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My entire body tensed, my muscles coiling like a spring.

I didn’t like to show emotions like shock, surprise, or sadness, but I couldn’t hold back the way my body went rigid, as if I had just been struck.

“What did you just say?” I asked, the words hoarse as if they’d been dragged from my throat.

“My father was an FBI agent,” she repeated, shifting her gaze to the cup on the coffee table to avoid meeting my eyes.

The air between us turned heavy, the tension palpable and suffocating.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Peter worked for the FBI, that he worked against us, the Bratva.

“That’s impossible,” I said, refusing to believe Peter would lie and betray us like that after how much we trusted him.

Giselle shook her head and rubbed her hands together. “Sadly, it wasn’t impossible because he really did work for the FBI. I only found out the night before he was killed.”

“If you knew so much, why didn’t you say anything earlier?” I scrutinized her for any signs she was lying or making things up, but there weren’t any. “Why did you keep it to yourself even after he was murdered?”

“I was afraid.” She looked at me with tears in her eyes, her voice cracking. “Do you think it would have been easy for me to walk up to you and tell you my father was a mole planted by the FBI? I didn’t know you or trust you. For all I knew, you could have killed me. You could have been the ones behind his death.”

A band of tension wrapped around my ribcage.

It made sense that she wouldn’t have trusted me that easily, but it didn’t make the news any easier to take. It wrenched my heart completely to know Peter had worked with me for over a decade, and all along, he was nothing but a spy.

We’d trusted him. We’d mourned him after his death, but he was never on our side, never on our team. He was freaking FBI all along.

I thought of my cousins and other members of the Bratva, knowing the betrayal they would feel when they found it. It would put everything at risk, including Giselle.

I inhaled, refusing to let the anger in my chest take control over logic. I needed to remain calm and hear her out first.

“So, when were you going to tell me about your father and that he was an FBI agent?” I asked with a tilt of my head, observing her.

Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she shook her head.

“You were never going to tell me, were you?”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered through the tears. “I wanted to, but I just didn’t know how you would react to it. I was afraid you would kill me or even do something worse to make me pay for my father’s betrayal. I swear I didn’t hide the details because I wanted to betray you.”

My jaw twitched, my hands balling into fists. “You don’t get it, do you? Your father betrayed me, but you choosing to keep that information from me was the biggest betrayal, solnishko . You knew how that would affect my family, and you still chose to not say anything.”

I wondered if she understood how serious things were. If I got taken down, it wouldn’t be long before the other rivals found her, and the thought of what they would’ve done to get information from her drove me crazy.

It would be a hundred times worse if any of those bastards knew her father worked for the FBI. They would torture her more as a traitor to get back at the dead man and the entire law enforcement for the times they fucked them up. She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand why I was so fucking mad right now.

She wiped her face with the back of her hands and sniffled. “Fine. Ask me anything. I’ll tell you everything I know. I promise.”

“Tell me everything you know about your father being FBI and why he joined the Bratva. Do not leave out a single detail,” I warned, my tone harsher than I intended. “It’s the only way we can keep the Bratva safe and find out who’s behind your father’s murder.”

Her tears made my chest clench painfully. I hated to see her cry, but I needed to put up a serious front to get the truth from her.

If Peter really had worked for the FBI, then they already knew enough to take us down. I needed to know who sent him, why, and how much he told them.

“I don’t know how it started. The night he came to see me, he was in a hurry and said he didn’t have much time,” she started, placing her hands between her thighs. “He told me he’d been sent to work for the Russian mafia as an undercover agent. He pretended to be a loyal dog to you guys while giving out information to the FBI.”

I swallowed hard. It was hard for me to come up with a mental image of Peter actually betraying us like that. He’d been loyal, more loyal than any of the men who’d ever worked for us, yet all of it was fake.

“But he told me the closer he got to you and the other members of the Bratva, the more conflicted he felt about it. Although you were into illegal businesses, you never hurt innocent people.”

I scoffed. Right, that was supposed to make me feel better about his betrayal. It was the same thing all the traitors said after they were caught.

It all made sense now, the raid the night the shipment arrived and how the FBI found out the Tyfun-1 was being smuggled into the country.

The pieces of the puzzle were coming together now, and it wasn’t so shocking because I’d always known if they had that much information, then someone was feeding them with it.

It had been Peter all along.

What didn’t make any sense to me was why the FBI would murder him so coldly and how other rival families got to know about the shipment.

There was a mole in the FBI; that was the only logical explanation for it.

Giselle’s shoulder sagged as if she was releasing a weight she’d held for so long. “That night, although he didn’t tell me exactly what it was, he said there was something the Bratva had and the FBI needed. I suppose it was the shipment you’re looking for.” She paused and lifted her chin. “He couldn’t bear to betray the Bratva, so he hid the shipment rather than turn it over to the FBI.”

I sat back, rubbing my jaw as I thought.

The night the warehouse was raided, Peter managed to hide everything before the police arrived. This wasn’t because he was smarter; it was because he was the whistleblower, and he knew they were coming.

He probably considered giving it to them but decided at the last minute not to.

“If he had the shipment they badly wanted, and he worked for them, then why would they kill him?” I asked. It was more of a rhetorical question, but I also hoped Giselle would have an answer to it.

She was the only person Peter had confided in before he died. He must have sensed that his death was near and told her everything that mattered.

“Dad told me he’d formed a bond with the Bratva that went beyond just work; he felt terrible about betraying you, so he decided he was going to quit his job and stop living a double life.” She held her breath. “That’s probably why they killed him.”

I dragged my hand through my hair, exhaling sharply. This was a whole lot to take in, and I had no freaking idea where to start.

On one hand, I was mad at Peter’s betrayal. On the other hand, I felt there wasn’t much to be mad about. He was just doing his job, and in the end, he risked his life and chose not to give away our most important shipment.

It was conflicting being in the situation I was in, and I wondered what my cousins would think about this if I told them.

“I’m so sorry about everything,” Giselle whispered. Her eyes were red and swollen, her breath shaky from crying.

All of this was breaking her apart. It affected her more than anyone else.

She’d suddenly lost the father she loved very much, and the peaceful life she had got thrown off balance.

She had to move in with a man she barely knew, got kidnapped, and almost died. Now, we were talking about the last time she met her father—a memory I suspected she’d so badly wanted to forget.

Although it would have made things easier if she’d told me the truth from the start, I understood why she didn’t, and I couldn’t be mad at her.

I also couldn’t blame her for her father’s mistakes, and the sight of her tears made something inside me crack open. I couldn’t bear that the woman I cared about was sad and in pain.

Standing up from the couch where I was seated, I walked over to her and pulled her closer, wiping her tears and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, solnishko . None of it was your fault.”

“But he betrayed you,” she choked out.

“He did, but he also made a crucial decision that saved all of us in the end.” I cupped her cheeks and tilted her chin so she would look into my eyes. “I promised to find his murderers, and I’m not going to rest until I do.”

Burying her face on my chest, she clutched my shirt and sobbed even more loudly.

I instinctively wrapped my arms around her to provide her comfort and warmth. The sound of her cries was a wreckage to my soul.

I hated it.

I would do anything to make sure she never cried like this ever again. The only sounds I wanted to hear from her were her laughter, her giggles, and her moans, not this.

“But my father betrayed the Bratva,” she repeated. “You must hate him for it. You must hate me, too.”

I ran my fingers through her hair slowly, rubbing her back to calm her down.

When she finally stopped crying, she lifted her now puffy face and met my gaze, adding, “I think I might know where Dad hid Tyfun-1.”