Page 63 of Devil's Vows

But finally hearing my name from her lips— “Yes,moya ptichka?”

“Where’s your dad?”

Her question comes from left field, and I sink deeper into the chair. I can’t hide this from her forever. Not when she’s living in the house with him, even if she doesn’t know it yet. When we get married, she’ll have to know.

“Why’re you asking?”

“The girls said he’s sick and it makes you sad…so I’ve been wondering. That’s all.”

“Milana hasn’t told you anything?”

Her hand shifts to my chest, covering the eye tattooed right over my heart. Where it could watch her expression and detect lies…where it will meet a bullet, fearless.

“We didn’t speak about him.”

“Who did you speak about?” I ask, worrying just how much Milana would give away in a drunken rage. But my sister has been a closed book for years now, and there’s no chance she’d open up to a stranger just because she’s a woman.

“The girls. Their births. Your wife and her…problems. And that she was using while she was pregnant.”

I huff out a slow sigh.Problems? Talk about a euphemism. Darya was pure poison until I forced her to sip from her own cup. At least now, I won’t have to ever fill Gabriella in.

“The girls are fine, mostly. It was really difficult when they were born.” I’m not in the mood to talk about Darya or how Irisha and Katya suffered. How I locked Darya up in an attempt to get her clean, but even then, she had her goons in place, slipping drugs to her.

I’m still digesting what Gabriella lived through, shell-shocked, trying to keep a cap on the anger that’s simmering in me. She’s been carrying this trauma with her for so long, it’s part of her background noise, sometimes turning up so loud, she can no longer ignore it.

“Anything else you want to know?” I murmur, keeping the conversation open, but really wanting to close it off.

“Who’s Dimitri?”

My anger seeps from me, leaving me icy cold inside. “Dimitri? Who talked about Dimitri?”

Yuri has been sworn to silence, just as everyone else has. But Katya and Irisha miss Dimitri, and they are too young to swear to silence—too innocent. The reason why I have two bullets that ripped through my chest. And Milana…whatever Gabriella and Milana spoke about, Dimitri might have come up.

“The girls mentioned him? That he’s gone? And that you’re sad that he’s gone?”

For a long while, I can’t speak, digesting her words and the girls’ observations that I’msad.

Papa.

Dimitri.

Sad? I’m mauled and torn apart. Scarred for life.

“Ivan?” she whispers as she reaches up to cup my cheek, making me look at her. “What happened?”

Here, like this, so close, with her pressed to my heart, I bet she can sense the turmoil rampaging through me.

“Dimitri…Dimitri is my best friend.”Wasmy best friend, but she doesn’t need to know more.

“You know him from school?”

Such a sweet observation. “From school in Russia, yes, a bit, when I went there. But he came here and worked with our Pakhan for a long time.”

“You were close? No wonder the girls miss him. The way Irisha said his name was so cute, spelling it out for Katya.” She taps her nose. “Di-mi-tri.”

Fuck. It’s enough to break me. A simple gesture triggering a landslide of memories of a man I called my brother. Worst of all is he was always so good with Irisha and Katya, loved them as if they were his own kids.

“Yeah, he used to love doing that, booping their noses,” I say on a hard swallow.