Page 22 of Bratva King's Secret Twins
While Nadia and I share our mother’s blonde hair, Alek’s is jet black and always neatly slicked back without a strand out of place. He is always neat, measured, and well-disciplined, making him perfect for running numbers and the legitimate side of the Mafia business. He isn’t prone to violence like Nadia and I are. Alek prefers numbers and order to the mayhem of flesh and blood, only killing when all other options have been exhausted and he sees no other way out.
“Oh, you didn’t know?” Nadia drops down into the chair on the other side of my desk and kicks her combat boots on my desk. Nadia wears her signature cropped leather jacket, blackripped jeans, and a lacey skin-tight camisole. “Nik’s dick is broken.”
“Your ankle is about to be broken if you don’t get it off my custom desk.” I smack her boots. She drops them to the floor, flipping me off.
Nadia isn’t wrong because the last five years have been fucking torture. I can’t find Gwen anywhere, and trust me, I’ve tried. She left the strip club where she worked three months after I visited. She moved houses two months after that, and despite all of my power in Washington, D.C., my resources have found nothing. The only reason I am sure she is not dead is because my mole in social security hasn’t seen her death certificate yet, and she checks for it every day. It’s like she was a ghost or a figment of my imagination, but I know she wasn’t because I could have never conjured someone as glorious as Gwen.
I lean against the edge of the desk and scowl at Nadia, but Alek sits beside her, unbuttoning the jacket of his navy blue three-piece suit. I can see the tattoo we share poke out from beneath the sleeve of his right arm, a rose tattoo with a viper wrapped around the stem. Nadia has the same tattoo on her neck, and I have mine on my spine.
“Nik, it’s time.” Alek sighs.
“We saw our father last year,” I deadpan as I walk over to my whiskey bar, pulling out two tumblers and a twenty-year-old bottle of Macallan.
“I know. That’s why it’s time again,” Nadia whispers.
I pour a cup for Nadia and me, since Alek doesn’t drink, and walk over, handing her one of the tumblers as I tentatively take a small sip of mine.
“He’s not going to tell us anything.” I look at Nadia from the corner of my eye, and she avoids my gaze to sip her drink.
“He will tell us something.” Alek nods as if declaring a statement like that will make the outcome true. “Long-term isolation can result in heightened activity in the amygdala, increasing susceptibility to anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders, while also disrupting neurochemical balances such as dopamine and serotonin levels.”
“Layman terms, Einstein.” I roll my eyes, taking another sip.
“That means he will be paranoid enough to make any deal to stop his isolation. We are social creatures. We need human interaction in order to maintain ourselves.” Alek steadily speaks as if he has memorized a psychology book.
He ignores my gaze and stares at the shine of my desk in front of him, continuing to mentally calculate the probable outcome of the man we have locked in our basement finally telling us anything of value.
“It’s been three years,” I say, staring at the picture of our mother and the three of us I had commissioned on her last birthday. Instead of being in her living room like I imagined, it now sits on the wall to the right of my desk. “How much longer does he need to tell us where the rest of our mother is?”
“It may be taking him longer because he was already mentally imbalanced,” Alek comments
I grimace, flinging the rest of the whiskey down my throat. “I vote that I can start breaking bones this year.”
I slam the tumbler on the table and look over at the emptying gaze of Nadia, who is the only one who has prevented the full violence between Aleksandr and me because, despite everything he has done, she still loves our father. Nadia nibbles onher bottom lip, the glass still full and barely between her fingertips.
I whisper, “Nadia?”
Her glossed-over eyes meet mine, and I reach out to smooth down her hair. Alek takes the tumbler out of her hand and places it on a coaster on my desk. “I get to pick which bones.”
10
GWEN
“Mia! Come on!” I stand at the end of the hall off the kitchen, calling out my daughter’s name for the third time. She doesn’t respond, and I mindlessly wipe the pancake batter on my slacks. “Shit.”
I glance at my son, Gio, his black wavy hair covering his eyes as he almost sleeps in his pancakes.
“Gio, baby.” I walk over to the sink, wetting a paper towel to clean the syrup off his face. “You’ve got to wake up.”
He looks up at me with a lazy smile, and I rub a little harder to get the syrup off his face, whispering, “I thought I told you to go to sleep at 8?”
“Mommy, I had to finish my book before the first day.” His voice is small but earnest.
I look into his big blue eyes and immediately soften like I did when his father looked at me. Gio’s luscious locks cascade in soft waves. His deep black tresses, which match mine, arestriking against Nikolai’s deep ocean eyes and mischievous smile.
But it’s his brains; I don’t know where he got that. At only five years old, Gio possesses the intelligence and savvy of a twelve-year-old prodigy, making him a mini Einstein in the making. He is currently teaching himself about every primate he can get his hands on because he has a deep passion for animals. Right now, his favorite is the lemur.
His eyebrows furrow, a frown on his face. “Did you know orangutans are going extinct?”