Milana nods. “Consider it done. How’s the gazebo coming?”

“It’s coming.”

“It’s been a while since you worked on it.”

“Since before Adrian’s ‘funeral.’”

“The next one will be real,” she hisses with sizzling determination. I frown, and she immediately backtracks. “I’m sorry. That was probably a stupid thing to say to you.”

I shake my head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“June.”

She sighs. “Let me guess: she doesn’t want you to kill him?”

“She begged me not to. And…”

One of Milana’s eyebrows nearly flies off her forehead. “Don’t tell me you’re considering an alternative course of action.”

Until a few minutes ago, I had been so sure about what I’d do if I got my hands on my brother. The same thing I once did to protect him.

Kill.

I remember each second that preceded the gunshot that took my father’s life. I shot him first in the leg, just to wipe that smug smile off his face. Then I knelt down beside him so that he could see that I wasn’t threatening this time. I wasn’t bluffing. I wasn’t playing games.

“I am your father,” he said to me in a broken rasp, his tone barren of all the pompous authority I’d become accustomed to over the years.

“No, you are the bane of my existence,” I told him. “I tried to avoid this moment, but you left me with no choice.”

His eyes had gone wide, spit forming at the corners of his mouth. He’d cast around in panic, searching for something, someone who could save him.

I made sure he found nothing.

“It’s over, Otets,” I told him. “Any last words?”

“Why bother?”

“For my mother,” I’d told him. “And my brother.”

His frothing spit was turning red with blood. “A woman and a weakling? Pah! Forget them. A don can only afford to be surrounded by strength, not liabilities.”

I pointed the gun at him. I had been planning the moment for months. But now that it was finally upon me, it was harder than I expected it to be. My hand felt heavy suddenly, my determination unsteady.

“We can do great things together,” he had said, and I felt something tug at my heart. Reluctance? Preemptive regret? I couldn’t say.

“You can be great,” he told me as the blood soaked into his beard.

And it struck me that what he considered great, I considered atrocities. I had started down this path to protect my brother, to avenge my mother.

Just like that, my resolve returned.

I shake my head. “I will be. But not with you.”

Then I’d fired right into his face, turning the beast who tried to break me into a bloody smear on the floor.

When it was all over, I dropped the gun and slumped down on the floor next to his body. I sat with him for a long, long time before we were found. The men of the Bratva piled into the room, staring at us with shock and incredulity.