Gilded Tears: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 2) by Nicole Fox (novels to read for beginners txt) 📗

That she just happens to be the only one here right now with any semblance of answers.

But she’s in my way and I’m unable to keep my fury from unfurling.

“Where is she going?” I demand.

She blinks at me. Either too stupid or too fearless to pay much attention to my tone.

“Somewhere else.”

My hands clench into fists. Even that tiny action sends pain rushing up and down my arms. I have a high threshold for physical pain, though.

It’s the emotional shit I could never deal with.

But I don’t have a choice anymore. Pain of all kinds is here to stay.

Matter of fact, pain is all I have left.

I shove past the woman and head out of the house. I’ve just limped through the door when I hear her call my name.

“Artem!”

Despite myself, I freeze.

“For what it’s worth… I think leaving was incredibly hard on her,” she tells me. Her tone is sorrowful, sympathetic.

But I am too black with loss to accept it.

I spit on the ground and keep stomping away.

Aracelia doesn’t pursue me. But when I glance back twenty minutes later, just before I round the hill and her hovel disappears from sight, she’s still there. Still standing in the lit rectangle of her back door. Watching me go.

I spit once more and keep walking into the mountains.

I must’ve left sometime around midnight, if I had to guess. And yet the sun is high overhead by the time I reach the top of the mountain trail.

My bandages are red at the edges with blood. Everything hurts. More pain than I’ve ever experienced at once.

The cabin comes into view. It looks the same way it always has. Quiet. Peaceful.

It’s painful to even glance at it.

Too many memories of happy days with Esme, waiting to taunt me like ghosts.

I don’t go inside. I’m not ready for that. There are things that need to be dealt with first.

I only stop at the shed, long enough to pull out a shovel.

Then I keep going, delving into the woods with single-minded purpose. One bloody, painful step at a time.

The smell hits me before I reach the clearing. It turns my stomach and I have to slow my pace just a little. The pungent odor smells distractingly like rotting meat.

I feel a crackle of pain as I realize that that’s exactly what Cillian is now. Nothing more than a heap of rotting meat.

When I turn the corner, that’s what I’m going to see.

Just a few more steps.

Just one more.

Then I break through the brush and prepare myself to look upon the body of my best friend, who died trying to save me.

It’s not there.

I do a double-take. I must be dreaming, hallucinating. Maybe my injuries have wrecked my brain.

I stomp around the edge of the clearing, looking for signs. When I reach the spot where he fell after Budimir shot him, I see the blood on the ground. But no body to be found.

Wincing in agony, I sink to one knee and look closer.

The blood is mostly mud now. Caked into the dirt and darkened by the days and nights since everything happened here.

This close, I can see that there’s a faint trail leading off into the brush. Like something heavy was dragged from this spot and away.

The shovel falls from my hand.

Did Cillian escape?

Or did Budimir drag him off and leave me to die alone?

I close my eyes and sigh.

“Cillian,” I whisper to nobody at all.

I wish I believed in heaven or hell. I wish I could close my eyes and picture him free of pain. Reunited with his love.

But I don’t. There is nothing after death. Just darkness.

So, wherever my best friend is, he’s either Budimir’s newest pincushion, or he’s worm food. I’m not sure which fate is worse.

“Thank you, brother,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. You put your faith in me and I let you down. I should have been a better don. A better friend.”

It’s killing me inside that I don’t even have anything to remember him by.

I can’t live with that. I need something. Call me stupid or sentimental, I don’t care. I just can’t let him disappear into the ether.

I look around me and see a huge mound of rocks off to one side. I rise to my feet and limp over there.

And then I start to work.

I find a nice spot underneath the largest tree I can find. I shuffle back and forth from the rock pile to the spot I’ve chosen. One by one, I pile the stones up.

It’s slow-going, and hard. But I welcome the pain that claws at my body. It feels like penance. Like I owe this much to Cillian.

I work until the sun it burning hot in the sky. Sweat drips down my face, pools in my bandages, and soaks through my clothes. But I don’t allow myself a chance to rest. Not until it’s done.

With every stone added to the construction, I keep seeing another mistake. Another way I let down my father, my best friend, the men in my command.

What makes it worse is that I’ve done all this before. I had been so blinded by grief over Marisha that I missed all the ways in which Budimir was undermining my father and plotting his death.

One mistake leading to the next.

And now years later, it appears that I’ve learned absolutely fucking nothing. I’ve been so consumed with Esme that I had ignored my duty to the Bratva.

I hid up in the mountains while Budimir hunted us.

And now, Cillian is dead because I ignored my instincts.

Not again. I will not let it happen again.

Eventually, I get the rocks piled up into a stable pyramid of smooth white mountain granite. Then, I fashion a small cross from some thick branches, lash it together with strips of bark, and wiggle it between the stones.

When I’m finished, I step back to evaluate my handiwork.

It’s a pitiful tribute to the memory of a good man. A few twigs and some pebbles in this fucking shithole of a