Inked Athena (Litvinov Bratva Book 2)

Whoever said misery loves company doesn’t know a fucking thing.

I’ve always preferred getting shitfaced on my own. There’s no need for anyone to see me miserable and self-destructive. No need for anyone to judge as I sit in the library and pour myself another glass of scotch, all alone in this empty, godforsaken castle.

Every time I blink, I see Myles’s face floating in front of me. Or Nova’s.

I can’t decide which one makes me feel worse.

Rather than blotting out the unwelcome thoughts, the first few drinks only made their faces clearer. It stabbed a hole in my cold façade and exposed the regret curdling just beneath the surface.

The next drink is supposed to drown it out altogether. My hands shake as I pour. Surely this’ll do it. This’ll be the one that fixes me.

But when I drain the last drops and still feel every bit as shitty as when I started, I abandon my glass and grip the crystal decanter by the throat.

If Leonid could see me now, he’d laugh in my face. He’d call me a sorry excuse for a pakhan. A real leader doesn’t hesitate between duty and friendship. A real leader doesn’t lie awake wondering if protecting his empire is worth losing the only two people who’ve ever truly been loyal to him. How could I let something as insignificant as my conscience derail the justified sentence I passed down on Myles?

This is why you don’t make business personal, Leonid would say. This is why shit like “best friends” and “girlfriends” isn’t meant for men like us. They don’t fit.

“Fuck off,” I mutter back.

So much for being alone. Even my demons won’t allow me a moment of drunken peace.

But if I’m hearing voices, I might as well talk back.

The creak of the door has me gripping the crystal decanter a little tighter. I twist around in my seat as the silhouette approaching grows clearer.

“I thought I told you to leave,” I slur.

“Jesus, Sam.” Myles’s voice is pitched with concern. Ironic, considering it ought to be laced with anger. “How much have you had to drink?”

I take an extra-long chug. “S’not your fuckin’ business anymore.”

Myles steps into the dappled moonlight and all the phantoms haunting me race for cover. “We need to talk.”

I scoff and turn away. “You were supposed to say that before you went behind my back.” I attempt a careless laugh but, despite all that scotch I’ve downed, my throat is dry. It comes out like a hyena’s cough instead.

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re a traitor,” I growl. “Since we’re stating the obvious, let’s start there.”

In his reflection in the dark window, Myles’s chin drops. “I know. I did betray you, and… Fuck, Sam, you have no idea how sorry I am.”

A crack of thunder peals across the sky beyond the window. The room is darker than it was a few minutes ago, the silver moonlight devoured by the clustering storm clouds. These damn things keep coming in, every evening without fail. Like nature intends to match my mood.

All this bullshit would be so much easier if Myles was defiant. His repentance makes everything more difficult.

I turn to face him. “It’s too late.”

Myles lifts his eyes to me. “It’s not. Not if you don’t want it to be. I’ve been with you from the very beginning, brother⁠—”

“Stop calling me that.” My grasp on the decanter tightens. I can practically sense the glass screaming beneath my fingertips.

“I am your brother, whether you like it or not,” he insists. “A truer brother than Ilya ever was—and you know what that means in our world. Blood might be blood, but loyalty…” He lets the words hang unfinished. “You know that as much as I do. I would take a bullet for you, Samuil.”

The scotch wants me to deny it. So do my demons. So does my father’s voice in my head—the same voice that taught me betrayal and family were synonymous. The same voice that showed me videos of my mother choosing drugs over her son.

But goddammit, Myles is right.

I give him the smallest of nods. “I know.”

“Then you know that I would do just as much for Nova and your baby. I would sacrifice myself for them in a heartbeat.”

My jaw tightens. I have to look away from him. Leonid would curse me for being weak—but then, he’s never had a friend he trusted. One who would jump in front of a bullet for him.

“You say that,” I snarl, “but you’re the one who put her in a situation that might make your sacrifice necessary. Every call she made, every connection reopened—it’s like painting a target on her back. On my child’s back. Ilya’s watching. He’s always fucking watching.”

“I did, and I know,” Myles says. “But it wasn’t intentional, Sam. I was stupid and shortsighted and careless—but I wasn’t malicious.”

“This doesn’t change anything. You have to go.”

“I made a mistake⁠—”

“A mistake that has put my family in danger!” The word “family” catches in my throat—so foreign until Nova, until our child.

Now, it’s everything.

Family. My bellow echoes against the stone walls. Even the thunder seems to go quiet at the sound of it, as if the storm itself recognizes the weight of what I could lose.

Neither of us says anything. The storm churns outside, the sky blacker than black.

“I thought I was part of your family,” Myles says softly, just as the rain starts to fall.

“You are— You were,” I correct. The alcohol is making me sluggish, slow, stupid.

“Doesn’t that entitle me to a second chance?” Myles takes a tentative step forward. “I’ll beg you if that’s what it takes, brother. This is the only life I’ve ever known. My place is with you, by your side. I didn’t want to plead my case earlier in front of Nova. I didn’t want to question your decision in front of her. But now… I can’t leave without⁠—”

“If you don’t leave willingly,” I interrupt, “I will drag you out myself.”

His fist tightens by his side. “You’re a stubborn ass, Samuil Litvinov.”

“No, I’m your pakhan.”

“Not anymore.” There’s steel in Myles’s tone that matches mine now. “That’s your father talking—the same man who taught you power matters more than people. The same lesson you swore you’d never pass on to your own child.” He pauses for breath, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. “Do you want to know why I did it?”

Getting to my feet, I wave the decanter in his face like it’s a weapon. “I don’t fucking care why you did it.”

“Well, you’re going to listen anyway, you drunk son of a bitch. It’s because you left Nova here like she was a damn dog locked in a crate. You gave her nothing to rely on, no one to turn to. She was lonely. She fucking missed you. I tried to help, believe me.” He shakes his head in bitter frustration. “Hell, that fucking boat sitting on the lake right now is floating because I fucking repaired it. But she didn’t want me. She wanted you.”

I hoped the scotch would make seeing reason a little more difficult. Apparently not, because every one of Myles’s words is another cold bucket of water in my face.

More unwanted images flash through my mind: Nova alone in our bed, Nova walking the grounds with no one to talk to, Nova staring at her phone like it’s a lifeline I’ve cut.

The scotch burns in my gut. It no longer numbs—it nauseates.

“Get out of my sight, man.” I shudder at the sight of the library shelves looming over me. They feel like prison bars.

I need out of this fucking place.

I shove to my feet and stride for the door. But Myles refuses to move out of the way. Instead, he blocks my path, raising his voice over the crash of rain lashing against the window in violent sheets.

“You want me to go?” Myles asks. “I will. But first, you’ll listen. Nova doesn’t need a pakhan—she needs a fucking partner. She needs someone she can talk to. And since I couldn’t make you do the decent thing, yeah, I let her have some contact with her grandmother and her best friend. It was the right choice. It was the humane choice.”

I slam the decanter down. The crystal doesn’t shatter, but something inside me does. The careful walls I’ve built, the control I’ve maintained—it splinters like the sound I wanted to hear.

“Enough.”

“No, not enough!” Myles raises his voice for the first time in as long as I can remember. “Not even fucking close to enough! You say you want to be better than your father. You say you want to be different from him. But instead of learning from his mistakes, you’re intent on repeating them.”

My mouth hangs open, slack and stupid. I see myself at twelve, watching another security video of my mother’s betrayal, my father’s voice behind me. This is why we can’t trust anyone, son.

“You fucking dare⁠—”

“Why not?” Myles shrugs carelessly despite the fire blazing in his hooded eyes. “What have I got left to lose?”

“Your tongue, for one,” I warn. “Because I’m about to cut it out myself.”

He just shrugs again. “Won’t stop anything I’ve said from being true. You know why I’m telling you all this? Because I’m your best friend. Because I know you well enough, and I care enough, to tell you the truth. No one else does. No one else will. And if you keep pushing away everyone who actually gives a damn about you, you’ll end up exactly where your father did—powerful, feared, and completely fucking alone.”

Damn him. Damn him to hell.

I knock Myles aside with a brutal shoulder check, but instead of charging toward the door that opens into the guts of the castle, I opt for the French doors that lead outside. When I throw them open, the wind takes over and sends them clattering against the wall. Some of the glass panes shatter. I don’t stop to deal with the mess.

I just keep moving. I have to move. If I stay still, the demons catch me—and if the demons catch me, the demons win.

So fuck it. One step after the next. Out of the office and out into the night, the brutal night, the raging, furious night, with wind like whips and rain like knives and lightning like God’s disappointment.

But my demons keep coming. Funny how they take the shape of my best friend.

“Sam!” I hear Myles call out after me. “Samuil!”

I ignore him. I keep striding away from the light and deeper into the wild dark until Myles’s voice and my father’s voice and the thoughts swirling around in my head all fade away in the howling of the wind.

I don’t want to think anymore.

I don’t want to fucking think anymore.

I draw in a sharp breath as ice swallows my right leg. I look down to see my ankle disappearing into murky water that thrashes and moans like it wants to claim me.

I’ve walked myself right into the loch.

The surface of the water churns and sloshes, splashing farther and farther up toward my waist. I take one more step. Then another. The water is up to my hips. If I keep wading in, the currents will drag me under.

Then something stirs in the water up ahead.

I squint into the rain as a shape moves back and forth, a great, hulking beast, groaning softly, wailing louder and louder. Lightning cracks, bursting through the darkness, and I see it for what it is.

The boat.

Nova’s boat.

The one that Myles repaired, because I wasn’t around to help.

Without a second thought, I push onward into the lake until I reach it. I throw myself over the side and grab the only oar that I can find. The wind must have pitched the other one into the water.

It doesn’t matter. I’m going nowhere in particular.

I have no destination, no goal in mind as I paddle. I just want to get away from here—from the taint of regret that’s clawing deeper and deeper into the gaping void in my chest. Away from the reminders of my own failings. Away from all the disappointment I know is waiting for me back at the castle.

The wind continues to keen. Rain slashes against my back. Thunder and lightning rip across the sky, illuminating the loch with eerie, silver light.

Through it all, I keep paddling.

I make it to the middle of the loch before wind like a freight train pitches the boat sideways and tosses me off-balance.

The oar slips through my fingers, cracks in half, and disappears into the black water.

Just like that, I’m trapped. Stuck hundreds of yards from shore with no way out of this loch or this storm.

Nova would tell me to fight. Our child would beg me to fight. But the black water calls like absolution—an easy way to ensure I never become my father, never hurt them the way he hurt everyone who loved him.

I could dive in if I chose. That would fix it. That would save me.

But I don’t deserve such a simple, painless ending.

Maybe this is what I deserve.

The cold. The rain. The loneliness.

So I close my eyes and take it.