Page 29 of The Butcher
Guards held their positions at the doors, watching everything without speaking unless they were asked a direct question. I was quickly seeing them as home decor at this point, breathing statuesthat would kill at a moment’s notice. The staff stayed busy, working their duties quickly and efficiently, and I made sure to stay out of their way.
I didn’t go into the study to snoop. I went in because of the album in the library. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about the boy in those pictures. He had smiled in a way that didn’t match the man I knew, and there had been something open in his face that no longer existed.
That was what stayed with me, not curiosity about Alexei or his world but the disconnect between who he had been and who he was now. I needed to understand that difference even if I wasn’t sure what I was looking for when I stepped inside.
The study was quiet with the same emptiness and stillness that filled the rest of the house when I entered. But it felt heavier here, and I knew it was about the man I married, and the things he wouldn’t want anyone to know.
This room carried the scent of him, a mixture of gun oil, expensive cologne, and something darker underneath, like blood that had long since been scrubbed away.
I didn’t rush toward the desk right away. My gaze moved across the room first, taking in the shelves, the furniture, and the way everything had been placedwith intention. Nothing here was personal in the way the album had been. That had been something softer, something tied to memory.
This room was different. It was built for work, for decisions, for things that didn’t leave room for hesitation or second-guessing.
I turned toward the desk after a moment, my attention settling there because it made the most sense. If there was anything worth seeing, it would be here. I moved behind it, my fingers brushing the surface lightly as I stepped into the space Alexei used when he sat here.
I opened drawers and searched for something… anything. But it all seemed like standard business documents, ones that made no sense to me. I focused on what was already there. Something inside of me said nothing would be locked, not when I was in Alexei’s domain. Someone would have to have a death wish to go through Alexei’s personal things, especially not in his home.
A folder sat near the edge of the desk. I picked it up and opened it without thinking much about it. At first, it looked normal. Just names, numbers, and places. The kind of paperwork I’d seen plenty of times growing up.
But then something felt off. The names weren’tbusinesses but people. Some had ages next to them. The dates and short notes written beside them didn’t make sense. And then it slowly clicked. My stomach tightened as I kept reading because it all started to fall into place. These weren’t businesses. This was a list of people being moved from one place to another.
I turned the page, then another, reading slower this time as I paid closer attention. It all followed the same pattern. Names lined up with dates. Locations matched to movements. Money was listed beside each one like it was just another part of the process. It wasn’t messy or thrown together.
It was planned, consistent, and had clearly been happening for a long time.
I kept flipping through the pages, forcing myself to read everything instead of looking away. The more I saw, the clearer it became. And then I noticed names of men I was familiar with, names I’d heard my father speak of in meetings or in passing.
My father’s name wasn’t anywhere on the pages, but that didn’t mean much. In our world, names like his didn’t show up on documents. They stayed behind everything, not written out in plain sight.
I had seen enough growing up to know how things worked. The quiet conversations. The thingsthat were never explained. The way certain questions were ignored instead of answered.
I didn’t know exactly what this was. But I knew it was dirty. And something in my gut told me Alexei was tied to it.
This was the real face of the man I’d married. The Butcher didn’t just spill blood… he moved it, profited from it, and I was now sleeping in his bed.
I knew the life I’d been born into wasn’t clean. It never had been. Power came from violence, from deals made in the dark, from things no one talked about out loud. I’d grown up around it, watched it from a distance, understood enough to know it wasn’t something you could dress up and call something else.
But I had never been okay with it.
What sat in my hands didn’t feel like the same kind of brutality I had learned to look away from. It wasn’t a fight or a threat or something done in the open where everyone understood the rules. This felt quieter and more controlled. It was ongoing in a way that didn’t stop once it started.
I sat there for a moment, the folder still in my hand, my grip tightening slightly as everything settled in a way I couldn’t ignore. The images from the album came back without warning, that youngerversion of Alexei with something softer in his expression, something that hadn’t been stripped out of him yet. It didn’t match what my mind was putting together.
I closed the folder and stepped away from the desk, not hesitating this time. I didn’t need to go through it again. I didn’t need more time to figure it out.
I didn’t know every detail, but I knew enough about this world—and the kind of things my father was capable of—that I couldn’t pretend he wasn’t involved.
His name wasn’t anywhere in the file, and I didn’t know if that meant he wasn’t involved or if he was just smart enough to stay off the page.
What turned my stomach wasn’t even him. It was the one question I couldn’t ignore.
How much of this did Alexei have his hands in?
Chapter Seventeen
Alexei
The council room was already full when I walked in. Every seat at the table was taken, the older men in the Bratva sitting where they always did, watching, waiting.
