She has no choice but to do as he says. The moment we’re standing next to each other, Adrian comes forward, gun wavering dangerously in our faces, and disarms both of us.

“There,” he says with some satisfaction as he kicks our weapons under the couch. “Now, we can have a real conversation.”

“Is that possible while you still have a gun?” I ask casually.

He drops his hand, but he grips the weapon tightly. “Apparently, that’s the only way I can get a little respect around here.”

“If that’s the only way you can get respect, then it’s not worth having.”

“Spare me the fucking lecture,” Adrian hisses. “You really are beginning to sound like Otets, you know that? He was a miserable bastard who looked down his nose at everyone else, too.”

“Why do you think I killed him?”

Adrian shakes his head. “Don’t try and make it seem like you did me any favors. You wanted control of the Bratva. I was just your convenient excuse.”

I told the black-haired June imitator at the bar that I had no heart. But that was a lie. I have a heart for June. I have a heart for Milana.

I have a heart for Adrian, too, even now.

“I never wanted the Bratva,” I growl. “It was the mantel I was born to bear, so I accepted it. But I was content to let Otets run things. Until he started making decisions I couldn’t get behind.”

“See?” he says triumphantly. “It had nothing to do with me.”

“It wasn’t only about you,” I clarify. “But it was most definitely about you. Don’t you remember that conversation, little brother? You’d just turned eighteen. You begged me for a way out. You swore that you’d be happy if you just had a way out. Remember that?”

Adrian stiffens in response. Of course he remembers. He was drunk when he came stumbling home. But when he’d woken up, several hours later, he looked at me with sober eyes. “Please, brother, help me. Save me. I can’t be here anymore. It’s too much. I will never be what he wants me to be. And he won’t let me go. Help me find a way out. Then I’ll be happy. I swear it…”

“No,” he says flatly in the present, his knuckles whitening as he grips and regrips his gun. “I don’t remember. Just admit it. You just wanted me out of the way so that you could have it all. The power, the money, the fucking glory.”

“Glory?” I repeat furiously. “Is that what you were chasing when you joined Ravil’s ring?”

He stares at me cautiously, eyelid spasming. He’s trying to determine if he should keep gaslighting us or if he should just drop the mask and tell the truth.

He chooses the latter. “I needed money.”

“You could have come to me.”

“Come crawling back to you with a begging bowl?” he demands. “Oh sure, that would have helped the rumors circulating about me. That I was a coward and a pussy. That I couldn’t possibly be Luka Uvarov’s son, because I wasn’t even half the man he was.”