Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva #3)

I swallow past the sudden and unexpected lump in my throat. “Something bad.”

He nods slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Which thing?”

He tilts his head to the side and fixes me with an understanding look. “Judging by your questions, I’d say you know that already, Milaya.”

I hesitate. I could lie and deny that Dante told me anything about their father and Sergio. But Mateo has me skewered as it is. He knows I know. So I just whisper, “Yeah.” It’s stupid to let a sympathetic note creep into my voice. Why do I care? The less of these Biancis, the better—right?

Shoot, I don’t even know anymore.

“I suspect I’m not the only one who needs a drink now, am I?” Mateo asks me softly.

I consider what he’s asking for a second—the question beneath the question. He’s standing a dozen yards away from me, but I can already feel that familiar, dreaded pull in my gut, like a hook embedded in me drawing me towards him inexorably. Reeling me in towards … something. Something regrettable. Something I should fight.

In the end, though, all I can say is what that dreaded pulling feeling wants me to say. “I could use a drink, maybe.”

Mateo gestures behind me. “Perhaps we can go sit outside and share a drink together then. After you, Milaya.”

* * *

The late night air is hazy and thick. Fireflies drift past my head as we sit on the steps of a gazebo nestled on the back lawn.

“It’s beautiful out here,” I murmur.

“I suppose it is,” Mateo replies with the voice of someone who has never stopped to consider that question before.

“Do you spend a lot of time out here?”

“No. Never.”

“Why not? Might not have such a sourpuss face all the time if you did.”

Mateo laughs. It’s a strange sound coming from such a massive, brooding man like him, but not an unwelcome one. I feel a weird blush of pride at that for some reason I don’t want to examine any closer. “I might not,” he agrees. “But my work demands most of my time.”

“Wouldn’t kill you to take a break and go smell the roses every once in a while, you know.”

“It wouldn’t kill meimmediately,” he corrects. “But it would kill other men. And it would eventually kill me, too.”

I fix him with a glare. “God, you boys are all the same. Buzzkill Biancis. Bunch of nihilists in ten-thousand-dollar suits.”

He laughs again, louder this time. “Ah shit!” he curses. He’d forgotten a bottle opener, so he’d been fiddling with the cork with a pocketknife, trying to coax it out. But his laughter made him inadvertently push the cork deeper into the bottle. Shrugging, he pokes it all the way through so it floats in the red wine and raises an eyebrow at me.

I shrug back. “No glasses, no bottle opener. Brings me back to high school.”

“To younger and more vulnerable days, then,” Mateo says, raising the bottle up in a mock toast before knocking back a glug and handing it over to me.

“You always have to make things serious,” I sigh. I tilt the bottle to my lips and take a long sip of my own.

“Life is serious.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“It is what it is, Milaya. We don’t choose it.”

I wrinkle my eyebrows. “All those books you read … don’t any of them have happy endings?”

He grins sort of sadly. That also looks weird on him, but he’s more handsome when he smiles than when he’s wearing his ever-present grimace. “Not the kind of books I read, no.”