Page 60 of Brutal Unionn

“She’s still my blood.”

“No,” I say, my voice cutting clean. “She’s mine now. Your blood means nothing.”

He snorts, shaking his head with that same smug tilt he must’ve worn the first time he backhanded her. “You really think that means something? Come on, I thought the son of the mighty Takeda Matsumoto was smarter than this.”

“The son of Takeda Matsumoto is dead as well,” I murmur. “When you die, remember it was Sho who killed you, and Nadia didn’t even have to ask.”

Boris leans forward, both hands on his knees, eyes sharp, mouth curling around something venomous. “You fucking idiot. She doesn’t want you.”

The words barely leave his mouth before I grab the front of his shirt, yank him off balance, and slam the back of his head against the edge of a half-buried rock. The crunch is wet and immediate. His beer drops from his hand and spills across the sand.

He groans, dazed, blood beginning to slide from behind his ear. I shove him backward onto his spine, kneel over him, and press the blade to his throat hard enough to draw the first line of red.

“Say that again,” I growl, breathing hard. “Say one more goddamn word about her and I’ll carve the inside of your throat before you can finish it.”

Boris coughs, blood already collecting at the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t fight. He grins.

“She made a deal,” he rasps, voice shaking from the impact but still smug beneath the pain. “With the council. They told her—kill Sho, and she gets her revenge on me, and a secure relationship with the Yakuza.”

I don’t move the knife.

“Keep talking,” I whisper.

His breathing hitches, but he pushes through. “She agreed. It was the only way she could get the Yakuza to give me over. It’s the only reason I hired Bhon.”

My heart stalls in my chest. This man is fucking vile. My girl. My Nadia would never. I hold his gaze, and speak through my teeth. “You’re lying.”

He leans in, the stink of beer and rot thick on his breath. “Then call her.”

I don’t respond, my nostrils flaring at the scent of metal in the air.

“Go ahead,” he presses. “Ask her. Ask Nadia if she has a hit out on you.”

I let the silence settle, heavy and cold. My hand is still on the knife at his throat, as I place my knee into the center of his chest.

I study his face. The blood running down his neck. The broken smirk twitching at the corner of his lips. He’s not bluffing—at least not the way amateurs bluff. This is the kind of lie that’s coated in enough truth to make it dangerous.

Nadia would never bring me to the Yakuza. She knows what they’d do to me. She knows the price on my head, and despite her not knowing every scar, she claimed to understand me. To see me. Towantme.

It doesn’t fit. It can’t. Shewouldn’t?—

But she would if she had no choice.

Would she?

I press the knife a fraction deeper into Boris’s throat, watching the pulse stutter beneath the blade. My knee shifts slightly into his sternum, not enough to crack, but enough to make it hard to breathe. He wheezes, but still grins.

Boris coughs under me, his voice hoarse now. “You think she loves you more than she hates me?”

I can’t say she does…she’s never said--

“I don’t believe that’s Nadia,” I whisper more to myself than him.

Boris watches me carefully,a smarmy smile on his lips. “Why would I lie?” he says. “You’re already here to kill me.”

Boris looks so sure of himself I can’t breathe. There’s not a bluff in sight, and I can’t trust myself to blindly believe her, not in this world. Revenge is so sweet to people like us. I can’t be certain of all the things I would do to eliminate my father. Why would I expect her not to sacrifice all she can for revenge and the security of her empire?

“If you’re lying,” I hiss into his face. “I will beat your skull in with this rock and leave you for the fucking seagulls.”