Page 82 of Born into Blood

“Jesus,” Val groans, rubbing his hand at the base of his neck. “Mom’s their sister, and that’s why it was an arranged marriage?”

“Yes and yes,” his dad says, “but as much as I tried to resist her, I fell so fucking hard for that woman.” He gives a faint smile at the memory. “She’s nothing like them. She hated them and lived in fear of them. They didn’t sexually abuse her, but they sure as hell did mentally.” He meets his son’s eyes. “Your mom is the best damn thing to ever happen to me, and I don’t give a fuck that we were forced to marry or about what her last name used to be. She’s a Melnikov now, has been since the day we married. She didn’t know that her brothers were the ones keeping Alina, and it nearly killed her when she found out. It’s taken years for her to stop blaming herself for their actions, and she never wanted you to know about them.”

Val sighs, still trying to take it all in, and when he looks over at me, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. Lara’s his cousin by blood, a bond that the three of us don’t even share. We’re cousins because our dads decided to become a family, but he’s actually blood-related to her. She has family, cousins and an aunt and uncle, and she’s been forced to live alone this whole time, caring for her mentally unwell mom, shouldering the burden all on her own, and my heart fucking breaks for her.

“I guess I should come clean too,” my Uncle Danil says, and I see Max tense as he looks at his dad. “They also kidnapped your mom and put her up for sale. I wormed my way into getting a seat at the auction. The plan was for me to buy a woman, and then we’d question her and get as much information as we could before letting her go, but as soon as I saw your mom up there, I outbid the asshole who was trying to buy her,” he says, shooting a grin at Dominic, making it clear he’s the asshole he’s talking about. “Then I fell in love with her and couldn’t let her go.”

I look over at Dominic. “Why were you bidding on Max’s mom?”

“I’d really like to know the answer to that one too,” Max says.

Dominic sits on the edge of his desk. “The Lebedev Bratva did the same thing to my sister. They kidnapped her and sold her and the fucker who bought her killed her. I was at the auction doing the same damn thing Danil was doing, but the fucker outbid me. We eventually confronted each other, Lev shot me?—”

Vitaly cuts in and says, “And we’ve all been besties ever since.” He looks back at the three of us and shrugs. “It’s a love story for the ages.”

We’re too stunned to speak. All the questions we’ve had about our family have just been answered, and it’s not at all what any of us were expecting.

“What about my mom?” I ask. “Was she taken too? Is that how you met her?”

“No, what we’ve always told you is pretty much the truth. Her dad was the mayor of the city, and I told you that I met her at one of his fundraisers. That’s the truth. I just hid the fact that he was heavily involved in all this shit and that she was suspicious of him and trying to find out what was going on.” My dad scrubs a hand over his jaw, watching me to see how I’m taking all this. “One night we were at a club that the Lebedev Bratva was selling women in, and I looked up and saw your mom.” He groans at the memory. “She’d decided she was going to take matters into her own hands and get some answers. I told everyone she belonged to me, that I’d brought her from Russia as my pet. No way in hell was I going to leave her alone in that goddamn place.”

While I try to wrap my head around the idea of my mom doing something like that, Val asks, “Anything we need to know about Aunt Jolene?”

Lev grins. “She was obsessed with me and stalked me at my underground fights. Her brother did sell her to the Bratva to pay off his debts, but I was able to quickly buy her from them. I did beat her brother to death, though, and that made me feel a little better.”

“Our family is even crazier than I thought,” Val mutters.

My Uncle Vitaly laughs. “Fuck yeah it is. Ask him what he did to his dad.”

We look at Lev, who’s scowling at his brother. “This isn’t a goddamn slumber party, Vitaly. We aren’t baring our souls here.” He turns to the three of us. “For the record, the fucker deserved everything he got.”

“So what are we doing about this?” Matvey’s asks, putting our attention back where he wants it. “How do we know it’s a daughter and not a son? How do we know it’s not a trap of some kind?”

My Uncle Danil waves a hand at the opened laptop beside him. “I’m guessing it’s a daughter. She used the name Odette19, and I tracked where she logged in from. It’s an apartment building that butts up against the western edge of our territory. The apartment is under the name Chloe Daniels.”

“Let’s go and grab her,” my Uncle Matvey says. “We can question her and find out what the fuck is going on.”

Val looks over at me, and even though it’s a quick glance, my dad still picks up on it.

“What?” he asks, looking between the three of us.

“Nothing,” I tell him, lying to my dad for the first time in my life. It makes me feel like shit, but all I can think about right now is getting Lara the hell out of there and protecting her from all of this, even if it means protecting her from my family. She just met them all for the first time tonight, and the last thing I want is for them to go storming in there and scaring the hell out of her. I also want to hide as much of her dad’s past from her as I can. She doesn’t need to know the whole truth. There’s no reason to hurt her like that. “We’ll grab her and bring her to the warehouse on fifth street.”

He eyes the three of us, knowing something is off but having no idea what it could be. When I stand, Val and Max follow, and we’re already making our way out the door when my dad says, “Let me know when you’ve got her. We’ll be waiting at the warehouse.”

“What the fuck are we doing?” Val asks once we’re outside and piling into my car.

“We’re getting Lara the fuck out of there,” I tell him.

“And then what?” Max asks. “There’s no way in hell they’re not going to realize who she is. My dad will have found out every single thing there is to know about them in less than an hour anyway. You got damn lucky that he hadn’t had enough time to dig any deeper before talking to us.”

“I know,” I admit, driving past Dominic’s guards before picking up speed and racing down the busy street. “I’m grabbing Lara and bringing her back to the apartment. I just want her separated from this. I want her safe, and I want to be able to tell her everything on my own. There’s no way I’m going to scare the hell out of her by grabbing her and her mom and interrogating her in one of the goddamn warehouses.”

I grip the steering wheel even tighter and weave my way down the busy road.

“This is going to fucking kill her,” I tell them.

“I can’t believe that out of all the women in this city, you went and fell for my damn cousin,” Val says. “What are the fucking chances?”

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