“PAVEL!” he roars. “No matter anything else, he is still yourson!”
“Get the fuck out of my way, Stepan.”
Stepan shakes his head. “Pavel, I’m your number two?—”
“Soact like it!!” Papa roars.
“I swore an oath to the Bratva. I have allegiance to you, of course, but my oath is tothe brotherhood. That means my oath is to Roman, too, as its nextpakhan.” He glances back at me on the ground, his brow caving before he turns back to my father. “Pakhan…my oath prevents me from letting you kill him.”
My father glares murderously at Stepan. His gaze shifts past him to me, his lip curling.
“You disgust me,” he hisses.
He turns away, viciously swearing in Russian.
“Get him up,” he growls. When nobody moves, he whirls on his men. “I saidget him up!”
The two Nikitin men rush over and lift me off the floor. They start to lower me back into the chair, but Papa shakes his head.
“No,” he grunts. “There.”
He points to a spot on the floor right in front of Val. I stumble slightly as they haul me over. But when I get close to him, it all fades away: the pain, the fury, the urge to roar at the world.
It all disappears as my eyes lock with Val’s.
“How’s my hair,” he grunts, his mouth bloodied.
I smile weakly back.
Papa slowly walks up behind me. “So this is why your fiancée ran off with another man,” he sneers. “Better to whore herself out to one of herguardsthan marry a fuckingpidoraz?!” He spits on the ground. “I don’t blame her.”
He starts to walk around me, his nostrils flaring, his hands behind his back.
“I tried with you, boy.”
“Papa—”
“Be silent!” he snaps. “I tried to raise you to be a man who could lead the Bratva with strength and honor.”
“Iwilllead?—”
He cuts me off with a sharp laugh.
“You think any of these men will follow a littlepidoraz?” he blurts, incredulous. “You think they will go to war, taking orders from a little fairy bitch?!”
His men are silent, but Gunner and his goons chuckle amongst themselves.
I drag my eyes away from Val to look my father right in the eye.
“No matter what you think I am,” I growl. “And no matter whom I love?—”
“Love!” he barks, tossing his head back with a throaty laugh. “He thinks taking it up the ass from another man islove!”
His laugh dies away when I grab him by the collar and yank him close.
“I. Love. Him,” I snarl coldly. “And there is nothing about that which will make it impossible for me to lead this brotherhood one day.” My eyes narrow. “Nothing.”
The room goes quiet. Oddly, my father doesn’t shove me away, or even try to remove my hands from his shirt.
