Page 31 of Brutal Union (Ruthless Mafia Kings #8)

NADIA

This nightmare always starts the same.

I am at the edge of a field filled with daisies and wild roses, the air thick with the scent of honey and sun-warmed petals. The horizon is endless, painted in hues of lavender and gold, and for a moment—just a moment—it almost feels like peace.

My mother is there, radiant in the center of the field like a goddess carved out of light and memory.

Her long blonde hair cascades down her back like liquid gold, shimmering with an ethereal glow as it dances in the breeze.

It covers every inch of her skin, wrapping her like a robe of sunlight, and somehow, I know—this is how I envision heaven.

I’m calling out to her, my voice high and desperate. I’m barefoot, small, no more than six or seven. The wind steals my cries before they can reach her, and still I call, arms outstretched like if I just try harder she’ll turn and see me.

But her shoulders roll back, her air tangles in the wind like the world is trying to hide her from me .

The damp dirt beneath my feet begins to shift, clutching at my toes like a dozen greedy fingers.

It’s cool—almost icy—and unforgiving, pressing up against my skin with the weight of something ancient.

Each step becomes heavier, like I’m dragging time itself with me.

The ground pulls me downward, slow and relentless, as though the earth has decided it wants me—body and soul—buried in its silence.

The daisies around me sway in the breeze, but something about their movement feels wrong.

Too synchronized. Too controlled. They lean in as though watching, whispering secrets to one another in rustling petals.

The air is thick, unnatural. And as I press forward, my muscles begin to tighten—not from fear, but from age.

My spine curls, my breath shortens, and my body grows weary under the invisible weight of years I haven’t yet lived.

“Mommy,” I pant, my tongue thick with the sharp, strange blend of earth and honeysuckle. It tastes like rot beneath perfume—like something once beautiful that’s been left too long in the sun. “I need you.”

She shifts, and for a heartbeat, a single heartbeat, she’s real. Flushed pink in the sunlight, her posture relaxed and familiar, like she’s just gotten lost in the pages of Mrs. Dalloway again. Like the world has melted away for her, and she didn’t hear me because Virginia Woolf was louder.

“Mommy, please—” I whimper, dropping to my knees. Pain shoots through my leg as I grip it with both hands, dragging myself forward with every ounce of strength I have left.

But when I lift my eyes again, everything has changed.

Her skin is soaked in crimson. Her body limp. And her head—her beautiful head—tilts, then rolls into the flower bed like a dropped doll.

I scream, my throat ripping open with the sound. I fall, crawling, clawing through blood-streaked petals and dirt. My nails break on the ground as I reach for her, as if I could sew her back together with nothing but want.

“No!” I screech, the word cracking in my chest. “Mom!”

My mouth fills with soil—gritty, bitter, final—and the world tilts. My forehead hits the earth, and then?—

Silence.

I am cold again.

Seated in the worn chair before my mother’s vanity, my knees tucked tight against my chest, I stare into a mirror that reflects someone I barely recognize.

My skin is blotchy, tear-streaked, and flushed from some emotion I can’t quite name—grief, maybe.

Rage. Fear. The knuckles of my fists, resting against my thighs, are slick with tears I don’t remember shedding.

My breath fogs the lower edge of the glass, and I find myself searching my own face for answers, for something solid in the middle of this storm.

Behind me, my father’s voice cuts through the silence, low and measured. “Nadi.”

I don’t turn. I can’t. I keep my eyes fixed on the version of me in the mirror—the one who looks so young, so small, so breakable.

My cheeks are streaked with chalky lines.

The tip of my nose is red and raw. But it’s my eyes that catch me off guard.

They’re impossibly bright, bluer than I’ve ever seen them, almost glowing beneath the vanity light.

They’re the only part of me that still looks alive.

“You are as beautiful as your mother,” he says, and his hand settles on my shoulder. There’s no tenderness in the gesture, only possession. His fingers tighten, grounding me in a way that feels more like restraint than reassurance.

I stay still. Silent. Letting him speak.

“Hopefully you’ll be smarter than she was,” he murmurs, his tone soft but loaded. “You won’t use that beauty to manipulate a man you claim to love.”

His hand moves again—slides up to my chin, curling his fingers under it and forcing my face away from the mirror.

I don’t resist. My gaze lifts, not to him, but to his reflection just behind mine.

It’s the eyes I can’t avoid—bottomless, black as pitch, pulling me in with their impossible gravity.

Every time I look into them, I feel like I’m tumbling into a void I’ll never crawl out of.

He’s the last parent I have left. The only man who’s ever made warmth feel like something sharp.

“You know the price of loyalty, right?” he asks, not because he expects a response, but because he wants to hear the words echoed back.

I nod slowly, the motion mechanical, like I’m a doll whose strings are tugged too tight.

“You fail,” he says, and his thumb presses hard enough into my jaw to leave a bruise, “and you pay with your life.”

The darkness rushes up to meet me then, swallowing everything—the vanity, the mirror, even his voice—until I’m falling with no bottom in sight.

My body jerks as I wake, lungs aching as I drag in air too fast to feel real.

Sweat clings to my skin, cold and suffocating, and my sheets are tangled around me like restraints.

My chest rises and falls in shallow bursts, and I barely manage to push myself upright.

My heartbeat rattles in my ears, and for a few panicked seconds, I have to convince myself that my father has been missing for the last three years.

Sho is not my father. He will not demand my life in exchange for disobedience.

He will not weigh my worth in blood or punish me for stepping out of line with the same hand that once held mine.

I have to believe he is something softer, something more forgiving—even if I have given him no reason to be.

Because my father was never a man who forgave.

He killed my mother for an affair that brought Nikolai into the world.

That single act of violence unraveled our family and handed the Bratva to a son who was never truly his.

Nikolai took what was never meant to be his not through birthright, but by default—because Aleksandr, the rightful heir, was discarded.

And because I, his daughter, was deemed too emotional. Too chaotic. Too much like her.

My father expected, perhaps even wanted, us all to know the truth. That Nikolai didn’t belong. That my mother had sinned. So he showed us in the cruelest way possible—by cutting her apart and sending us the pieces, one by one.

The first pieces he sent to me were her eyes.

Those beautiful, bright blue eyes—my eyes—dulled by death and fear, wrapped in silk and sealed in a box as if that could somehow preserve what was left of her.

I remember holding them in my hands, unable to cry.

The tears didn’t come until later, when I found myself back in the chambers where we kept him locked beneath the house, screaming at the bars like a child having a tantrum.

Why would you do this to me ?

Why would you destroy her?

Why would you make me look like her, only to despise me for it?

He never gave me real answers. Only monologues.

He told me he was raising me to be stronger than she was.

That my mother had been a lesson. That she acted out because he didn’t control her well enough.

That love had nothing to do with freedom—it was about obedience. And he was teaching me to be better.

I don’t know why I kept going down there, why I visited him long after I should have stopped.

Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was guilt.

Or maybe it was the worst kind of madness—the kind that makes you believe if you just try harder, if you just play the part well enough, the monster might finally love you.

I begged him to see me. Not her. Just me. Nadia. His baby girl.

But I was never anything more than her replacement in his mind, a shadow he tried to mold into submission.

And I let him.

That’s the part I can’t escape. I let him. I let the hope live inside me, even when it was hollow and cruel and rotting at the edges. I was weak enough to chase a ghost of his approval, and even now, I’m still dumb enough to question whether it might have been worth something.

Even now, some twisted part of me still wants to ask: If I had been more like the woman he wanted—would he have spared her? Would he have the heart to spare me?

None of that matters now. Boris has been missing on all accounts for three years.

I have killed all of his loyalists that prayed for his return throughout the Bratva, and when I see him—despite the gapping need I have to want his approval— I will kill him to show my strength as Vor v Zakone of the Bratva.

I will kill him to keep my brothers, their wives and their children safe.

I will kill him for our mother, and the brightness of her eyes.

I will kill him for never believing in me as a leader. As an equal. As a woman.

In all honesty, I may just kill him to watch his eyes die when he realizes his end didn’t come in battle or glory. It came at the hands of a woman pissed and proper enough to take her rightful place on the throne.