“And then she found out.”

Kir nodded. “A mistress of one of his brothers. A jaded woman who saw nothing of selling drugs or weapons save as a lucrative industry that allowed her man to provide her every luxury.”

From the look on her face, she already suspected what would follow in his story, but she asked the question anyway. “What happened?”

“My mother got greedy. Realized the power her husband could leverage and the spoils that could become hers. She pushed my father. Demanded more and more of him—none of which he would deny her.”

He thought of her twirling in the fur his father had given her for her birthday. The new house he’d moved them to shortly after. Then he remembered the tightness behind his father’s eyes. The fear in them. “My father was a soldier. And while they do not suffer financially, there is only so much they can make without skimming from their vor.”

“Oh, shit,” Cassie murmured.

Kir nodded. “Oh, shit indeed. The government kept close tabs on my father’s organization. They saw my mother’s excesses and my father’s troubles. They cornered my mother and let her know how close her husband was to being found out.”

He met Cassie’s gaze, all the disgust and anger he’d had to navigate alone as a child rushing up and lodging in his throat. “They used her. Manipulated her fear. Said the best way to save him from certain death was to give them enough evidence against him to warrant an arrest so that he would be safe. Said that the alternative would be for her to be implicated as well and suffer similar consequences.”

“She betrayed her own husband?”

“Worse.” Kir tried to swallow, for all the good it did him. “Once he was arrested, she worked him incessantly. Begged him to give the authorities the information they wanted to incriminate the whole family so that the three of us could escape and live a luxurious life.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone escaping such a life.”

His shrewd woman. Always wise and seeing things even before they would be apparent to others. “With Sergei? He would release me, wish me the best and do everything in his power to see to my success so long as I kept my silence. That’s who he is.”

“But your father’s family wasn’t like that.”

Kir shook his head and stared at the coffee table in front of him. “Nyet. They were powerful. Ruthless and deadly. My father knew it and fought it as long as he could.” He met Cassie’s gaze. “But as I said, he loved her and would deny her nothing.”

Cassie voice dropped to a whisper. “What happened to him?”

Saying it out loud even now cut deep. Brought all the pain and agony of those initial moments when he’d learned the truth back to the surface as though they’d never abated. “He was dead before he could share a word. My mother and I were captured and brought to the vor before his body was cold.”