My God. This is about the past. The sins and the secrets of the past. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to say because itwaswrong. Nothing about itcanbe right.
All I can speak for is the present, and it looks like there was never any time in my life when she didn’t wear a mask. This is her true face.
“You waited all this time, Sophia?” I balk.
“It’s called waiting for the right opportunity dear my nephew. When you are weak, that’s all you can do. Wait and watch and plan. Your father trusted me with everything. He thought I would support his disgusting idea to marry the woman responsible for my best friend’s death. Like I could ever be okay with that. Then you came along and trusted me, too. Trusted me more than he did.”
“I did trust you.”
“Which is what made me the best spy. I knew the day would come when Sergei would have to make a choice between his two sons. It was logical. I just never thought he would go as far as changing the leadership selection rules.” Again, she shakes her head. This time with disgust.
“You thought we should all suffer because of the past and the change!” My voice comes out heavy and weak at the same time.
“It’s like spitting on Tatiana’s grave and her son’s legacy. That’s all he had to look forward to as some form of redemption for what happened to his mother. We both knew your father was going to choose you. That’s why he changed the rules. He would only do something like that to sidestep what he wasn’t man enough to do.”
Shit, she’s starting to look blurry. My head slumps to the side, and my body leans with it, crashing into the wooden arm of the chair.
The fucking poison is taking effect and weakening me.
I can’t move.
My hands and legs feel heavier now. But I’m going to keep fighting to stay awake.
I have to get out of here.
Natalia needs me.
“Then, to add insult to injury, my dear brother decided to split the company four ways so Ivan wouldn’t get the ruling shares and I’d get no part of the company my forefathers built from the ground up. It was your mother who told me your father’s plans, breaking his confidence because she thought we’d become such good friends.” She hisses. “Like your father, she thought I’d be happy to get the diamond company. She didn’t know she was opening Pandora’s Box. Sergei thought the diamond company would be a sufficient inheritance for me. That bastard.” She laughs, a crude horrible sound, or she just sounds that way because my heart is thumping in my ears. “Dmitriyev Ltd. was not meant to be split between Sergei’s whore of a wife, his bastard son, his little bitch of a daughter, and the only son he should have had. It was too much. Someone had to make him pay.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
I’d be more inclined to believe the poison was screwing with my hearing and my sight over thinking what I’m hearing my Aunt Sophia say is the truth. But it is, and I never saw this coming.
“And that person had to be you?”
“Indeed. I took matters into my own hands. I knew Ivan would agree with me. I knew all his secrets and his flaws. I knew who would join forces with me to achieve the goal. Raul was at the top of the list because he didn’t like the control your father had over his cartel. He was always in some disagreement with him, so he was easily swayed when we approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse— shares in Dmitriyev Ltd. once the ownership passed, and freedom from our control. He was the only person strong enough to take you down. The others were just the masterminds.”
“Others?” I rasp.
“Investors who would take the company to new heights in the grand vision I have for the future of Dmitriyev Ltd.”
It makes sense now why people like Barabbas Ponteix got involved.
“What my parents did was wrong, but what you did is wrong, too. How could you think it was okay to kill them?” When I think of Talia, my soul trembles. “My sister, what was her crime?”
“Her mere existence, my dear nephew. Her existence was her crime, and her fucking love for ballet reminded me of how your mother enticed my brother. It was me who set up her sale to make sure she died in the worst way possible.”
More laughter sounds, showing how truly evil she is. She made Talia suffer the way she did.
“How could you do that!”
“Her suffering and death were an extension of what I wanted to do to your mother.”
“You sold my sister to sex slavers who killed her. How dare you think she deserved such a fate!”
“Well, Mikhail. I couldn’t exactly sell your mother. The sale for a woman over thirty in the flesh trade is practically non-existent. I wanted that bullet in your mother’s head for the same reason I wanted to poison my brother.”
“What the fuck reason was that?”
