Leopard's Wrath (Leopard People 11)

He lived in hell. It was that simple. What man subjected a good woman to hell? What kind of a man would he be if he even considered it? He took a deep breath and slowly let go of the door handle, forcing himself to turn away from the sight of her walking back to her car, under the umbrella Vikenti provided.

Sevastyan slid into the car and turned toward him, glaring. Mitya held up his hand. “I know what I did was insane, Sevastyan. I apologize for making your life so difficult. It wasn’t done on purpose.” It wasn’t. He loved his cousin and had placed him in a terrible position. Worse, he’d placed Ania in one. Sevastyan could easily have determined her a threat and shot her.

Sevastyan didn’t lay into him the way he should have. Instead, he waited until Vikenti and Zinoviy had gotten back into their cars and Miron was once more behind the wheel. “What made you stop for her?”

Mitya shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was a compulsion. My leopard went wild when we passed her. When we turned back, he acted strange.”

“In what way?” Sevastyan pushed.

“Just different. A behavior I’d never seen in him. Not like she was a threat, but more that he was content in her presence. My leopard had to guard me when I was a child. There were conspiracies. I don’t know if you remember or not, but Gorya’s father, Uncle Filipp, was alive then. He had two sons, Dima and Grisha, much older than Gorya. Lazar and Gorya’s older brothers wanted Gorya and his mother dead.”

Sevastyan frowned. “How do you know this? You aren’t any older than the rest of us.”

Mitya felt older, not that the others hadn’t gone through hell as well. No one lived in their lairs and had it easy, especially his cousins. Their fathers were cruel and expected their sons to follow in their footsteps. They were expected to torture and kill any who might oppose their fathers’ rule.

Mitya’s father insisted the toddler be kept with him at all times. He wanted his son to grow up familiar with torture. With seeing women and children killed if their fathers in any way stepped out of line. He wanted his son to be so conditioned to the violence that he would never so much as blink when he had to do the same things. He heard a lot of things as a toddler, things his father planned.

“Mitya? What really happened to Uncle Filipp? Did Uncle Lazar or my father have anything to do with his death?”

Mitya glanced toward the front seat where Miron drove. The man had proved his loyalty to them, and yet he was still reluctant to talk about family business in front of him. Why? Because his father had drilled it into him never to speak of their business in front of non–family members. He had insisted there was no such thing as loyalty. Anyone could betray them, and would for a price—including one’s own brothers.

There had been four brothers: Lazar, Rolan, Patva and Filipp. Each had become a vor in the bratya, the Russian mafia. Each ruled their own lair of shifters. All were very cruel, sadistic men. Talking about them aloud to his cousin was one thing; talking in front of an outsider was something else, but he needed to get over that. He wasn’t ruled by his father any longer. In any case, Miron had been raised in the lair. He knew quite a bit about the Amurov brothers.

“Uncle Filipp didn’t kill Gorya’s mother as everyone has been led to believe,” Mitya said. “After Uncle Filipp killed his first wife, he accidentally found the woman who was his true mate. At least my father believed that was what changed him. Filipp suddenly was protesting the bigger plan the family had and he was protecting his wife.”

“What plan was that?” Sevastyan asked, frowning. “My father never spoke to me of a bigger plan.”

“As a whole, the brothers wanted to take over more territory. I don’t think that would have been difficult, but by that time, the leopards were so bloodthirsty they would go into a territory not held by shifters and let their leopards loose on the families of the vors. They would kill everyone. Man, woman and child.”

Mitya’s head was beginning to pound. The moment Ania had slipped out of the car, his leopard had reacted, going crazy, flinging himself toward the surface, demanding to be free. Since then, he hadn’t been quiet, not for one second. Mitya’s body was already hurting. With his leopard clawing at his insides, as if he could rip his way out of his confines, his body wanted to just lay it all down.

“Mitya, did your father take you along when they invaded other territories?”

Mitya nodded, closing his eyes, but the images were there, stamped forever into his brain. When he tried to sleep at night, those memories looped through his mind, playing out like a horror movie, over and over.