Page 16 of Crushed Vow

His blood stained the side of his collar, but he didn’t flinch or slow down.

“They knew I was coming for Vincent,” Cassian muttered as we walked. His jaw clenched. “The only person who could’ve tipped them off... is Luca.”

I stopped mid-step.

My pulse quickened. “Luca?” I echoed “Oh my God, Cassian... now I’m scared. Who exactly did my father get into trouble with?”

His gaze cut to mine.

“The Volkov Bratva,” he said. “The same Russians who held your mother hostage for years. The same men who broke her.”

My breath hitched.

“She was real,” he went on, his voice lower now. “The voice you heard... in the room next to yours that night, the night I locked you up—”

His eyes flickered. “That was your mother.”

The world tilted.

“I didn’t put her there to punish her, Charlotte. I didn’t even know she was alive for a long time. When I finally tracked her down, she was a shell of herself. Violent. Confused. Damaged in ways I don’t think she ever truly recovered from.”

His voice lowered, more human now.

“The Russians did things to her. Unspeakable things. They destroyed her from the inside out. She wasn’t just traumatized—she was gone. Her memory, her sanity, everything. She was infected with syphilitic meningoencephalitis—a result of repeated, untreated abuse. By the time I got to her, she couldn’t even recognize her own name, let alone her daughter.”

I swallowed hard. My chest tightened.

“I’ll admit it,” he said, eyes narrowing at something distant. “I turned a blind eye to her suffering at first. I thought it was karma for what she did to me and to my mother. I told myself she deserved it. And maybe that was true once. But then you came into my life, and I couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t matter. So I went after her.”

He paused, his voice thickening with guilt.

“But she wasn’t herself anymore. She screamed when touched. Bit. Attacked nurses. I only brought her to my house for one day—that same day I had you locked up for challenging me—because I didn’t know where else to keep her until we could get her proper help. The next day, I transferred her to Columbia Presbyterian’s psychiatric trauma unit. The best care in New York.”

My legs felt weak.

“I never hurt her, Charlotte. Not once,” he added, turning to face me fully now. Blood, dried and smeared, marked a line down his temple. “I wanted to kill her for what she did to me and my mother, but I didn’t. For you.”

He exhaled heavily, as if confessing cost him more than he expected. “The doctors said if there was even the slightest chance she’d improve, it would take time. I planned to let you see her the moment she recognized anything. But you were gone by then. And she never got better. She never remembered. She never stopped screaming. And a few weeks ago... she died.”

I couldn’t respond. The burning hatred I had nursed for him, for keeping her from me, began to crumble. Not from forgiveness. But from sorrow.

It felt like someone poured water over the fire inside me—extinguishing it, not with peace, but grief.

A black SUV pulled up beside us.

Cassian opened the back door. I slid in numbly, barely registering the massive figure behind the wheel. The driver’s voice was as big as his body—gravelly, commanding.

“Boss,” he said.

Cassian didn’t look up. “Speak.”

“The boy’s been taken.”

The blood drained from my face. “The boy?” I repeated, my voice hollow. “Vincent?”

Cassian turned to me slowly, meeting my eyes. “They hit us so we wouldn’t make it on time.”

I couldn’t breathe. “I lost my mother,” I choked. “And now—now my brother?”