Page 64 of The Enemy's Defector
Hell, you can have Joann, too.
It pained me that Katerina never had friends other than me. Anton was that much of a social pariah that she’d been a loner. If bringing her former housekeeper here would help her feel less alone, I’d make it happen.
After dinner, I left Maxim with Sloan and Saul. Part of me wanted to linger and further encourage my older brother to relax about Katerina being in the family now.
Instead, I went to visit my father. It wasn’t easy to see him struggle with his recovery. He had good days and bad days.While he’d improved over the time that I was taken and held captive, then hiding, he wasn’t his old self yet.
He might never be.
He greeted me and recognized me when I entered his room, and that lifted my spirits. Then, as I spoke with him about my capture and other business things—all of which he had been informed about—he changed the subject to marriage.
“You don’t need to worry about Katerina,” he said.
I raised my brows. “About what?” I dreaded the possibility that he’d gotten word about us arguing earlier.
“About her betraying you like Beatrice.”
I huffed a wry laugh. “I’m glad that you’re not acting like she’s the enemy.”
He sighed, looking off to the side with a vacant expression. “Today, I’m not. I hate how my mind is a mess. How my memories can be so clear one day and scrambled the next.” He faced me solemnly. “Has Maxim or Damon told you about how I mistook Lucy for Katerina?”
I nodded. That story had been shocking to hear, but given his complicated recovery and inconsistent mental status, I wasn’t surprised.
“I’ll never forgive myself for that,” he admitted sadly. “She’s been so calm and quiet and sweet. She’s really good for Damon, and I’m so happy that he’s found someone who supports him and stands with him.”
“I agree.” I had yet to learn much about Lucy, but just seeing how close she and my twin were, I knew that it was a positive happenstance that she’d come here to marry him.
“But when I saw her and thought she was Katerina, I was so gripped with twisted memories about when Thomas died.”
I watched him, sad for him to revisit the time that he’d lost his friend. Maxim confirmed that he’d passed the word to him already that Anton was responsible for Thomas’s death. Nowthat I could see firsthand how upset he was, I wished I’d come to visit more often around the important meetings that had taken up my life since I’d returned.
“I recall being so suspicious of Anton,” he admitted. “I wanted to launch more investigations into Thomas’s death, but it wasn’t a simple matter of spying and getting answers about it. I’d never trusted him enough to ever want to be allied with him. And I think when I mistook Lucy for Katerina that day, my mind was so jumbled that I thought all Kozlovs had to be behind it.” He rubbed his face, looking a hundred years older. “And now to know that motherfucker killed him? To have Katerina’s proof that Anton shot my friend? His own brother?”
My anger rose too. “She wants to avenge her father.”
He grunted. “Let her,” he snarled. “Let her pull the trigger and kill that bastard.”
“It won’t come to that, Father.” I drew a deep breath. Maxim warned me not to give Father too many specifics because it could be a risk. We all had to be careful with him. One day, he could be fine and the next, he could be lost to us mentally. But I bet he was already aware of the plans that Maxim and I were hatching with Damon and Saul. We operated as a team. “It doesn’t matter how involved Anton was in my capture or potentially in your poisonings. He’s been involved to an extent, and we will end him and destroy him once and for all.”
He nodded, not losing that hard glare at the wall. “Kill him for killing Thomas.”
“Anton Kozlov will be finished for many reasons,” I replied. “Most of all, Father, his death will be imminent for the danger he placed on Katerina. He dared to put a hit on his niece all because she’d defied him.”
With a gruff grunt again, he shook his head. “He will be so furious that she’s married to you now. That he’s lost his hold over her completely. It’ll be a hard hit for him to accept thatshe’d never been his spy, never would be his spy, and in fact, will be here plotting against him with us.”
You get it. Why can’t Maxim understand that too?
“What about Dominic Romano?” Father asked, proving that the scheming, calculating man was still in there. “He’s got to be just as involved. Before I was—” He furrowed his brow, rubbing his head. “Before I was poisoned, that was the focus. Looking into Anton and Dominic partnering to bring us down.”
I stood, ready to go check on Katerina again.
“No one’s bringing us down, Father. We’re too strong. We’ve expanded and have another generation to count on now, too.” Smoothing my hand over the front of my suit jacket, I met his sly smile with one of my own. “If any partnership ever formed between the Kozlovs and Romanos, it will be crushed.”
He could mark my word on it.
Because I would never settle for anything upsetting my wife.
Even if I was the cause of her annoyance.
