I stand outside the cell way down deep in the basement, my whole body shaking with fury and hurt.
I feel betrayed. I feel like a fool.
And most of all, I feel horribly, sickeningly guilty.
I told Yelena it was her fault that my father’s dead, and my brother is lying in an intensive care unit with tubes going in and out of his body.
But the truth is, it’s my fault.
I knew Alexei Yenin hated us. I knew he wanted revenge on my family. I knew that he exerts incredible pressure and control over his children.
And yet I told myself it would all be fine. Because I wanted to believe it would be fine. I wanted to believe I could fall in love and be happy, and that all the wrongs of the past could be swept under a rug.
OF COURSE Yelena and I didn’t meet by chance. It’s ludicrous now to think that I ever believed that.
The way that we connected with each other, the way we fell in love so quickly felt so fated, so absolutely right, that it made me believe in destiny. I never questioned how we kept crossing paths. I believed the universe was bringing us together.
Those are the delusions of a fool. Someone who thinks that karma is real, that things always work out right in the end. How could I ever have believed that, when I’ve seen a thousand times that it isn’t true?
My uncle was burned alive, by the fucking Bratva. My mother died of an infection that was random, capricious, and totally preventable. And now my father is dead, because of my mistake. There’s no justice in any of that.
I shouldn’t have gone in that cell.
I can’t get the sight of Yelena out of my mind—her beautiful wedding dress now dirty, torn, and stained with blood. Her face stricken and pleading. Chains on her hands and feet. And that bandage covering her shoulder where Dr. Bloom plucked out the bullet and sewed her up again.
The bullet she took for me.
When she told me that she knew nothing, that she had no idea what her father had planned, I didn’t believe that for a second. She knew that he was out to get us from the beginning. She knew it was a set-up.
But one thing I know for certain is that she jumped in front of that gun . . .
Nobody made her do that.
It was instinctual, immediate.
She wanted to save me.
Which means that whatever else she might have done, she does care about me. That part wasn’t entirely a lie.
But it can’t bring my father back from the dead.
I just came from the morgue. The police recovered Papa’s body from the Orthodox Cathedral. They found it under the triptych, along with the bodies of three of Yenin’s bratoks. They ran Papa’s prints through their system, finding his old record from his younger years, when he was arrested on charges of racketeering and money laundering. They called me in to identify the body.
My father looked so much smaller than usual, laying on that slab under a sheet, his suit and dress shirt stripped off of him. His skin was the color of cheese, with marks all over from the heavy wooden frame falling on top of him. And his face . . . it was almost completely destroyed. Not from the triptych—from the Bratva’s bullets. All that was left was one beetle-black eye, open and staring.
The police already knew who he was. They brought me in to shock me. Hoping that when they took me into the room next door, I’d spill the details of exactly what had happened at the cathedral. They must have recognized the other bodies as Bratva. Maybe they thought I’d tell them everything, motivated by revenge.
I refused to answer a single question. I said I didn’t know what had happened, why my father had been at the church that day. Worst of all, I couldn’t tell them that the bodies lying next to my father’s—one tall and lanky, the other broad and bulky, belonged to Brody and Giovanni.
Giovanni didn’t have much family, only a brother in prison. But I thought of the bewildering call Brody’s parents were sure to receive later today or tomorrow, as they sit calmly in their little house in Wilmette, reading the paper or watching television, never suspecting that anything had happened to their only child. I wanted to slap my own face over and over again, in pure shame and anger.
I lean against the basement walls—plain concrete, damp and chilly, because this little dungeon is the lowest level of our house, below even Nero’s old garage. I wish I could disappear off the face of the earth. Because I can’t face all the things I’ve caused to happen.
But that would be the coward’s way out.
I’m not going to kill myself.
I’m going to get revenge.
So I climb the stairs back up to the kitchen. Greta is sitting at the little table, dressed in clean clothes, her hair neatly brushed and tied back as always, but her face puffy and swollen from crying.
It’s strange to see her sitting. Greta is always bustling around, keeping her hands busy. She’s never idle. She hates to sit down even to watch a movie.
When she sees me, she jumps up and throws her arms around me. It hurts to accept her hug. I don’t deserve it—I don’t deserve her comfort.
“How’s Nero?” she asks me.
I went to the hospital before the morgue. That was the strangest sight of all. Nero is the id of our family—primal, ferocious, and intensely alive. To see him lying there, pale and motionless, only breathing because of the machines keeping him alive . . . it was unbearable.
Camille was sitting right next to him, almost as pale as Nero himself. She hadn’t changed out of the pretty red dress she’d worn to the wedding. She hadn’t left his side for a single moment, except for when he was in surgery, and even then she’d sat in the waiting room, crying until she had no more tears left in her body.
The dress looked wilted and sad, stained all over with my brother’s blood just a little darker than the material itself. I remembered how he’d flung himself on top of Camille, without even attempting to protect himself, or to fight back against the Russians.
I could never have imagined Nero behaving that way. I don’t think he would have sacrificed himself for Papa or Aida, or any of us. Only for Camille.
“They don’t know anything yet,” I say to Greta. “He survived the surgery, though.”
“He’ll pull through,” Greta assures me, letting go of me so she can blow her nose into one of the many tissues she keeps tucked in her pockets. “Nero is too stubborn to die.”
“I told Jace to guard the hospital door. I told him not to leave for any reason.”
I’m trying to justify myself to Greta, even though we both know how insufficient it is to try to protect Nero now, after I almost cost him his life.
Greta is too kind to accuse me. She already knows how much I’m blaming myself.
I have to discuss something else with her, but I don’t know how to say it.
So I take her hand and ask her, “Will you sit down with me for a minute?”
“Should I make us some tea?” she asks me.
“Not for me,” I say. “But if you want some . . .”
“No.” She shakes her head. “All I’ve been doing is drinking tea, until I’m shaking. It’s not calming me down anymore.”
She sits down across from me at the tiny, slightly wobbly table that’s been sitting in this kitchen since before I was born. So many of the things in this house were here before me and will probably be here long after I’m gone. A duration of time that might not be as long as I think, with the plans I intend to execute over the next few weeks.
Which is what I need to discuss with Greta.
Once we’re both seated, I look her in the eye. It’s hard to do that, because Greta’s face is so kind and sympathetic, so full of love for me. I’ve always been her favorite, I know that. And I’ve never deserved it less than today.
“Greta,” I say. “This isn’t over with the Russians.”
Her bottom lips trembles, and she presses her mouth into a firm line, to keep herself from letting out a sob. I assume she’s remembering her terror in that moment when the Bratva stood up from their seats and pointed their guns at her.
“You know what I have to do now,” I say to her.
Greta slowly shakes her head, her clear blue eyes fixed on mine.
“You don’t have to, Seb,” she says quietly.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?” she says. “Because you think your father would have wanted revenge? Is that why?”
“No—” I say, but Greta pushes on, overriding me.
“Because I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Seb! Enzo told me a lot of things these last few years. Things he had done. Things he regretted. His hopes and dreams for you children. And especially for you, Seb. He said you were a good man. He said you weren’t like him—you’re more like your mother—”
“He was wrong,” I say shortly, cutting her off. “I’m no different from Dante or Nero, or even my father. In fact, I might be worse.”
“You don’t mean that—”
“YES I DO!” I bark, startling Greta into silence. “Greta I HATE Yenin. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to blow his fucking face off his skull, just like he did to Papa. He broke a blood contract, and he’ll pay for that, no matter what I have to do. I’m going to kill him, and his son, and every one of his men. I’m going to wipe them off the face of this earth, so anyone who even dreams of raising a hand to our family again will remember what happened to the Russians and shake with fear.”
Greta is staring at me wide-eyed. She’s never heard me talk like this before.
“You heard Papa,” I tell her. “For every blow, return three more. Our fury overwhelms their greed.”
“He wasn’t himself that night!” Greta cries. “He never wanted that for you.”
I’m silent for a moment, remembering the thought I had as we finished our chess match.
I thought, Some night we’ll play our last game. And I won’t know it’s the last game, when it’s happening.
That was the night. That was the last time. And just as I thought, I had no premonition that it would be the last.
“It doesn’t matter who he wanted it for—me, or my brothers. It’s here, and I’m the one ready to meet it,” I tell Greta. “I’m going down a path, and I don’t expect you to follow me. I don’t expect you to support me. You know that Papa left you five million in his will—”
“I don’t want that money!” Greta cries.
“You’re taking it,” I tell her. “It’s yours. You’ve loved us, you’ve raised us, you’ve cared for us. You’ve been our family. You made Papa happy when almost nothing else could. You should take care of yourself now. Travel, see the world, do all the things you put aside when you put us first.”
Greta is frowning now. She looks angry—and when Greta is angry, you better watch out. She has a thick fuse, with a lot of dynamite behind it.
“I don’t give a damn about traveling,” she says to me. “This is my home. You are my family. Not sometimes—ALWAYS.”
“I can’t protect you,” I say to her. “I couldn’t protect Papa, or anyone else. This is a war, Greta. There’s no possibility of a truce anymore. We eradicate the Russians now, or they’ll pick us off one by one. One of us will destroy the other. It’s win, or die.”
Greta looks at me, her face blotchy and her eyes full of tears. Her hands are folded calmly on the table in front of her.
“I never married,” she says. “I never had children. I never made a family of my own. I threw my lot in with the Gallos, for better or worse. I helped raise you and your siblings. And I’ll help raise your children, too.”
“I’m not having any children,” I tell her.
I had thought that I’d like to, when I was dreaming of what my life would be like with Yelena. But now my wife is locked in a cell in the basement, and those dreams are torn to shreds and drenched in blood. There’s no future for either of us. No babies to renew this family—not from me, anyway.
“You don’t know what’s to come,” Greta snaps. “You’re not a boy anymore, but you’re not a man, either, if you still think you can predict the future.”
“You should at least leave until this is settled—”
“NO!” she cries, her cheeks flaming with bright spots of color. “I’m staying right here! And I’ll work however I can. That’s what brings me happiness, Sebastian, for as long as it lasts. I don’t care about traveling, and I don’t care about being safe. If I did, I never would have taken this position to begin with. Do you know, your father told me the truth about his job the day that he hired me? He never lied to me, Sebastian. Don’t think I’ve been some blind fool, protected from the truth! What I do is humble, but I am one of you, and I always have been.”
I’ve never been able to win an argument with Greta. She never backs down when she’s sure that she’s right.
And in this instance, what am I even trying to prove? That she’d be happier alone in Italy or sunny Spain?
“Now,” Greta says firmly, deciding that her point has been made, “Who have you got locked up below the garage?”
I look at her, startled. I didn’t think she even knew about the cell beneath the garage.
She rolls her eyes at me. “I know every part of this house, boy,” she says. “Remember that I’ve cleaned it since before you were born.”
“It’s Yelena,” I admit.
“SEBASTIAN!” she shrieks.
“Don’t argue with me about this,” I tell her furiously. “She lied to me, and she betrayed us all. We have no idea what she’s told her father, or what she’ll tell him next if we let her go.”
“You can’t keep your wife locked in a dungeon!” Greta shouts.
“Yes I damn well can, and if you’re so determined to stay here, you’re going to help me,” I say.
“Help you how?” Greta scowls.
“She needs food and antibiotics,” I say. “And you might need to change her bandages.”
“Bandages! Have you—”
“I didn’t hurt her. She was shot at the wedding. Dr. Bloom came to see her, she’s going to be fine.”
Greta scowls at me, not liking this one bit.
“Don’t let her go,” I warn Greta. “I’m serious. I’m not the only one fucking pissed at her. The Russians might be, too, because she did stop them from killing me. She’s safest exactly where she is.”
Greta presses her lips together but doesn’t argue. That means she’ll do it, even if she doesn’t like it.
With that settled, I get up from the table.
I have another conversation I’ve got to get through, which will be worse than the one with Greta.
I’ve got to talk to Dante.
