penny to the highest bidder and no one would ever hear from me again.
When I laughed in his face, he lunged at me with such fury that for a few seconds, I was certain I was going to die.
The rest is a blur. I think the letter opener ended up in my hand through pure desperation and when he flew at me, I just reacted.
I had no idea a letter opener could do so much damage to someone.
It slit his throat like a hot wire through ice.
We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, then he stumbled back into his chair and blood spurted from his throat like a fountain. It all happened so fast that it still doesn’t feel real. But I did it.
I killed my father.
I murdered him to save myself, and then I tried to make it look like a break-in and assassination to save myself further.
I ran outside, broke the window, and even scuffed up the back gate to make it look like someone had snuck past security. I wiped security cameras in the house and looped them to compensate for the lost footage. Thankfully, my father didn’t have a camera in his office because he was too paranoid.
But I did it.
I killed him.
And the entire family has been scouring the city for months in search of his killer.
Coldness envelops me as the storm rages outside, and my father’s chair sits empty, still stained with blood that couldn’t be scrubbed out.
Nausea warms my gut, sending hot tingles all over my skin, followed by a flush of goosebumps.
I swallow hard and step past his desk to the filing cabinets where the remainder of the files are kept, and as I open them and search for anything regarding the Yegorovs, it dawns on me how limited my time may be.
Every step I take to move the family forward and advance my own business involves risk, but if my father did have dealings with the Yegorovs, then I’ll need a good excuse to decline their offer. I can’t take the risk that they are my father’s mysterious, unknown business partner.
But declining has its own risks. Viktor is watching me like a hawk, and the last thing I need is to give him another excuse to probe deeper.
Without a scapegoat, I’m on borrowed time.
The laws of our family, and every other Bratva family in New York, are absolute. Murdering thePakhan, the leader of the Russian Mafia, is a death sentence.
Even for his daughter.
Some rules are absolute. In a perfect world, I would have gathered evidence and presented it to the heads of the other most powerful Russian families in the city, and they would have dealt with him.
Instead, I murdered him.
And if anyone ever finds out, it will be my neck in the guillotine.
23
ERIK
This is a bad idea.