“What?”

  His voice snaps like the wind. I turn to him with the laughter bubbling wildly in my throat. “Oh, this really is the night for big reveals, huh, Dad?”

  A beam of moonlight through the branches catches his face and turns him pale as a ghost. He splutters, “Y-you’re pregnant?”

  “Four months along.”

  Another puzzle piece snaps into place. The biggest, heaviest one yet. The fucking centerpiece.

  “The night that he and I met…” I close my eyes and let out a breathy laugh. I need to, before I drown in a flood of tears. “Of course. Ilarion was in the neighborhood—to meet with you. That was why you were so jumpy and paranoid. You knew he was coming.”

  “Taylor, we really have to—”

  “You thought he would kill you,” I muse. “He turned out to be too smart for you, huh, Dad? He realized that the best way to hurt you would be to take your daughters. I don’t think even he realized how brilliantly things would work out.”

  “Did he force himself on you?”

  I laugh again, every bit as unhinged as the first. “No, Dad, Ilarion Zakharov did not force himself on me. In fact, he was the person I ran to after you hit me. Remember that?” I tilt my head to one side. “Remember how you slapped your own daughter for trying to be an independent, grown adult? It’s almost poetic that she’d run straight into the arms of the guy you screwed over.” Another realization hits me, and I laugh even harder. “Oh my god. Your first grandchild is the heir to the Zakharov Bratva.” I giggle. “Congrats!”

  If I’m being cruel, I’m far past caring. I’ve carried so much heavy guilt over that night, and it turns out it’s all my father’s fault. My father, vor to the Zakharov Bratva.

  For seventeen. Goddamned. Years.

  Which means he’s not only known Ilarion this whole time; he’s known Ilarion and Mila since they were children.

  They’ve always been a part of my life; I was just never allowed to know about any of it.

  “You’re a totally different person to me now.”

  He shakes his head sadly. “I’ll just have to live with that. But I can live with anything if it means you girls are safe.”

  “Touching,” I whisper. “But somehow, it still doesn’t make up for all the lies.”

  “We can sort through all that later, Tay. The only thing I need to know now is, do you trust me enough to come with me?”

  I glance back at the house. “You keep saying ‘girls,’ but Celine’s still in there.”

  His face sours into a grimace. “We have to leave without her.”

  I turn back to him. “What?”

  He nods again. “She won’t leave him.”

  “Did you tell her everything you just told me?”

  “Everything.” He jangles the car keys in his hand. “Including the fact that the only reason Ilarion chose her was to get back at me, to control me, keep my loyalty. She still chose to stay.”

  My hand flutters over my belly. “She really is in love with him…”

  I meet his eye for a split second. In some ways, I’d made the decision a long time ago. But hearing Celine’s choice makes it easier.

  I glance back at the mansion one more time. It’s only right now, right when my world has been shaken harder than that stupid snow globe I stole from the cabin…that I finally realize Ilarion was right.

  I don’t know my sister as well as I thought. Hell, I don’t even know my own father, apparently.

  Or maybe I clung to some imagined idea of them. Of people who do things out of love and not out of selfish desperation at the cost of others’ happiness.

  But Dad wanted more than his wife and children could give him. He tainted our lives with fear and paranoia, lying to us every single day, because he chose to pursue something being a vor gave him.

  And Cee…

  My stomach churns at the thought of her. She doesn’t care about Ilarion’s happiness, or Dad’s, or least of all mine. She lied to me and forced me to carry the blame for something that happened years ago.

  I don’t want to think it, but I know that if she finds out—when she finds out—she’ll cling to Ilarion that much harder, because she simply doesn’t care about anyone’s happiness but her own.

  Tears sting my eyes. I wanted so badly to be loved fiercely by the very same people who have done nothing but leech my loyalty dry.

  And the one person who actually does love me, fiercely and protectively…

  Is the one person I already turned my back on forever.

  I look at my father, where he’s gone to sit in the driver’s seat of the car. I barely recognize him now, but it’s easier to think of him not as my dad, but as someone from Ilarion’s world who knows what to do.

  Because I have to face it—that’s exactly who my father’s been my whole life.

  I open the passenger door and give him a nod.

  “Alright. Let’s go.”

  80

  ILARION

  I once had a dream about standing atop the ashes of the Bellasio empire.

  That is the closest I’ll ever come to a real-life premonition.

  I stand on the elevated road that overlooks the Bellasio mansion and watch as it burns. Plumes of smoke and ash claw at the sky above like a corpse’s gray fingers.

  And all I can think is, Nothing has ever looked so beautiful.

  Mila and Dima join me. “Well, it’s done,” Mila says, surveying the ruins of the estate with an apathetic frown. “Every property he owns has been hit. Along with the men who guard them.”

  “Not every property,” I mutter.

  Mila glances at me. “We hit every property on your list.”

  “Yes, but Benedict and Gregor were not in any of them,” Dima fills in for me. “Which means—”

  “There are more,” I finish for him.

  Mila throws her hands up. “Does it even matter?” she protests. “So yeah, there’ll be smaller locations. Safehouses. Little fucking shacks out in the boondocks. And there will be a few Bellasio rats here and there hiding in them. But who gives a shit? We’ve hit his power base.”

  “That does not make him powerless.” Then I exhale. “But it sidelines him. For now.”

  Mila raises both her brows. “Does that mean you’re going to let him go?”

  “Hell no. Not until his corpse is cooling at my feet.”

  She shakes her head. “Then I don’t know what the point of tonight was. All we’ve done is give birth to a desperate man with nothing to lose.”

  “Which is exactly why I intend to keep looking for him.”

  “He’s going to find a burrow to crawl into,” warns Dima. “He won’t be easy to catch.”

  “Ah, but I have a secret weapon,” I remind the two of them. “I have Archie. The man was a double agent for long enough. He’ll be able to tell me of any other locations that we might be overlooking.”

  Mila spits on the ground at our feet. “Surely even Benedict isn’t stupid enough to use any safehouse that Archie knew about.”

  “He won’t have a choice. He’s out of options, and even if he has somewhere farther afield to run to…no one can run that fast.” I turn my back on the smoldering ruins and face the line of trucks waiting for us.

  “So Archie is the big hope,” Mila says in disgust. “Can we even trust him? He betrayed us once. What’s stopping him from doing it again?”

  I smile cruelly. “I have his daughters. Both of them.”

  Then I descend the hill to my victorious army.

  Mila and I climb into the Hummer in front of Dima’s. We drive away from the fire, leaving it as an orange glow against the night sky behind us.

  As the silence settles, I glance at my sister. Her face is a mask of steel. She stares into the middle distance ahead of the truck as we eat up road with a careful blankness. I know how hard she’s fought to keep her mind that blank. That empty.

  The past can’t hurt you if you don’t let yourself remember it.

  “Mila?”

  “Hm?”

  “Is this what you want to be doing ten years from now?”

  She scowls. “Have you asked Dima the same thing?”

  “Dima has a life.”

  She tenses. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he goes out. He fucks, he drinks, he fights. And one day, he’s going to find a woman and he’s going to settle down with her,” I say as gently as I can manage. “Unless…unless you do something about it.”

  Her scowl hardens long past the point of being believable. “I… I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do.”

  She pointedly turns away from me and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Ilarion.”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at him. I know what’s keeping you tethered to this Bratva, and it sure as hell isn’t me. It isn’t loyalty to the cause or love of the game, and God knows it isn’t for the sake of family tradition. It’s for him. Admit the truth, Mila.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Mila—”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  I fall silent. The sound of the engine churns all around us. Mila picks at her nails again and again until I hear a hiss of pain and look down to see she’s torn one clean off. Blood trickles onto her pant leg.

  “Mila.”

  “There’s no point, okay?” she says in a broken rasp. “I can’t…I can’t be with him the way a man wants a woman to be with him.”

  “I want to see you happy. You haven’t been happy in a very long time.” I cast a quick glance at her. “Except for when he’s around.”

  She sighs, and her eyes flutter closed. “I haven’t been happy since the first moment he…touched me.”

  It’s been a while since she’s spoken of it. The air in the car feels electric now. A lethal charge in every breath.

  “I wish you’d told me sooner. I wish I could have stopped it.”

  “You loved him.”

  “I loved you more.” I gently nudge her. “I still do.”

  She gives me a small smile. “I know that. Thank you. But what happened is a secret that I intend to take to my grave. And if I were to be with Dima, I would need to tell him the truth and…I just can’t do that.”

  I leave the conversation there. I’m not about to force her to face her trauma. I know what that can do to a person.

  81

  ILARION

  I drive through the gates of the Diamond and park behind Dima. Mila and I are just walking into the house when Dima skids to a stop at the head of the staircase. His eyes are wide with panic.

  “I just went in to check on Archie, to prep him for our talk. But…he’s not there.”

  My spine goes rigid. “Taylor?”

  Dima just shakes his head.

  Mila turns and rushes back out of the house to convene with security. I race upstairs. Dima follows me back to Taylor’s room.

  Her scent still lingers in the air, but it’s already fading. It won’t last much longer. As my heart pounds harder and harder against my ribs, I check the closet for any trace of what might’ve happened.

  Her black duffel bag is gone.

  “Fuck,” I growl. “Fuck!”

  I’m standing in place in the closet, fists knotted and shaking, when Mila surges into the room a moment later. “He took down three guards,” she says. “They left through the south gate.”

  “Celine?” I ask Dima.

  “I checked on her. She’s still in the medical wing. Asleep when I got there.”

  “They left her behind?” Mila gasps.

  “No.” I turn toward the window. In the distance, I can just make out the glow of the Bellasio blazes. “No, neither Archie nor Taylor would have willingly left her behind. Celine chose to stay.”

  Mila frowns. “Archie wouldn’t have protected you. He would have told both of them who he was—the connection between the two of you. He would have told Celine why you chose to propose to her in the first place.”

  I nod and give the only explanation that makes any sense: “She doesn’t care.”

  I badly miscalculated everything. This whole goddamn mess started with a simple oversight and one slip of a miscalculation. Now, the wrong woman is in my house pledging blind loyalty to me while the perfect woman of my dreams is lost in the wind.

  “But Taylor…” Dima says. “Taylor cared.”

  “Taylor’s not thinking of me.” I say that, but something deep inside refuses to believe it. Dares to say it knows not to. “She’s thinking only of Celine.”

  And how Celine will react when she finds out about our baby.

  That’s when I punch a hole through the closet wall. “Fuck!”

  “Ilarion,” Mila intervenes, moving into my line of vision, “it might not be too late.”

  I think about it for a split second. Should I let Taylor martyr herself despite what she really wants?

  Or should I find her, drag her back and force her to accept what she really wants?

  Taylor told me that to love someone is to let them go. But no one ever taught her what I learned years ago: that loving someone means allowing them to face their demons. Love is doing what’s best for the other, even at the risk of destroying that love in the end.

  And god-fucking-dammit, I love her.

  So there’s only one thing I can do.

  “Find her.”

  TO BE CONTINUED

  Ilarion and Taylor’s story continues in Book 2, DIAMOND ANGEL.

  Click here to keep reading!

  www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7JD1X23

 

 

  Naomi West, Diamond Devil (Zakharov Bratva Book 1)

 

 

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