Page 69 of The Darkness is Calling

“Do you trust me?”

“Not when it comes to Ekaterina. I’m still afraid you’ll hurt her. I saw the bruises she tries to cover during the day with makeup or scarves. You did that, didn’t you?”

My blood freezes at the memory.

“Yes.”

“Fuck,” he hisses, worried, dragging his hands through his hair.

“But I stopped.”

“Obviously,” Yar exclaims, pointing toward the door. “Otherwise, right now they’d be organizing a funeral, not a wedding, and we’d have an actual ghost in the kitchen.”

“There will be no wedding.”

He goes still, his hands still buried in his short hair. I can almost feel the air turn electric and heavy, and no sound exists until he speaks again, nearly frozen. “You’re not serious.”

I blink unfazed. “She won’t do it.”

“Because she won’t want to, or because you won’t let her?”

“Probably both.”

“I think you’re forgetting some very important details, Voron,” he says firmly, reminding me with my nickname of what my role is. “A Pakhan’s promise is everything to him, and you intend to break something that sacred. The Bratva will not forgive you. Father will not forgive you.”

“But will you forgive me?”

My question catches him by surprise.

I don’t think he ever expected me to care what he thinks. But to be honest, until recently, I cared about no one and nothing. They have always been by my side, but Ekaterina has made me understand that not all people are merely physical presences I can do without at any moment.

Some people, my brothers, to be precise, matter to me.

Just as she does.

“Is that what you want? My blessing?”

“Your support.”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

We look at one another in a way I don’t think we ever have before. Like two brothers who are also human beings, not only bloodthirsty killers born and raised together, knowing their life was to rule an empire side by side and remain a family.

Now we are also people who feel.

Or at least, I am.

Fuck me. Is all her fault.

“It does,” I say shortly, because the message is important enough without me adding emotion to the consonants.

He tips his head back and mutters several curses in Russian, then looks at me with a frown that tells me he is thinking the entire situation through carefully.

“I think we’ll need to strengthen security in the house. And bring more soldiers into the area.”

“Agreed.”

“I can’t believe you’re like this because of a woman.”