“I don’t think you should listen to it,” he says.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If my brother sent a voice message, I should definitely listen to it,” I snap back, my anxiety getting the better of me. Why wouldn’t he want me to hear what Boris has to say?
For a long moment, Andrei is quiet, until he reaches into his pocket and sets his phone on the table.
He navigates to the message and presses play, pushing the phone towards me so that I can hear.
Boris’s voice comes towards me, and my stomach spins nervously.
It’s a contradiction of emotions, to hear him because on one hand, he is my brother, and on the other hand, I have a deep sense of fear towards him.
“Tia, hi. It’s me. I want to let you know that I am determined to work things out with Andrei. You don’t have to worry. I will come to some kind of agreement with him to resolveour issues, and then we can get you back home where you belong. I hope you are well.”
A smile spreads quickly over my face.
“He wants to fix things,” I say happily. “He’s going to work things out with you. That’s amazing.”
My heart is beating happily as warmth spreads through me. My half-brother does care about me. He would never try to resolve past issues if he didn’t. And he wouldn’t bother trying to negotiate with Andrei if he was the one who wanted me dead.
Van was clearly working alone.
Chapter 17 - Andrei
The message is bothering me.
Boris is a master manipulator, and Tatiana is falling for it.
There is no way in hell that he plans on attempting to make things right with me, and there is no way for him to make things right unless he can bring Grig back. Impossible.
I can’t forgive him for what he did, and on top of it all, he’s flat-out lying.He is the one who ordered Van to take the shot at Tia.
I know it.
But she’s not ready to accept the truth about that.
It’s not her fault; she has never had the opportunity to see who he really is from another perspective. She’s been suffocated by him her entire life.
She reasons that his harsh treatment was just him trying to protect her; she says he locked her away to keep her safe. But she’s wrong.
And the warning her father gave Boris is clear evidence of that.
A father would never feel the need to threaten his son in order to get him to be kind to his daughter.
It’s not normal.
Besides all of that, I’vemetBoris. I’ve worked with him for many years, and I know him forexactlywho he is.
The brutal, selfish, and unkind man he is.
***
“Are you ready?” I ask, picking up her overnight bag.
“I am,” she grins, over the moon to be heading out of the city on a little vacation I’ve arranged for us.
When she told me she never gets takeout, I started asking her what else she hasn’t experienced, and it turns out she’s never been away on holiday. Somehow, she’s never even been on a plane, which is crazy considering that Boris has his own jet and could have taken her anywhere, if he cared.
This presented an opportunity for me, because I want to get her as far away from Boris as possible.
