Wicked Prince (Koalistia Bratva 4)

3

Manya

Iwatched Dmitry walk away with my heart hammering in my throat.

I knew that he was going over important things with Shura, but it didn’t make being left alone with his father any easier. Before, it would have simply been awkward, but now all I could see when I looked at the old man was my mother’s blood staining his hands. I couldn’t see his health problems, or the way that he looked at me as if measuring my worth. I couldn’t see past the fact that I nowknew.

Papa Koalistia looked in the direction of the door Dmitry had just exited. “Make a fool pray to god and they will smash their own forehead,” he muttered in a scratchy voice before a barren cough shook his once-imposing frame.

I could vaguely remember him from his prime, back when I had been a young girl, back when he had seemed to stand taller even than Shura and with just as many muscles bulging from his tight-fitting clothes. Now he was an old man, growing smaller and weaker even since my last visit.

“He is only being hasty out of caution,” I answered back, my voice sharper than I had meant it to be. I could feel his gaze swing to me as I dropped my own, ignoring the questions I knew would be in his eyes. “To protect me, to protect you . . . to protect all of us.”

“He is too quick to fire,” Papa Koalistia coughed. “Too quick to react. Huh,” he sputtered out a half laugh, half cough at the end of his answer, his body jerking back into his chair. “Apple doesn’t fall far from tree, there.”

“Are you saying he is like you? Or like his mother?” I forced blandness in place of the disgust that I wanted to give voice to. I didn’t want to think of the two men as alike, not with what I knew, but to outright say that I couldn’t see it would only be inviting trouble.

The gun in my waistband was heavier now that I was in the room with him. I could feel it like ice against my skin, and with that same sort of frigid burn.

Papa Koalistia snorted again, taking his cigar between his fingers to exhale. “Like me. The boy is too much like me. He has his mother’s passion, but she was a patient woman and one who didn’t react outwardly. Those secretive black Russian eyes of hers . . . you have some similar, come to think of it.” His eyes narrowed, peering into mine as if to ferret out whatever secrets might be there.

I didn’t tell him that Dmitry hid his emotions too, too shocked to find that his own father didn’t recognize that fact. Instead, I hummed a noncommittal sort of sound as I readjusted, trying to take away some of the pressure of the metal against my skin. “Dmitry is patient,” I disagreed, as politely as I was able.

“Ha. He is patient as a bear come end of winter and stubborn too. Had he accepted his promotion; we would not be here. Or at least, not quite yet.” His cough was slower this time, a plume of thick smoke coming with it and unfurling in the air between us.

The acrid stench filled the room as my eyebrows raised involuntarily. “His rank change from torpedo? You think his refusal to leave when you wanted was the cause of all this? Weren’t you a torpedo as well?”

I was fishing, I knew it, and judging by the way that he paused, he must have picked up on as much as well. He didn’t have the gall to appear even half bothered by it though, or seem ashamed to be nodding his yes. Maybe he didn’t know why I was asking, maybe he didn’t care, or maybe he just didn’t think of my mother as something worth mentioning.

I didn’t know which of the possibilities would bother me more.

“Da. I was torpedo. Long before Dmitry was born. Before I ever set eyes on his mother.” He shifted somewhat in the pile of pillows, turning to face me more fully and slowly inhaling from his cigar.

“Did you not like being one?” I asked hesitantly, surprised to find myself uttering the words. “Is that why you were so against him being one?”

I wanted him to say yes. The understanding hit me with such sudden force that I could feel my chest seize up. I wanted him to tell me that he had hated killing people, that he had wanted better for his son.I wanted to hear anything, no matter how small, that could allow me to forgive him for what he had done—or at least begin to forgive him.

His laughter this time was loud and callous, an almost jeering note behind it. The smoke filtered lazily between his teeth and out of his nostrils. “Did I not like being one? A torpedo is honorable enough, it carries clout. Why would I not like being one?” His sharp gaze moved even more quickly to me, his forehead scrunching up.

I shrunk under his aggressive stare. “I had just heard that there were some who felt as if the duties a torpedo is expected to carry out are . . . well, that it’s rather just like paid murder.” I paused, my gaze lifting from where it had fallen from his, to see his broad face creased in deep amusement.

“Paid murder? Ha! I like that! Da, that is what contract killing is, what else would it be? Why should that not be honorable?” He exhaled, the smoke curling around his nose as his teeth flashed from beneath the hair on his lip. “Do you think Dmitry does not see it so? Or do you simply think that we should find fault with that? With ourselves?”

“You don’t have a problem being a murderer?” I asked, aghast. I hadn’t meant to put it so bluntly, but my disbelief was too sudden and too strong.

Again, he laughed, and again I had to blink from how he seemed to find such humor in what I would consider such a serious topic of conversation.

“A problem?” He chuckled, waving away a tuft of smoke “Nyet. They are on lists for reason. If I was paid, it was for reason. What business of mine is it what they do to wind up there? No business, that is what. As my babushka would say: If you knew too much, you would get old very quickly.”

He said it as if there were nothing else to consider in it, as if those lives he took at the other end of a contract meant nothing at all. I didn’t know whether it was my own experience or his shallow dismissal that made the anger course through me. But I knew that my emotions were now clearly displayed across my face.

His sharpening gaze only further proved that point.

“Shto, you think Dmitry is any different? You think someone with bleeding heart would try staying in such a position?” He blew air between his teeth to further showcase what he thought about such idealism, and my blood ran cold. “Dmitry is, how did you say, paid murderer.”

“Dmitrywasa torpedo.” The words flowed from my tongue faster than quicksilver. “Dmitry does his job. Dmitry is the man that you made him, the man that you raised, and he is so much more than whatever ranking it is that he holds in the Bratva.” I could feel my heart beating in my words, the fire in my tone matching that which burned inside my chest. “Whatever he is, he has purpose. He’s not in if for the money alone.”

I’d said too much.