Page 106 of Vendetta Crown

"Aren't you?"

"For Lev..." Her voice shakes. "Yes."

My blood boils at her admission, but before I can speak, she raises her hand.

"But my children?" Her voice hardens. "You have no right to accuse me of my son's murder! I carried Mikhail in my womb for nine months, Ruslan. I felt him take form, whispered to him in my belly at night after Lev was done with me. I watched him grow from a tiny little thing to the man that he was."

Tears flow freely down her face now, smearing her makeup.

"I loved my son, as I love all my children. How dare you accuse me of this?"

"Then why did you never show any interest in his desire to leave the bratva for a life in acting?"

Tamara's hands ball into fists. "Because Lev forbade me from doting on Mikhail! He said I was making him weak, turning him soft. Every time I showed affection toward my son, he would hurt me for it."

Her words hit me like a physical blow. Once again, I'm reminded that the Lev I knew and adored was not the Lev that the rest of the world saw. That the Lev I grew up with never appeared once to his wife and children.

"On the day that Mikhail died," I continue, remembering her strange calmness that day. "Why did you not react when I told you?"

"Because," she answers, voice hoarse. "I was forced to sit there and listen in when the killer told my uncle over the phone that my baby boy was dead."

I swallow hard, trying to process this when Aurora's hand slides into mine.

I stare at Tamara, trying to separate truth from deception in her eyes. Something about her story doesn't add up.

Or maybe I don't want it to add up because it's easier to hate her than to understand her.

"Tell me your side of the story," I say, keeping my voice even. "All of it."

Tamara's perfect posture slumps and she looks like she's trying to make herself look small in an attempt to not attract attention. For a moment, I wonder if this was how she was with Lev behind closed doors.

When he became the monster keeping her captive.

"Gregor struck a deal with my uncle weeks before Lev died," she begins, her voice hollow. "I wanted Lev gone, I won't deny that. After nineteen years of hell with him, I wanted freedom."

Aurora tenses beside me, but I keep my focus on Tamara.

"The morning it was supposed to happen, my uncle sat me down. He told me that the plan had changed." Her voice cracks. "That it wouldn't just be Lev. That Mikhail had to die too."

My blood turns to ice.

"I screamed at him. I begged him." Tears spill down her cheeks. "I told him this wasn't part of the original deal, that Mikhail should be allowed to live, that he had no right to take my son from me like this. But you know my uncle. He wouldn't budge."

She wraps her arms around herself, shivering despite the warmth of the day.

"When I threatened to warn you and to stop it somehow..." She swallows hard. "He forced me back into a chair and pressed a gun to the back of my head, and made melisten."

Aurora gasps softly beside me.

"And when the murder was done, he whispered in my ear that if I dare interfere with his plans, he'll make me watch as Mikayla is married off as soon as he can. That he'll make Sofia and Stella wards of the Triads."

The horror of that threat is overwhelming. To place two young girls in the hands of the Triads.

"And then, only then, will he kill me," Tamara continues. "As punishment for undermining my father nineteen years ago. As punishment for negotiating with Vitaly when that peace was never mine to negotiate."

I stand frozen, unable to process the raw pain in Tamara's voice.

For years, I've built her up as this calculating monster in my mind, the woman who handed Leslie to my father on a silver platter, the woman obsessed with me, and the woman willing to sacrifice everything around her.

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