Chapter Text
VLAD
I plop down on the chair in the office while my brother Mikhail paces the length of the room looking for something. I let him, and don’t interfere to help him. After a few minutes of aggressively groping my furniture, and walls he gives up and glares at me.
I shrug and get up from the chair, “I won’t let you inside my control room. You can tell me whatever you need you need to say right here in this office.”
Mikhail releases a long sigh and flops down on the chair infront of me “We lost the shipment for Alexei. And guess who is behind all of that.”
My jaw clenches and temple throbs from how hard I grind my teeth “I know.”
Mikhail looks confused at my acknowledgment. I pull out my phone from my pocket and open a video file and slide the phone to my brother. He looks at the video thrice before handing the phone back to me.
“If you knew about this why hide it from us Vlad?”
“I only got the feed last night, after you confronted the piece of shit who sold us out. It’s like he wants us to find him. We were ignoring all the shipments gone wrong, because they’re really nothing in terms of money or assets, we ignored his existence because we were busy with the takeover shit, thinking he is a nobody, a fucking myth. But no, we shouldn’t have done that. He used that time to build his base, a dozen mercenaries? Arms? Connections? I don’t know. We don’t know because he wasn’t our centre of attention.”
“He is baiting us. We need to be ahead of him, go over every little fuckup since Ilya Aranov’s death.” I sigh and nod. I lean back in the chair and see a shadow moving outside the locked office door.
Looks like a little deer is keen on snooping. I signal to Mikhail to keep quiet and walk to the door silently and jerk it open. Lilia loses her momentum and jerks forward into my arms.
“Breaking my rules again, Lilia?” I close the door with her in my arms and push her against it. She glares at me and squirms to slip free.
“I am not breaking any rules. Don’t turn your back on a predator, know your enemy, don’t take another man’s name and don’t break your promise to the Aranovs. I haven’t broken any rules by snooping.”
I give her a manic smile and turn around to look at Mikhail who is now leaning against the desk and watching us. “She remembers all of it like a good girl.”
Lilia rolls her eyes and tries to squirm from under me, but I push her to the door with my leg between her thighs. “I might have to make new ones, because you are special aren’t you, Mishka?”
“No thank you.” She pouts and pushes against me.
“Give me a kiss and I will let you go.”
“NO. Mikhail tell him to stop.”
“He is of no help to you. He is in my team. Give me a kiss, I know you want to and I also know you have decided to let me fuck you, otherwise you wouldn’t have been snooping here knowing I would catch you, Mishka.”
“You are delusional. How did you build such a big empire with this kind of deductive skills? I snooped because I needed to know what you guys are talking about. Fucking you wasn’t even on my mind, far from it. You are actually my least favourite Aranov brother after Kirill.”
“Baby, your thing with Kirill is whole another game we haven’t even started playing. He is a little busy right now, but once he is back, you are in for a fucking ride.” I expect to see confusion on her face but the little minx fucking blushes, the deep red hue spreads from her cheeks to her chest. I want to taste it, feel the heat of it on my lips and fingertips.
“Guess it won’t be a shock to you after all.” I say and get off her. I wanted to push her for a kiss, but instead I got something so much sweeter. It is better to ease her into this slowly instead of force and coercion, that way all of this will seem like her idea.
Lilia pushes away from me and walks toward Mikhail. He looks lost in thought, while glaring a hole through the carpet. I bet this whole interaction just flew over his head. He tends to live in the future, though it is good for business, it isn’t good for the family or his personal life, which is basically all about Lilia. But there are times even she can’t unwind the asshole when he is deep in his head like this.
Lilia stands in-front of him and slowly lifts his chin and focuses his gaze on her. She gives him the most beautiful smile, pure like freshly fallen snow, untouched by darkness. Mikhail releases a slow breath like her smile just took the weight off of his shoulders and brought back life into his body. He pulls her closer by the waist and drops his forehead to hers. Their eyes closed, both of them settle on the chair with Lilia on his lap. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and pulls him closer.
This is my cue to leave them, as much as I want Lilia all for myself, Mikhail needs her more than I do now. I walk away from them, to the other side of the desk and put my fingers on the scanner to open the underground entry for my hub. The door swishes open silently and I exit the room, as the entry slides closed.
As soon as I enter the lights switch on automatically and the computers power up. Sliding into my chair I open the tracking program for the shipment of counterfeit luxury goods arriving tomorrow, when everything looks alright I switch to the warehouse surveillance, my breath stalls.
It’s a carnage. Blood-soaked walls, the men cut up into pieces and heaped into a pile. I switch the audio and wear my headphone, a familiar music is playing in the background. Though the volume is low I can hear sound blaring in my ears, the carousel tune repeating over and over again. I clutch the edge of the desk, controlling the urge to break the monitor replaying my failure, replaying a past I wanted to stay buried. Right when I give into the urge, my phone pings with a message from an unknown number. I open the phone with my hands shaking with rage and see the text. The words of the screen are repeated to me in the voice of a woman long dead but is still haunting my family.
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE DEAD ONE, VLAD.