Page 143 of Bratva Bidder
He lifts the pistol, checks the chamber with a precise click that echoes off oak paneling, then levels it. My heart barely stutters. I’ve been waiting for this barrel my entire life. But instead of firing, he lowers it—slow, deliberate—and slides it across the inlaid leather blotter.
“You’ve finally grown into your name,” he says. “A man worth fear.”
“I didn’t come for praise. What do you want from me? Why are you doing this? If you think I killed Roman, and God I wish I had, but I didn’t.”
His face hardens. “I’m beginning to suspect that.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He doesn’t say anything, just paces the room.
“I did my own research after you accused me of trying to kill my grandson before even meeting him,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back. “Your boy’s condition—restrictive cardiomyopathy with marrow involvement. Rare. But treatable, given the right donor.”
Ice sluices down my spine. “You don’t have any fucking idea?—”
His reflection in the glass is a pale shard. “Actually I do. You see, I found out from my sources that you were trying to look for donors, international ones even. Don’t look so surprised, son.I’m not an idiot. The only reason I didn’t find out about Nikolai and Mila sooner is because you didn’t know either. But that’s not the point. You see, I ran the HLA markers myself after managing to get my hands on Nikolai’s reports.”
I stand up, slamming my hands on the table. “You’ve crossed all the lines. How dare you?—”
“Let me finish,” he says. Something about his voice gives me pause. He turns, and I see something unfamiliar tighten the lines around his mouth—fear, or maybe shame. “I’m a match, Konstantin. The best you’ll find.”
For a breath the room tilts, desk and gun and father all sliding out of alignment. The idea of Dmitry’s blood in my son’s veins feels like fusing lightning to fine porcelain.
“I want to donate,” he says.
I swallow hard, dizzy with disbelief. “This is another play. A collar disguised as kindness.”
His smile is thin. “If I wanted leverage, I’d have taken a hostage, not offered an organ.” He gestures to the abandoned pistol. “Do you see any shackles here? Despite what you might think of me, I don’t want my blood to die.”
I don’t answer. The floor seems to pulse beneath me, memory tangling with present. Dmitry in a gray overcoat at my first sparring match, Dmitry turning away at Mother’s funeral to answer his phone, Dmitry tonight lowering his gun. He would never do that.
“And before you brand me the villain of every tragedy,” he continues, voice gaining weight, “I did not burn your warehouse.Someone else is circling you. Someone who doesn’t care whose children get caught in the cross fire.”
“You expect me to believe you?” My voice scrapes raw.
“I expect you to want your son alive more than you want me dead.”
His words slam into the hollow part of my chest where helplessness festers. Nikolai’s fever-bright eyes, the small gasp he makes when fluid steals breath from his lungs—those memories crowd the study like ghosts.
“You tried to have me killed in Barcelona,” I say.
He doesn’t deny it. “Do you blame me? My own bastard going against me? I had to do something. And you’re here standing in front of me, aren’t you?”
I shake my head. “Then why?” I ask, because nothing about this man makes sense when he offers mercy. “Why now?”
Dmitry crosses back to the desk, places both palms flat as though bracing himself against a tide. The lamplight leaves half his face in shadow, but his eyes gleam, wet and ancient.
“Because I’m tired,” he says, and the tremor in his voice is real enough to still my pulse. “Tired of burying Buryakov sons. I buried my brother, who I’m just finding out might have died because of the same disease. I stood over my oldest son’s corpse. I will not stand over my grandson’s tomorrow.”
I search his face for the angle, the trap, the inevitable twist of the knife. But for the first time I find only a man—old, battered, haunted by ghosts of his own making.
The air quivers with possibilities—vengeance, forgiveness, ruin, redemption. I realize my knife hand is shaking.
“I could kill you now,” I say quietly, half expecting him to reach for the gun and prove me right.
“You could.” He inclines his head, accepting the truth of it. “Or you could let me save him. Then kill me after, if you still wish.”
A hollow laugh escapes me. “You think I’d let that debt linger?”
