Page 18 of Beautiful Forever
Raising back up to his full height, Drako tucks a hand in the pocket of his coat. “Do you want to know?”
“No.”
I don’t care what he did with Father’s body. I hope he threw it in an incinerator until every molecule of his existence was obliterated into ash.
“As far as everyone is concerned, Nikolai returned to Moscow to attend to Nina’s affairs and left you and Aleksei in my care. Interested parties will hear that he was arrested shortly after he arrived and sent to Adskiye Vrata, where upon your eighteenth birthday, you will be informed that your father died in prison.”
Being sent to Hell’s Gate is a death sentence. If you ever wind up in that remote part of Siberia, you never come back.
Drako’s large hand covers the top of my head. “Do you think you can keep up the pretense until that time?”
I nod.
“What about Aleksei?” he asks.
I nod again.
“You are no longer a child, Aleksander. I’m sorry that circumstances have stripped you of those years, but the second you pulled the trigger, you became a man. It’s up to you to decide what kind of man that will be. Your burden now will be to carry the adult responsibilities of your family. Your brother is not strong like you. He cannot do it. So, I need to know, are you prepared to do what needs to be done?”
It’s not like I have any other choice. “Yes.”
“Good.” He gently tousles my hair, the gesture both parental and caring, two things I never got from my father. “I looked into the matter you asked me about.”
I lift eternally hopeful eyes up at him. “You found her?” I didn’t expect him to have news so soon, but like the Society, the bratva has eyes and ears everywhere.
“I will let Pyotr tell you. This type of news should come from a friend.”
With those parting, enigmatic words, Drako takes his leave and strolls back up the hill toward the house.
Pyotr’s grip tightens on the back of my neck, and he pulls me to him, touching our foreheads together. “I don’t want to tell you. Not now. You’ve been through too much. Please, Aleks, don’t make me tell you.”
I’ve never seen Pyotr scared before, and it freaks me out. “Do you know where she is? I need to see her,” I implore him.
Life has proven how fleeting it can be, and I don’t want to waste another minute standing on the sidelines, waiting for my chance.
A tremble goes through him, but I feel it as if it came from me. “You can’t, Aleks.”
“What? Why?”
The air surrounding us suddenly turns heavy and hushed, like it’s carrying a secret it knows will destroy me.
Pyotr’s eyelids slam shut, like he can’t look at me when he says it. His lips part and then press closed, the words backing up behind his refusal to say them, building pressure, higher and higher until…
“Because Aoife is dead.”
I jerk away from him, a roar of disbelief and denial blocking out everything but the sound of my own shattering heart. “That’s not possible.”
“She was in Ireland. There was an accident. A drunk driver plowed into their car.”
I can’t breathe.I can’t fucking breathe.
“Aleks, there’s something else. It’s about Dierdre. It’s been kept out of the papers, but Dad found out?—”
I clap my hands over my ears and block him out. If I can’t hear it, it won’t be true.
But I do. I hear every horrid detail of what he says. Why didn’t Tristan say anything last night? Why was he acting sonormal?
“I’m so fucking sorry, Aleks.”
