Inked Adonis (Litvinov Bratva Book 1)

Until I was seven, I only had one image of my mother.

I found it wedged in the back of a drawer in my father’s very off-limits office a few years earlier. There was no name or explanation, but I felt it deep in my chest: the connection.

Her hair was dark honey waves—just like mine—and her eyes were silver—just like mine.

I’d always wondered why Ilya got to have a mother while I didn’t. At least I had the photo. One perfect snapshot of the woman who gave me life. She’s smiling and radiating joy, and I could pretend that wherever she was, she was still happy. And that maybe, one day, she’d come back for me.

Then my father found me looking at the picture late one night.

His blue eyes are chipped like ice as he snatches it out of my hands. His nostrils flare and his teeth grind together. For a moment, he looks like Reaper, the most vicious of all of his dogs.

Not coincidentally, also his favorite.

“Where’d you get this?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “She was young here. Sweet. You love her just looking at you, don’t you? I sure did. She looks innocent.”

I nod like the scared little boy I am, too frozen to form actual words.

The next thing I know, he throws the picture frame to the floor. Glass shatters. His eyes bore into mine as he leans close, too close, too fucking close. Cigarettes and vodka wreath his breath as he exhales one word: “Wrong.”

He drags me by the arm down the hall, unlocks the door to his office, and throws me into the leather chair in the corner. I look around the room in awe. I’ve been in here before, but always with the lights off. It’s always been a stolen few seconds—in and out—before I could be caught.

Now, I have time to take it all in.

But all I can focus on is my father as he wrenches open his desk and pulls out a videotape.

“Let this be a lesson to you, boy. Your eyes will always deceive you when it comes to women. She may have looked like an angel, but, well… see for yourself.”

He slides the tape into the VCR. Static at first. Like dirty snow. Then a woman appears on the screen. She’s bone-thin and shaking in the middle of the frame. Her hair hangs in limp, greasy tangles around her hollow face.

But when she lifts her chin, I see the same silver eyes from my photo.

My mother.

“P-please,” she rasps. “Please, Leonid. I’m suffering.”

My father’s voice booms through the speakers. I flinch instinctively, even as the present version of him looms silently at my side. “You brought this on yourself. You’re a slave to your addictions, Natalya.”

“Just one more time,” she begs, her lips cracked and bleeding. “A little more money, and then I’ll… I’ll get clean. I’ll come back.”

“Listen to me.” His voice turns gentle, which somehow makes it worse. “I’ll offer you a choice.”

My mother goes still, aside from the constant twitching of her hands.

“I’ll give you twenty-thousand dollars to use as you see fit⁠—”

“I’ll take it!” she blurts, eyes wild. “I want it.”

“… but you’ll never see your son again.”

My stomach plummets. I don’t have to wonder what her choice was. My entire life, I’ve wondered where my mother was and why she left.

Now, I know.

I don’t feel any better.

“He’s only two, Natalya. He’s a baby,” my father continues. “You’ll never see him again. I won’t allow you to come back.”

Her eyes dart back and forth like a trapped animal. The silver in them has dulled to lifeless gray. Then:

“Okay.”

The screen cuts to black. Silence rings in my ears.

“You wanted to know who your mother was,” Leonid says, sinking to one knee in front of me. “That was who she was, boy. She gave you up for petty cash, and she never once looked back.”

I stare at my hands. If I move, I just might break.

“Look at me, boy.”

I have no choice. I drag my gaze to his. When I open my mouth, raw sobs rip from my throat instead of words.

“Stupid child,” His snarl slices through my grief. “Don’t waste your tears on her. She never shed a single fucking one for you. The next time you cry for your junkie mother, I’ll make you sit through this video again. You hear me?”

I nod obediently.

I have no choice.

Twenty-seven years later, I’m sitting in my office, watching a tape of another woman.

Nova would never believe it, but I hate monitoring her every move. I despise searching for signs of deception and betrayal, always bracing for the next knife in my back.

When I see her cross the screen, pacing from room to room like a caged bird, all I see is my mother.

“How long have you been poring over that footage?”

I didn’t hear Myles come in. I shut the laptop screen as he shifts behind me.

It’s one thing for me to torture myself watching Nova move through her gilded prison. It’s something else for Myles to spy on her, too.

“I’m just being thorough.”

That’s not a lie. I know every fucking second of her waking world. Nova spends most of her days trying to train Rufus, who seems to find joy in doing the exact opposite of what she asks until she laughs and gives him a treat anyway. In between, she ignores the food I have sent to her and cooks for herself, she ignores the maid I pay for and cleans up after herself, and she calls her grandmother and Hope.

For anyone else, watching her would be mind-numbing. But I can’t tear my eyes away, no matter how much I wish I could.

“And?” Myles leans against the glass wall, arms crossed. “What’s the verdict?”

My jaw locks down tight. I should feel victorious about my next words, but something dark and jagged rips through my chest instead. “It’s looking more and more like she’s innocent.”

“Just another pawn.” He sighs like this is all so predictable. “Once again, you’ve got an innocent little bird trapped in the palm of your hand.”

“‘Innocent,’” I murmur. “I don’t think there is such a thing.”

“Maybe not for you or me. But not everyone has a closet full of skeletons.”

My arms cross over my chest, hands curling into fists tight enough to leave half-moons in my palms. “Some people bury them in the backyard. But everyone has them. Just because a person looks innocent doesn’t mean they are.”

My mother’s gaunt face flashes before my eyes. It was impossible, of course, but she seemed to get worse each time my father played me the video.

Each time he sat me in front of the screen, she decayed in my eyes. I started to hate the sight of her. She’d fooled me. The smiling photo of her young and beautiful had been a lie, pure smoke and fucking mirrors, and I’d bought it.

I hated her for leaving me.

I hated her more for making me hope she’d come back.

“Sam…?”

I blink back to the moment with a small shake of my head.

Myles eyes me suspiciously. “Where’d you go?”

“No place good,” I admit, clearing my throat. “I know I said I wanted to get on the ice tonight, but I changed my mind. I’m out.”

He watches me too carefully. “You sure? It’s never a good sign when you bail.”

“I’m fine.”

“Got anything else planned?”

I ignore him because the truth is, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. I stand, grabbing my phone and my coat as I go. “I want an intel report on Hope’s Helpers by the end of the week.”

My hand is on the handle of the door when Myles speaks. His voice is so quiet that I almost miss it. “You know, Nova is not your mother, Sam.”

This is what I get for hiring the best. Myles sees me even when I don’t want him to.

I hesitate for only a second.

Then I walk out as though I didn’t hear a word he said.