“My mother was French, a beautiful woman and a kind soul. She came to visit London with a friend and met my father who took her dancing and on picnics to Hyde Park, swept her off her feet I guess you could say. My father had to have her and for a reason she refused to share, she never went home. At the time, she had no idea who he was, not really, but she told me once, when I was too young to understand the significance of what she meant, that he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It wasn’t until after she’d died, when I was fifteen, I truly grasped what she’d said.”
“Do you look like her?” Jolie ran a finger up and down my nose a few times then let her hand slip down to my collarbone where it rested softly.
“A little. Same eye colour. Both Yosef and I got our stronger features from our father.”
“He must have been a handsome man.”
“Wolf in sheep’s clothing, remember? But yes, he was. Had the worst personality in the world, not a good or fair man at all,” I admitted because it was very much the truth.
“And Yosef’s your brother?”
I closed my eyes hearing his name, trying to find the confidence to continue. “Five years older than me, and just like our father, except a little more personable and a lot more stupid.”
“This is tragic, isn’t it, all the things you’re going to tell me?”
“Yes.” Yes, all the things I was going to tell her were tragic, and painful, and not a day went by I didn’t regret the loss of my brother’s life and what mine had become after those catastrophic events.
“Half of me doesn’t want to know because I can see it upsets you, the other half…” she stopped.
I prompted her to go on. “The other half?”
Rolling onto her back, she stared at the ceiling. “It sounds like you need to purge. In order for you to have the things you dream of, you need to confess because this definitely sounds like a confession. It would always be this secret between us if you didn’t tell me. Your pros and cons don’t add up, do they?”
“No, Jolie. Not at all. I’m scared to death of losing you, which you probably think is ridiculous.”
“I think we’ve danced around one another enough. We’re not strangers anymore. At the least, we’re friends looking for more and wanting to take the next step but there’s this rock sitting on your chest and we can’t move until you unburden it. Tell me what you think you need to, all I can do is deal from there, there’s nothing more to it.”
Clearing my throat, I reached for her hand, brushing my thumb across hers. “After my mother died, my father changed and not for the better. He was hungry to take the top spot in the organisation from Lev, Irina’s grandfather, when it was rightfully meant for his best friend.”
“Irina’s father, I presume. That’s not a good friend at all.”
“I had just turned twenty when Yosef started messing around with Irina, I had an acceptance to University for a Poli-Science degree. When I was two years in, they were still together, thought they were in love.”
“Really? I understand the dynamics a little better if she dated your brother first. But I don’t get how you ended up married for fifteen years, under contract at that.”
“I sold my soul, and I hate myself every single day for what I did to save my skin. I killed him, Jolie. Irina was never going to fall in love and have a conventional marriage after what happened.” There, it was out, no taking it back. The one regret I had in my life, the biggest regret, and ripping off the bandage and blurting out the truth had been the right thing to do. Now she knew.
Her gasp sounded loud, the room so quiet in the early morning, and I wasn’t surprised when she shook her hand from mine and carefully climbed from the bed, pulling on her pyjamas.
Sitting up, I leaned against the headboard and scrubbed my hands across my face. I couldn’t believe I’d admitted my sin, my darkest secret, I was unable to look at her face to gauge her reaction, but I saw her hands as they trembled when she pulled on the drawstring of her pants, then stepped backward.
“You killed your brother?” He voice was barely above a whisper, full of disbelief rather than the anger I’d been expecting.
“Yes.”
“And you married his girlfriend,” she stated, as if it was as easy as that.
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s…”
“We were the Russian mob, though I detest the word. Organised crime, nasty shit, what the fuck ever. Yosef was meant to be where I ended up, but he was as greedy as my father and like I said, not as clever. He didn’t cover his tracks too well when he took our father’s money and seconded contracts on our lives. He wanted it all. When he realised he was not the favourite son, not the heir to the business, he betrayed whoever he could.” I took a deep breath. I was all in now, on a roll, and it was only right she knew it all. “My father was playing us both. He let me go off to university thinking everything would be for Yosef because he knew I
