Page 3 of Empire
Nikolaj’s brow furrows slightly. Interesting. I continue anyway, because if he’s here to accuse, I’d rather steer the shape of it than wait to be cornered like a child.
“Whatever you think you know, whatever version of history he’s reconstructed, Ruslan was not some helpless victim unwillingly dragged to every decision. He—”
“Stop.”
The word cracks through the room, silencing me. Nikolaj finally takes a step toward me, and now I can see him properly. There’s no fury in his features and no weapon in his hands. “That’s not why I’m here.”
His words make me blanch, and I feel a sliver of irritation slide through me. “If you’re here to kill me, Nikolaj, then please understand that I no longer have the patience for speeches beforehand. I’ve earned at least the dignity of being shot without the melodrama.”
He looks at me for a long second, and there’s something so chillingly familiar in that silence that it almost makes me laugh. Ruslan did this too— letting quiet do the cutting before words ever touch the wound.
“I want to know what happened between you and my father.”
There are moments in a man’s life where the ground shifts beneath him and no one else in the room notices. This is one of them.
I don’t answer immediately. How can I? The question is impossible in ways Nikolaj doesn’t even understand. It’s not only about Ruslan, it’s about me before I became what I am.
“I know there was something,” he continues. “Every time your name comes up in meetings with my father, he gets this look on his face. Every time I ask about the true reason we were exiled years ago, nobody answers me directly. Every fucking document is sealed, even to me, the fucking Pakhan. It feels like I’m standing in the middle of a story that started before me.”
The boy has no idea how right he is.
Nikolaj takes another step closer, close enough that the resemblance hits me so fiercely that I have the insane impulse to say Ruslan’s name just to get it out of my mouth before it burns me alive from the inside.
“Did you love him?”
The question lands without ornament or attempt to soften it. Dragovich men never learn to ask for the truth politely.
I truly laugh then, but not because I find his question amusing. There is something so unbearably cruel about being asked this by his son after all these years of acting like the wound has scarred over, when in reality, it has just learned how to bleed inward.
I move past Nikolaj to the sideboard because I need the distance if I’m going to be honest tonight. I pour myself another whiskey, and this time I drink it. When I turn back to him, he still hasn’t moved.
“That’s not a question with a short answer,” I say.
He shrugs. “I’m not in a hurry.”
No. He wouldn’t be.
“You should be careful what doors you open, Nikolaj. You might not like what lies behind them.”
He offers me a sardonic smile, and my hand fists around the top of my cane. “You should have told your son the same thing.”
That one lands clean.
I sigh, pour myself another glass, and walk back to my gesture, gesturing to the one opposite mine. “Sit down.”
He does as he’s told, and I raise my glass to my lips, looking at the consequences of my betrayal so long ago.
I look at Nikolaj and see Ruslan in splinters. They’re enough to hurt, but not enough to save me from answering.
And somewhere far inside the house, the clock begins to strike again.
Salvatore - 23 Years Old
Guilty As Sin? – Taylor Swift
Isitatmyfather’sright-hand side and pretend I don’t feel the weight of every pair of eyes at this table.
The original Five Families meet only twice a year and never meet in public. They lock down entire floors of hotels and have rooms swept within an inch of its life before the leaders even land.
