Page 149 of Royal Bargain

“She was clever. Brave. Always trying to keep up with me, even when it meant scraping her knees or coming home covered in bruises. I’d tease her, she’d bite back. We’d get in trouble together and lie to cover for each other. It was like that for years.”

Something fragile flickers in his expression. A crack in the stone.

“But our father…” He swallows hard. “He had a way of seeing loyalty as a weapon. Love as a weakness. He started pitting us against each other. Little things at first—who could finish theirtraining faster. Who could memorize the codes. Who could bring in more money, more obedience, more pain.”

He shakes his head.

“He made us prove ourselves, again and again. Not just to him but to each other. Told us only one of us could inherit the Bratva. Only one of us would be worthy to carry the name. So we fought. We trained harder. Got colder. I started seeing her as a threat. She started seeing me as a rival.”

His voice grows quieter.

“Our closeness grew into distance. Our friendship turned bitter. Still, we kept fighting for the top spot. I would make a move, then Mira would work to undermine it. Back and forth, for so long. Our father got some kind of sick satisfaction from the way we used each other, turned on each other.”

He smiles sadly. “And in the end, he chose me.”

My breath catches.

Anatoly looks down at his hands. “I thought Mira would protest. Throw a tantrum. Fight me for control. But she didn’t. She accepted our father’s decision calmly. Maybe too calmly. Didn’t cry. Just nodded. Said she understood. And the next day, she was gone.”

He leans back, eyes closing for just a second. “I thought she’d left to make her own way. I thought she was free. But now I see… she was waiting. Watching. Planning. She didn’t want her own kingdom. She wanted mine.”

The silence afterward is thick.

I don’t know what to say. My mind is spinning, trying to fit this version of Miranda—Mira—into the woman who encouraged me, pushed me, believed in me. The woman who seemed to care about the Brannagan family enough to protect them when I entered the picture. Tested my loyalty to them.

Liam’s hand finds mine, grounding me. But even he doesn’t speak.

Anatoly opens his eyes again, locking them on me.

“She’s not done,” he says softly. “Whatever’s coming next… it’ll be worse than anything we’ve seen before.”

And for the first time in my life, I believe him without question.

I sit in silence for a long moment, Anatoly’s words still echoing in my head.

Mira.

Not Miranda.

Not the polished, unbothered woman in pearls who handed me a future.

The sister he lost.

The enemy we never saw coming.

My voice is thin when I finally speak.

“But if she wants power,” I whisper, “then why is she helping Burns?”

Liam turns to me, startled.

“She’s backing his campaign. Funding him. Feeding him intel. If she wants control, why isn’t she going for it herself?”

The question hangs in the air like smoke.

Liam opens his mouth, then closes it again. His brow furrows. He doesn’t have an answer.

And suddenly, the silence feels like a trap we’ve only just realized we’re walking into.