3

MISHA

A FEW HOURS EARLIER

“Misha.”

My sister’s hand lands softly on my arm. When my eyes flicker down, she removes it immediately. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “You were off in your head somewhere.”

She’s not wrong. I was remembering things that are probably better off forgotten. Shaking the memories away, I notice she has her little black clutch white-knuckled in her fist. “Leaving so soon?” I ask.

She nods and points her chin towards where our mother stands near the cathedral’s pulpit. Agnessa Orlov is wearing a black mourner’s dress, her petite frame stooped with grief. But for ninety minutes, she’s been shaking hands and accepting condolences from every crime lord in the city. Not once has her smile faltered.

“I can’t believe Otets ever found fault with her,” Nikita murmurs. “She’s flawless.”

“Otets could find fault with anything.”

Nikita turns her back on the crowd and faces me with an arched eyebrow. The thick layer of makeup under her eyes is an obvious attempt to hide that she’s spent the last few days crying. She starts to say, “I know I shouldn’t ask—”

“Then don’t.”

Her lips harden with determination. “For fuck’s sake, Misha—as much as you might wish it, we aren’t robots. We’re allowed to have human emotions. Especially today. So just tell me, honestly: how are you holding up?”

“I just told you not to ask.”

She shakes her head in disappointment. “That happened fast.”

“What did?”

“Your transition to don.”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t start, Niki. It’s too soon for you to resent me for doing what I have to do.”

She squints at me for a few seconds, assessing. “But that is what you are now, isn’t it? Father is dead and Maksim is dead, so you’re in charge. You’re the big bad wolf now. All hail.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised at her bitterness. We all developed our own coping mechanisms over the last three days. Ways to deal with the grief we hold so close.

Mama got quiet. I retreated inward.

Nikita picks fights.

I don’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “Go home, Nikita. Go home and wipe all that makeup off. You aren’t fooling anyone.”

Her eyes narrow. That’s the thing about siblings: you know each other’s secrets, even when they haven’t been shared. Maksim knew all of mine. And even as we lowered my brother into the ground less than an hour ago, I couldn’t help but think, Who’s going to keep my secrets now?

“You should come home, too,” she fires back. “Mama wants to have a family meal. None of this bullshit pageantry, this ‘showing the strong face of the Orlov Bratva so the city knows we’re still here.’ It’ll be just us.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Misha—”

“As you correctly pointed out, I am the don now,” I say coldly. “I have business to attend to.”

“On the day of your brother’s funeral?”

“Maksim and I discussed this possibility years ago,” I answer, marveling at how easily my tone hardens into frozen iron. “He would want me to follow the protocol he set in place. So that is what I’m doing.”

My sister’s eyes are gray, like mine. But they’re more turbulent. More erratic. Like the sky before a thunderstorm. “Fuck protocol! What do you want to do?”

“I want to do what is expected of me.”

She looks away from me, disgust and disappointment rolling off of her like heat waves. “The Orlov men and their godforsaken rules,” she grumbles. “Don’t you wish you could just throw that rulebook out the window?”

Yes, I scream in my head.

“No,” I say out loud.

Nikita just grimaces at the answer she knew she should’ve expected. For a moment, we stew together in the tense, painful silence.

“I’ve decided that Cyrille and Ilya should move in with Mother,” I tell my sister abruptly.

She doesn’t even bother to look surprised. “Oh, how wonderful. Excellent idea. It’ll be good for Ilya to be closer to his grandmother, especially now that he’s lost his father and his uncle.”

“Don’t!” I snarl at her viciously, losing my composure for a moment.

Nikita beams at my uncharacteristic outburst. “Ah-ha! So you are still in there somewhere.”

“What do you want? You want me to get drunk and angry?” I demand. “You want me to blubber like a baby? Will you be satisfied if I fall apart, Nikita?”

Her triumphant grin sours. “What would have satisfied me is if my nine-year-old nephew had been allowed to cry at his own father’s funeral,” she hisses. “But he wasn’t allowed to, because of the fucking rules—”

“Tears can be interpreted as weakness.”

“He’s nine, for God’s sake!”

“No, he’s a target,” I remind her. “We cannot appear weak. Even here, even now, we are being watched. Maksim didn’t drop dead of a heart attack, Niki—he was murdered. As we speak, Petyr Ivanov is probably plotting new ways to chip away at our family.”

She exhales. I can feel our shared grief in that sigh. “You’re right. Fuck, I hate it when you’re right.” Straightening herself up, she fixes her hair and puts her mafia princess face back on. “Very well. I will do my part.”

She places her hand on my arm again, not caring how much I hate the intimacy. It doesn’t last long. Just one fleeting millisecond of contact before she pulls back and walks to where our mother is now standing with Ilya.

I look around and spot Ilya’s mother—Cyrille, my brother’s widow—in the entrance hall.

The mourners around her disappear like mist meeting the sun when they see me coming. Cyrille gives me a shaky smile that betrays just how much today is stealing from her. “Hi, Misha.”

“The car is here to take you home.”

“To take me—” She shakes her head, realizing that can’t be right. “Nessa’s home, you mean.”

I nod. “In time, it will start to feel like yours.”

Her blue eyes are clear, but her nose is uncharacteristically red. “My home was with your brother. Now that he’s gone, I don’t have one anymore. So your mother’s house is as good as any, I guess.”

“I will take care of you, Cyrille. You and Ilya are family.”

It’s the most assurance I can give her, pitiful as it is. She takes no comfort in it. With a bleak nod, she walks down the steps toward the armored black sedan waiting in front of the building.

A second later, Mama appears at my side. “It’s funny,” she observes as she looks me up and down. “I never thought I’d see you in this position. But now that we’re here, you look like you were made for it.”

I frown. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

She almost smiles. Almost, but not quite. “I don’t expect you to come home right away. But after the council meeting, after things are settled… do try.”

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. All I want right now is a strong drink and my bachelor pad in the city.

But as of eleven hours ago, I no longer have a bachelor pad in the city. What I have is what I inherited.

An eleven-bedroom mansion.

A thousand-man Bratva.

And a giant fucking target on my back.

“Ready, boss?” my best friend Konstantin asks as he takes my mother’s place at my side.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don Orlov, then?” I shoot him a glare that makes his smirk wither. “Sorry, man. You know I’m not good at funerals.”

My cousin’s coping mechanism is humor. He’s still never quite learned when he ought to keep it tucked away.

“We’re one dysfunctional family, aren’t we?” I mutter under my breath. Then I shake my head in dismay. “Come on. The men will have gathered by now. Time to get this over with.”