Page 73 of Brutal Unionn
Those beautiful, bright blue eyes—my eyes—dulled by death and fear, wrapped in silk and sealed in a box as if that could somehow preserve what was left of her. I remember holding them in my hands, unable to cry. The tears didn’t come until later, when I found myself back in the chambers where we kept him locked beneath the house, screaming at the bars like a child having a tantrum.
Why would you do this to me?
Why would you destroy her?
Why would you make me look like her, only to despise me for it?
He never gave me real answers. Only monologues. He told me he was raising me to be stronger than she was. That my mother had been a lesson. That she acted out because he didn’t control her well enough. That love had nothing to do with freedom—it was about obedience. And he was teaching me to be better.
I don’t know why I kept going down there, why I visited him long after I should have stopped. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was guilt. Or maybe it was the worst kind of madness—the kind that makes you believe if you just try harder, if you just play the part well enough, the monster might finally love you.
I begged him to see me. Not her. Just me. Nadia. His baby girl.
But I was never anything more than her replacement in his mind, a shadow he tried to mold into submission.
And I let him.
That’s the part I can’t escape. I let him. I let the hope live inside me, even when it was hollow and cruel and rotting at the edges. I was weak enough to chase a ghost of his approval, and even now, I’m still dumb enough to question whether it might have been worth something.
Even now, some twisted part of me still wants to ask: If I had been more like the woman he wanted—would he have spared her? Would he have the heart to spare me?
None of that matters now. Boris has been missing on all accounts for three years. I have killed all of his loyalists thatprayed for his return throughout the Bratva, and when I see him—despite the gapping need I have to want his approval— I will kill him to show my strength asVor v Zakoneof the Bratva. I will kill him to keep my brothers, their wives and their children safe. I will kill him for our mother, and the brightness of her eyes. I will kill him for never believing in me as a leader. As an equal. As a woman.
In all honesty, I may just kill him to watch his eyes die when he realizes his end didn’t come in battle or glory. It came at the hands of a woman pissed and proper enough to take her rightful place on the throne.
It sounds so victorious. The kind of plan that should end in glory and blood-soaked triumph. And maybe it will. But for now, it’s the only reason I’m awake when the Yakuza breach the white picket fence of Nikolai’s picture-perfect New Jersey home. It’s the reason I’m sitting in the breakfast nook at two in the goddamn morning, drinking lukewarm water and staring into nothing, instead of being in the next room with the twins where I should have been.
The reason I hear the faint hiss of movement—too smooth to be wind. The reason I catch the almost-silent pop of a suppressed weapon, followed by the dull thud of something soft hitting something solid. The reason I stand, heart already slamming against my ribs, just before the air is ripped from my lungs.
Then everything goes black.
When the gas lifts, the world feels like it’s been shattered and stitched back together wrong. My ears ring, my head is pounding, and the house smells like ash and chemicals. I don’t wait for backup. I don’t call for Nik. I run—sprinting up thestairs, every muscle burning with dread, every step hammering with the echo of gunfire I didn’t get to stop.
I expect carnage. I expect the hallway to be slick with blood, the walls painted in violence. I expect to see Gwen’s body curled around the twins, trying to shield them from what no mother can stop. I expect crimson handprints on doorframes, glass shattered, family photos torn through with bullets.
But what I find is worse.
Gwen is sitting in the center of the twins’ room, crumpled like a broken doll, rocking back and forth with silent sobs. Her hands are smeared with something—maybe blood, maybe not—but her eyes are wild, unfocused, as if the screaming hasn’t stopped in her head. The room is untouched, too untouched, eerie in its stillness.
And outside the door, embedded into the walls are ninja stars. Five of them. Perfectly spaced, gleaming in the dull sunlight.
Inside the bedroom, Gio stands frozen. His eyes are locked on the opposite wall, unblinking, as though looking too long at the empty space might make his sister reappear. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t cry, doesn’t move. His shoulders are locked in place, his fists trembling at his sides as if every breath he draws is an act of defiance against the panic pressing down on him.
My eyes drift to Mia’s bed—or what’s left of the innocence it held. Her yellow daisy-print comforter lies crumpled in a pile at the foot of the mattress, the fabric creased and dirtied by small footprints, like someone walked across it carelessly. Like she didn’t have time to scream. My stomach knots. That comforter is the only trace of her left in the room.
“Gwen…” I try to say her name, but it comes out like a rasp, thin and weak and barely audible.
She’s collapsed in the middle of the floor, her body shaking so violently it looks like her bones might shatter beneath the weight of her grief. Her sob breaks free before she speaks, a sound that isn’t made for language—it’s a raw, guttural sound that vibrates in my own chest, sharp and jagged like broken glass.
“They took her,” she chokes out, clutching the carpet like it’s the only thing keeping her from unraveling.
Gio crouches beside her, voice barely a whisper as he touches her shoulder, trying to ground her. “Mom…”
She doesn’t stop crying. If anything, the contact makes it worse—her sobs turn convulsive, ragged. Her entire body trembles like it’s trying to shake itself out of the world.
“I’m so—” I start to say something—anything—but it dies in my throat.
She turns on me fast, eyes swollen and bloodshot, her face drawn tight with rage and pain. The red in her stare is startling—it cuts through me like a knife and freezes my breath mid-chest.
