Page 10 of The Brutal Arrangement

Father nodded, his gaze too vacant for me to believe he understood.

“Fuck,” Maxim muttered under his breath to me. “He’s so different now.”

I hated seeing our father reduced to this state too. Patting then briefly rubbing my brother’s back, I showed him as much support as I could think of to offer.

“There you are.” Grandmother beckoned for us to join her and Father. Saul was pacing and on his phone behind the couch she sat on. “Come along. I know you’ll want to get back to Sloane.”

Maxim nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets as he stopped and waited. I took a chair and tried not to wince at how weak Father looked. Weak and confused.

“With Sloane’s scare earlier, it’s reminded me of how fragile our futures are,” Grandmother said. “I insist that we all need to invest more into the next generation and prepare?—”

Maxim and I groaned at the same time. Saul smirked as he sat next to Grandmother.

“Don’t look at me,” Maxim said. “I did as you asked. I have an heir on the way. Sloane is fine. The baby is fine. Those little scares can happen, and we’ll monitor it all.”

“Sure, you did as I asked,” Grandmother replied wryly. “You kidnapped her and?—”

“Let’s spare the details,” Maxim replied with a nod of his head toward Father.

“We can pace this, Grandmother,” I said, not in any mood for her to resume her nagging about us brothers needing to settle down. Ever since we attended a wedding in the early part of summer, she’d been on us to pop out babies so the Ivanov name would continue.

“She’s right,” Father said, his voice stronger than I expected it to be. “We need a future.”

Grandmother smiled. “We do. Now, while things are… well, interrupted with Nik being gone and potentially hiding, it’s not the number-one priority to remind you all of the importance of having heirs and the next generation, but it is still a matter to deal with.”

Then take your own advice and stop nagging us.

“Especially this matter of an arranged marriage.” She held up a few papers. “When I was going through information about other Mafia princesses and daughters for you”—she glanced at Maxim—“just in case you were ready to settle with someone, I found this old agreement.”

She handed it to Saul, and he didn’t even look at it, handing it to me.

I gave him a dry look, annoyed that he’d literally pass the buck to me. Maxim was engaged to Sloane. Nik wasn’t here. And clearly, Saul wasn’t interested.

Of course, you’re not.

Of all us brothers, he was the player who liked to sleep around, a die-hard bachelor at heart.

I skimmed the paper but instead of really reading it, I listened to Grandmother summarize what she’d found. “Grigory, you signed this with Thomas Kozlov years ago. Well before Thomas was killed and Anton took over the family.”

Father furrowed his brow, as if it required great mental energy to think that far back—if he could remember those old memories at all now.

“What’s the agreement?” Maxim asked.

“For one of you to marry Thomas’s only daughter, Katerina Kozlov,” she replied. Holding up both hands, she almost seemed dismissive. “Now, this agreement was forgotten.” She glanced at Father. “Not because of your incident. I suspect this was drawn up as a courtesy, a joke even, with Thomas, not as a serious contract. And it’s been dismissed all this time, forgotten about and no longer relevant.”

I frowned. “It looks legitimate to me.”

“Yes, but it seems like it was written or concocted without a serious or legitimate reason to adhere to it. Thomas was a good ally. A friend.”

Father still seemed confused. “Why wouldn’t we still be friends? Thomas is a strong ally.”

Fuck.He was in rough shape, unable to remember his old friend had been killed years ago.

Maxim and I shared a worried look, then I spotted Saul frowning as well.

We’ll work with it. He’s still recovering. We can’t give up all hope that he’ll be the man he used to be.

“Thomas is dead,” Grandmother gently reminded Father, who didn’t reply and instead stared vacantly. Facing us again, she sighed. “What’s most intriguing about this particular agreement is that Anton has reached out to us with the intention to see it fulfilled.”

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