Page 28 of Filthy Lies

“But they didn’t.” He sets down his glass. “They’re both safe now, aren’t they?”

“No thanks to you.”

“On the contrary.” His eyes—the same cold blue as mine—glint with something like amusement. “Everything went according to plan.”

The statement is so absurd, so detached from reality, that I almost laugh. Instead, I take yet another step closer, pressing the barrel of my gun against his temple. His pulse beats steadily beneath the skin, unhurried.

“What fuckingplan?” I hiss. “Explain it to me, old man. Explain how orchestrating my wife’s abduction while she was in labor was part of any rational plan.”

He says nothing for several long ticks of the grandfather clock on the wall. Just stares at me, the same dead-eye gaze he’s worn since my mother died.

“The plan,” he begins carefully, “was to prove a point.”

“What point?”

“That you need the family. All your talk of going legitimate, of breaking away, of doing things your own way—it’s a fantasy.” He doesn’t shy away from the gun. “I was going to have my men bring her here, where she’d be safe. Protected. And then I was going to wait for you to come for her.”

“And?”

“And when you arrived, desperate and furious, I would show you that only the Akopov family—only our way of doing things—could have kept her truly safe.” His voice finally begins to fray at the edges. “Proof that all your new ideas, your American wife with her corporate strategies and legal niceties, were inadequate.”

The gun trembles in my hand. Not from hesitation—from rage.

“You risked her life. Our child’s life. For a fucking lesson? AnI told you so?”

“The lesson was necessary,” he insists. “You’ve been slipping away, Vincent. Abandoning what made us strong. What madeyoustrong.”

“But you fucked up, didn’t you?” I snarl. “Maybe I’m not the one who needs lessons, Otets.”

A flash of something—not quite guilt, not quite regret, but something adjacent to both—crosses his face. “The Solovyovs weren’t part of the plan. They intercepted my men. Things went wrong.”

“‘Things went wrong,’” I echo flatly. The mere presence of those words on my tongue is repulsive beyond measure. “Do you have any idea what she went through?”

“That was unfortunate.”

“She gave birth in a filthy factory surrounded by men who wanted to use our baby as leverage. She nearly died. And all you can say is ‘unfortunate’?”

My finger tightens on the trigger.

One squeeze. That’s all it would take.

One squeeze and thirty years of Andrei Akopov’s toxic influence on my life would end. One squeeze and Rowan would be safe from his manipulations. One squeeze and I could fulfill the promise I made to myself when I found her blood on our floor.

But Rowan’s face flashes in my mind. Her voice.

Come back to us whole.

Would I be whole if I executed my own father? Would that be the kind of man who deserves her? Who deserves to raise Sofiya?

And beyond the moral question lies the practical one. My father’s death—now, under these circumstances—would trigger chaos within the Bratva. Power struggles, vendettas, blood on floors not just here but across the entire city, country, world. Precisely the kind of instability that would endanger my family further.

I lower the gun slowly.

“You miscalculated,” I tell him, my voice frigid. “For the first and last time.”

He watches me warily. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that, as of this moment, you are no longer in operational control of the Akopov organization.” I holster my weapon. “You will retain your title. Your public position. Your place at the head of the family table. But every decision, every order, every movement of men or money or resources will go through me first.”

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