Mother

Viktor POV

Aria’s breathing stayed uneven long after the nightmare ended.

Most people believed they could fake sleep if they kept their eyes closed and stayed still enough, but the body always betrayed the truth eventually. 

Aria still breathed like someone waiting for danger and I lay beside her in silence, staring at the dark ceiling while her shaky inhales slowly settled beside me. She thought I believed her act and I allowed her to think so.

Fear didn’t disappear because someone whispered promises in the dark but eventually her body softened slightly against the mattress, tension draining little by little until her breathing finally evened out for real.

I turned my head slightly toward her.

Moonlight filtered faintly through the curtains, silvering the edges of her face even asleep, there was tightness around her mouth, like some part of her still expected pain.

People feared me every day and men twice my size lost their nerve when they realized who stood before them.

Some feared me because they had seen me fight in the cage while others because they understood what lived beneath my calm exterior.

Aria shifted slightly in her sleep, and my gaze moved over her automatically. The oversized shirt she wore had slipped off one shoulder, exposing pale skin marked faintly by old bruises nearly healed.

My jaw tightened, usually violence left nothing behind inside me and I could walk away from dismantling a man piece by piece and sleep peacefully afterward. My pulse never rose during torture and my blood never burned with rage but tonight there was restlessness beneath my skin.

An irritation I couldn’t fully dissect, perhaps because Yuri had touched what belonged to me or because Aria’s fear lingered in this room even after the man responsible no longer breathed.

I closed my eyes briefly but the unease remained.

Finally, I pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed soundlessly.

Aria didn’t stir and the marble floors were cool beneath my bare feet as I crossed the dark bedroom and stepped into the hallway.

Most guests had already left after the chaos earlier tonight.

The scent of blood still lingered faintly in the air downstairs despite the cleaned floors and polished walls. 

I moved through the quiet house toward the faint breeze slipping through the open French windows.

Outside, the night stretched endlessly over the ocean but the darkness had never held monsters for me the way it did for Aria.

I stepped onto the terrace and immediately spotted Alexei standing near the edge of the knoll overlooking the water.

He hadn’t bothered dressing after we finished with Yuri.

He stood barefoot in only black briefs, his broad back turned toward me as moonlight washed over the scars covering his skin.

Blood streaked across his arms and chest in drying lines, his body tensed the moment I approached and immediately he recognized me, his muscles relaxed again. I stopped beside him, staring out toward the black ocean with him.

My eyes drifted over him briefly..“You’re still covered in his blood,” I said.

He let out a quiet breath through his nose. “When has there ever been a day without blood in our lives?”

I glanced sideways at him but something was off.

Alexei rarely lingered in moods like this, he was mostly angry and violent but silence isn't what I know him for.

“Do you know what day today is?” he asked.

“March Thirty-Second.”

But I already knew where this conversation was heading because he slowly turned his head toward me.

Most people would have stepped back from the look on his face because hatred radiated from him and it was far more dangerous than shouting ever could be. “It’s her fucking birthday.”

I looked back toward the ocean. “I know.”

For several seconds neither of us spoke then he laughed once.

“Right now she’s breathing somewhere.” His voice roughened.

“Taking another fucking breath she doesn’t deserve.”

My chest tightened faintly at the mention of our mother as old memories press against old scars.

“She should’ve burned in hell years ago,” he muttered as the wind shifted around us.

“We can still kill her,” I said calmly. Alexei fists clenched instantly at his sides.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We could.”

His eyes slid toward me again,  “Fifteen fucking years,” he said. “Fifteen years and she’s still alive.”

I understood because some wounds didn’t heal properly when the person responsible still existed somewhere in the world.

“We could ask Ivan,” I said after a moment. “He’d understand.”

Alexei expression hardened immediately. “No.”

“That day belongs to us.” His breathing deepened once.

“If anyone kills our mother, it’ll be us.” He looked directly at me now. “Together.”

Then he held out his arm and the Blacktop tattoo stared back at me beneath the moonlight and without hesitation, I gripped his forearm while his hand locked around mine.

“I’d go through fucking fire for you,” he said.

They were truth and images flickered briefly through my mind.

Alexei dragging us out of hell with blood on his hands and murder in his eyes. “You already did,” I said quietly.

He released my arm and stared back toward the ocean.

“The smell of blood always reminds me of that day,” he admitted after a while. “Funny, isn’t it?”

The wind carried his voice into the darkness.

“With how much blood we’ve spilled over the years, you’d think it would bury that memory.” His jaw flexed. “But it never does.”

Some things never faded no matter how much violence came afterward and trauma didn’t drown, rather it adapted.

“It stays with you,” I said. He nodded once then his eyes narrowed slightly toward me.

“You being out here means you didn’t fuck your wife.”

The bluntness would’ve amused me under different circumstances.

“Her past stayed with her too,” I said instead.

“Killing her uncle didn’t erase it.”

Alexei watched me carefully for a moment then his gaze returned to the horizon. “Would killing our mother erase ours?”

For once, I didn’t immediately know the answer and I considered it carefully.

Revenge often looked cleaner in theory than reality but eventually I spoke. “I don’t know.”