Refusals
She turned to face him from Kiefer’s knee and shook her head, “no.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want to run a family who didn’t give a fuck about me for the last twenty–nine years, Nazar.” She saw him visibly flinch as she addressed him by his first name. Was he expecting her to call him Dad? Fuck that.
“I understand you are angry.”
“I understand you are rumored to be this ruthless man who runs his businesses with an iron fist, but your family is a fucking nightmare and the last thing I want is to be dragged into it with my family. I want you to give my partners the information you have on your brother so they can bring Laoise back and then we, our family, will eliminate the threat to me. When this is managed, you can return to Russia or wherever it is you call home, but I want no part of it.”
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“Why would I want to be part of a family of people who didn’t
want me?”
“I wanted you. From the minute I knew your mother was pregnant with you, I wanted you. I never ever, didn’t want you.
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Do you understand the desperation it took me to be forced to keep you hidden from the rest of the world?”
2/9
She took a breath, “do you know what? Yes. I know the desperation it takes to keep a child hidden from the rest of the world. Seven years ago, the bitch your stupid uncle kidnapped, shoved me down a flight of stairs and kicked my son’s twin out of my abdomen.” She watched the other man’s eyes widen. “Do you know what I did? I protected my other son. I ran. I took him and I ran, and I promise you, I have far less resources than you. For six years I did everything to keep him safe. I changed my name, my identity, his identity. We moved to a different country. I cut off everyone I ever knew. I worked remotely. I kept him safe. I was a twenty–two–year–old woman with minimal resources, and I was running from the Iron Force Gang. You were thirty–six, thirty–seven when your brother was killed? You weren’t a kid who didn’t know how to navigate the world of a mafia. You could have found a way to keep me safe far better than the American foster system.”
“I had you placed in good homes.”
“My home should have been with my father!” she screamed at him as she hopped away from Kiefer and started pacing. “I should have been with my family, being kept safe and being taught how to be as tough and ruthless as my father is supposed to be. Instead, I fended for myself. It’s a good damn thing I’m bloody brilliant otherwise I would have floundered in public. school. My father is a billionaire, and I was going to public school with the other foster kids because you were scared.”
“I already lost one child! I didn’t want to lose you too.”
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3/9
“Yet, you did.” She snorted angrily. “I might have your DNA, but I am not your daughter.”
“I’m not willing to give up.” Nazar said bluntly.
“Good.” She retorted with a glare. “My father, the man who raised me the first six years of my life, taught me nothing in this life is ever easy. If you want to be in my life, then work for the right to be here.”
“Okay.” He nodded eagerly. “Whatever it takes, I will do the work.”
“Good. You can begin by taking your prejudices about my relationship with my partners and shoving it up your ass. As for my son, you don’t get access to him. I will not introduce him to you until I feel you are not a threat to him or his wellbeing. Unlike you, I have no problem looking anyone in the eye and telling them my child is off–limits.”
He inhaled sharply and a small smile pulled his lips, “you’re a force.”
“Damn right.”
Tadgh reached out and pulled her to him, “come here. You’re a weird shade of red. You need to calm down.”
She made a face but didn’t fight him as she sat with him.
“Breath, m’fhiorghrá, “he rubbed her back. “You’re getting very
Refusals worked up.”
“I’m furious.
“It was not my intent to make you angry,” Nazar spoke softly from his perch on the edge of the sofa. “I am sorry.”
4/9
“I don’t know why I’m so angry,” she rubbed her chest. “I,” she looked away with tears flooding her eyes and she was annoyed at their presence. Finally, she snapped, “you should have fought more for me! I’m angry because you should have fought for me. and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have spent so many nights. crying myself to sleep as a little girl wondering why nobody loved me anymore.” She watched through blurred eyes as Nazar nodded sadly at her words. “You left me all alone!”
“I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best to keep you alive.” Nazar’s own eyes were watering. “I will make it up to you. I’ll make it up to you and your son. I promise you this.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“No. I have one child, and she is enough. I never needed.
another.”
She pursed her lips and angrily wiped her tears off her face, “can we change the subject? I feel like I keep coming back to being hurt and I’m circling a drain of emotions.”
“Of course. What would you like to discuss?”
“How we go about killing Yegor Sokolov because he took the
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5/9
only father I ever knew, away from me and I want his head on a platter.” She said bluntly, “also he and his little fuckers killed several of our men and wounded others with the intent to take me. I want time with him.”
Nazar looked to Lorcan who smirked. “You weren’t kidding.”
“I told you, Nazar. She is not for the faint of heart.”
Tadgh dug into his pocket beneath Genesis’s lap and pulled his cell phone out. He scrolled it and she groaned as he pulled the video of her annihilating the ballistics dummies. He tossed the phone to Nazar, “hit play.”
“Tadgh!” she complained.
“This was how Gen and I spent a date night recently. She had some anger to get out in relation to my sister and Laoise Poole.”
“Laoise is the one who caused you to miscarriage?”
“Yes, but Aoife was very much involved.”
“And where is she now? This Laoise one you were bringing her here where is Aoife?”
“Dead,” Lorcan shrugged carelessly.
Kiefer gave a rare giggle, “did you hear her parting comment, Dad?”
Lorcan gave him a dirty look. “I am not impressed. My ears
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needed bleaching.”
Nazar frowned, “what happened?”
6/9
“I ordered the execution of both Aoife and my wife Moira for their involvement in Genesis’s torture seven years ago. I figured for the amount of torture they put on Genesis, they deserved a bit of their own before their deaths. I left them with a single gun and bullet and told them only one could leave the room alive. They’ve always been remarkably close as mother and daughter. In the end, Aoife shot her mother in the head. When Aoife was leaving the cell, she offered sexual services to the team and then when they were preparing to do her execution, they let her know she was being punished for hurting the woman I consider my partner.”
Kiefer gave another laugh, and the sound was contagious as Genesis giggled. Kiefer told Nazar, “Aoife asked why Dad didn’t want to fuck her instead of Gen because she would have gone for
it.”
“She was your daughter!” Nazar protested.
“Not biologically,” Genesis teased Lorcan.
“Daughter or not, I’d chop my own dick off before letting it near her or her mother.”
“She could have called you Daddy and
she made wide eyes
at Lorcan who gave a furious growl at her words. She blinked at the man who crooked his finger at her and Tadgh gave her a shove off his lap. “Tadgh,” she looked at him curiously.
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“Don’t look at me. I never once took a punishment for Kiefer, and he is my twin. I love you but you just poked the beast.”
7/9
“The beast poked me enough last night,” she grumbled as she rounded the desk and sat on Lorcan’s lap. He gripped her chin, and she blinked. “Sorry. Too far?”
“Much too far.” He kissed her mouth and whether he’d forgotten or simply didn’t care Nazar was in the room nobody would know. “Only one girl calls me Daddy.”
“Yes sir,” she pursed her lips, licking the taste of him onto her tongue. She felt ornery and she knew she shouldn’t be taking it out on him but figured his shoulders could take it.
“You’re feeling like a brat.”
“I am.”
“Tadgh and Jerren will take you shooting this afternoon. Get it out of your system.”
“Yes sir.”
“This is a very strange dynamic,” Nazar commented quietly but as Genesis looked up, he looked to the phone in his hand and hit play, avoiding her glare. He watched as Genesis in the video beat the dummies and then finished them off with a gun. He looked up with a smug grin on his face, “can I say how much you look like Mak in this? He was exceptionally gifted with weapons and a pistol. He liked being up close and personal when taking care.
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of business.”
“Really?” she grinned suddenly.
8/9
“Yes. He was particularly fierce with this wooden baton he liked to carry with him everywhere. It looked like a Billy club. It was heavy as sin. It was wood wrapped around a thick chunk of metal. I remember someone asked him once why it was so heavy, and he said it was filled with the souls of the people who fucked with him. He made it himself, the club, that is. He’d beat. someone like this,” he waved the phone, “and then finish them with a bullet. If I was a superstitious man, I’d almost think you channelled him here.”
The four people in the room looked around and Tadgh leaned forward, “is it possible?”
“No!” she argued with Tadgh. “It’s just a coincidence.”
“But you picked the weapons on the table. I set them out, but you chose the ones you wanted to work with.”
“Egan talks to dead people,” Kiefer told Nazar. “Your brother lives in his dreams with him.”
Nazar made a face and Genesis waited to hear what he was going
to say.
“All of this is a lot for a man to understand,” Nazar spoke finally and then he shook his head. “However, it is not in me to judge. I want only to get to know you better Genesis and if it means to embrace the things I don’t understand then so be it. I know
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you’re hurting, and it is my fault. I want to make amends.”
She gave a single nod, and he spoke again.
9/9
“My first trial at making amends is to tell you, I might know how to locate Yegor and Oleg. I understand you’re damn good with a computer.”
11
“I am.”
“I have Oleg’s personal laptop. I stole it from him in London two months ago. He thought he lost it on the tube, but I have it. You can have it.”
