Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance Chapter 166

Kirill frowns. “I would… trap him. Reel him in. Make him talk.”

“That’s how you deal with an enemy you don’t know. This one, I do know.”

“Do you?”

He has a point. But I can’t afford to second-guess myself now.

“It’s Saturday,” I remind him. “He’ll be at Fyodor’s.”

Kirill nods uncertainly. “Should I… get a kill team together?”

I shake my head. “I want this done quietly. He may not deserve it but his position earns him some respect. You and I can handle this ourselves.”

46

RUSLAN

The rage flooding through me feels like it has a life of its own. It still doesn’t dissuade me from entering my father’s house with Kirill at my side.

Fyodor’s housekeeper, Bogdan, is a portly man who’s been with the family long past his expiration date. He leads us to the garden room where Fyodor and Vadim are sitting opposite each other in matching armchairs, smoking cigars and drinking scotch.

“Ruslan!” Vadim blurts the moment he sees me. “This is a surprise.”

Fyodor glances up, his brow crinkling. “Has something happened?”

It’s a fair question. I’m not in the habit of stopping by for casual visits unless there’s a damn good reason. And I’ve never crashed one of their Saturday night meetings. It’s been a tradition since the accident, one of the few things that Fyodor does without having to be forced.

That’s when it hits me.

This isn’t just between Vadim and me.

Once I’ve exposed his betrayal, it will affect everyone. Especially my father.

“May we join you for a moment?” I ask with stiff formality.

The two older men exchange a glance. “Judging from the looks on your faces,” Vadim says as his eyes skitter between me and Kirill, “this is not a social call.”

I take the only remaining seat between the two brothers. Kirill remains standing. “You’re right about that, Uncle.”

I flinch. It hurts to say. Uncle. It’s a title that means something. It has weight. Responsibility. And this motherfucker has smiled at my face for years, supported me openly day after day—and, all the while, plotted against me.

Who knows? Maybe it started long before Adrik. Maybe Adrik was nothing but a pawn in Vadim’s game.

“What’s going on, son?” Fyodor asks. “Is the family okay?”

“No,” I intone. “The family’s not okay.”

Fyodor recoils with concern. Even Vadim has the audacity to look worried. It’s so damn convincing that it floors me. Even now, he keeps lying.

“Emma and the kids?” Fyodor almost chokes. “Where are they? What happened?”

That snaps me out of it. When he said “family,” he was thinking of my new family. “No. No, Emma and the kids are alright. This is not about them.”

Fyodor eases. Vadim, on the other hand, stiffens.

“What is it about then?”

My gaze slides pointedly to my uncle. “I have Adrik in custody.”

Now that I know what Vadim really is, I can see all the little telltale signs that give him away. It’s a marvel I didn’t notice them before. The twitch of his mouth, the nervous tic in his foot, the way he keeps wiping his sweaty palms against the leg of his pants.

“You didn’t inform us that you were going to run an operation against him,” says Vadim.

“I don’t have to inform anyone of anything,” I growl. “I am the pahkan.”

He flinches. “Yes, of course. I wasn’t disputing that—”

“No, but you are opposed to it. Aren’t you?”

The silence is prickly with tension. It feels as though I’ve just charged the room and now, we’re all waiting for things to go boom.

It’s Fyodor who breaks the silence. “Ruslan, my son, I don’t know what’s going on, but accusing your uncle is not—”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Otets? Ask him if he thinks I should be the pahkan.”

Fyodor doesn’t hesitate. “That’s ridiculous. He has supported you completely from the moment you donned the mantle. He has been loyal, faithful—”

“Treacherous.”

I’ve never seen Fyodor look more afraid. Not since we buried Mother, at least. His eyes dart between me and his brother, his hands are shaky, and his brow is dotted with beads of perspiration.

“I will not sit here and let you run down my brother’s—”

“Brat.” Vadim doesn’t raise his voice but the way that Fyodor stops short makes it seem like he screamed.

“What is Ruslan talking about?” my father asks desperately. “What is the meaning of all this?”

“Tell him, Uncle,” I growl. “Tell him how you and Adrik have been working together for fuck knows how long to bring me down.”

The silence hurts. Vadim doesn’t so much as breathe. Fyodor’s eyes go wide but he doesn’t take them off my uncle. “Deny it, brother. Tell me what he’s saying is wrong.”

I can appreciate the desperation on Fyodor’s face. Discovering his betrayal has destroyed me, too, and I’m not nearly as close to Vadim as Fyodor is.

“Vadim!” Fyodor roars, raising his voice for the first time in recent memory.

Vadim closes his eyes. “I can’t deny it,” he says softly. “I won’t.”

Fyodor’s mouth drops. His entire face sags under the weight of that admission. He’s aging ten, twenty, thirty years in the blink of an eye.

“No… no. This can’t be true.”

“It is, Otets.”

“Why?” Isn’t that the question of the fucking day? “You, who have always, always championed family over all else. You, who have always believed that family is everything. You’ve been working against my son. Against your pahkan.”

Vadim nods. An air of detached resignation clings to his sagging shoulders. As ancient as my father looks, Vadim looks plenty old himself. He stubs out the cigar in the ashtray and sighs. “As always, you’ve gone straight to the point, brother. Because the truth is, he—” His eyes dart viciously toward me. “—was never supposed to be pahkan, was he?”

Fyodor’s frown turns down at the corners. “This is about that.”

“Of course this is about that!” His tone is whip-sharp and dripping with the resentment he’s been suppressing all these years. “Do you remember the months after Leonid and Alina died?”

Fyodor flinches violently. “Don’t—”

“You wanted to know why. I’m telling you,” Vadim snarls. “You lost your wife and son and you fell to pieces. A true pahkan would never have let that destroy him. But you… you were weak. But despite that weakness, you were the elder brother, the rightful pahkan, so I followed you. I supported you. I made it so that no one knew how far you’d fallen or how little you wanted to wear the crown. I led for you and gave you the credit. The reason the Oryolov Bratva still exists today is because I saved it.” His hands are balled into fists and his voice is trembling from the weight of his emotion. “You knew the burden you’d placed on me even at that time. Which is why you promised to hand over power to me. ‘You’re the real pahkan, brother. You should lead them, not me.’ Those were your words. Or do you deny it?”

There are tears in Fyodor’s eyes now. “I do not.”

Vadim nods with grim satisfaction. “You promised to turn the reins over to me—and then what did you do? You changed your mind and—without warning, without so much as a conversation—you announced that your twenty-one-year-old son would take over as pahkan.”