Chapter 40: God of Wrath: Chapter 40

Irealize something is wrong the moment I land at the airport.

People often say there’s no such thing as a sixth sense and that having the ability to predict danger is a mere myth invented by superstitious, evil-spirit believers.

However, that sixth sense is what alerted me to something being amiss and enabled me to take countermeasures. That, and my tight grip on critical information and the enemy’s sore, weak spots.

There’s no such thing as a perfect defense. Not even fort-like houses, encrypted security, or armies of guards. The only way to eliminate hazards and protect those who matter is to gather as much intel as possible about the right people.

The people who wouldn’t dare to cross me. Because they’re afraid they have a spy in their ranks who’ll slice their throat before they can reach me.

This is how I’ve managed to effectively protect my family for decades. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve uncovered a plot way before its execution and swiftly put an end to it before it happened.

No one but my senior guards knows about these attempts. Certainly not my wife. As much as she’s integrated into my lifestyle, I don’t want to worry her over pests that I’ve already taken care of.

And because information is essential, I taught my children from a young age to acquire as much intel as possible, not only about their enemies but also their friends, entourage, and guards.

Basically, anyone who crosses their paths.

If they know the people they’re dealing with, they’ll be able to avoid any malicious intent and even destroy the conflict before it arises.

That talent comes naturally to my son. He’s fully aware of everything in his surroundings and goes the extra mile to implement that principle in his everyday life.

Annika might have been sheltered, but she can also get any information she sets out to obtain through her people skills. It’s how she’s managed to survive in our world all this time.

I trust my children’s survival skills, even when I’m not around. I still wish they depended on me for protection, but I knew there would be a day when they’d take their own paths in life.

Despite that trust, I can sense that something has gone awry during the time I was on my way here from the States.

I share a look with my senior guard, Kolya, and he nods, probably getting the same feeling as me.

“Sir.”

I stop at the entrance of the mansion in which my son stays. A younger man, probably a few years younger than Jeremy, greets us at the door. He has a muscular build, light blond hair, small blue eyes, and angular features.

He’s not one of the guards I sent with Jeremy when he first came to this bleak island that shares England’s irritating weather and the English’s bland manners.

There’s no need for questioning, because I know exactly who he is. Kolya and I have been keeping an eye on him ever since Jeremy informed me of his existence.

“Ilya Levitsky,” I say his name with an edge to my calm voice.

His body stiffens in an erect position, probably realizing that all the rumors he’s heard about me are true.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Kolya circles him like a giant cat who’s about to devour a cub and asks him in a rough Russian accent, “Age.”

“Twenty-one, sir.”

“Parents’ occupations.”

“They’re both dead.”

“Place of birth.”

“Saint Petersburg.”

“How did you get onto this island?”

“Scholarship.”

“Why did you join the Serpents?”

“I didn’t want to go back to my previous life in Russia, and I thought if I joined the New York Bratva, then I’d secure my future.”

“Reasons for defecting and choosing Jeremy.”

“He saved my life when he didn’t have to. He also taught me that I can take my fate into my own hands, and if I fail, so be it. I can always try again.”

“Military experience.”

“One year.”

“Too little.” Kolya tsks. “That might as well be considered nothing.”

“I’m open to enrolling again after college.”

“Special Forces?” Kolya asks with a raised brow.

“If that’s what the boss wants.”

“Even if that’s not what he wants, you will go.” I step forward. “You’re supposed to be the first line of defense for my son, and if I can’t trust you to protect him, I can and will eliminate you.”

He swallows, but he doesn’t cut eye contact. “Yes, sir.”

“You seem like a good kid, Ilya, but I’ll watch you until the day you die.” I grab him by the nape and stare straight into his eyes. “If I smell a hint of betrayal, incompetence, or even misjudgment, Kolya and I will see you again under less pleasant circumstances. And mark my words, death will be everything you wish for. Be loyal, and you’ll be compensated. Anything else will be punished.”

“I am loyal, but not to you, sir. My loyalty lies with Jeremy.” He doesn’t miss a beat as he says the words.

“How dare you.” Kolya reaches for him, but I raise a hand, stopping him in his tracks.

After a moment of staring at the kid, I casually release him.

He doesn’t take a step back, doesn’t flinch, or even release a breath of relief.

I still don’t entirely trust this kid, but I like him. He might be able to broaden Jeremy’s tunnel vision.

“Where is he?” I stroll inside with both Ilya and Kolya in tow.

“Control room. Let me take you there.”

“No need. You can stay here with Kolya.” I smile when my guard gives me a ‘really?’ look. “The kid needs to learn some hard facts. Think of him as Yan.”

“Can’t. At least Yan was in Special Forces.”

“Don’t be a snob, Kolya.” I smile to myself and head to the control room on the second story.

I’ve paid Jeremy a few visits through the years he’s been here, mainly because my wife misses him and doesn’t want to bug him about coming home often. For that reason, I learned the ins and outs of this mansion by heart. In fact, I knew everything about this place before Jeremy even set foot here.

After all, I couldn’t send him here without ensuring it was well-secured.

I push the door to the room open and stop at the threshold.

Jeremy sits in front of the countless monitors, alone, elbows on the table, chin leaning on his hand as he watches a sequence in a loop.

On the screen, a girl runs from the property while removing a wig and revealing her hair before she disappears out of the camera’s range.

On and on, the sequence repeats as if it’s a broken record.

I stride to behind Jeremy and cast a glance at what’s in front of him. A half-empty bottle of vodka, his phone flipped upside down on the table, and…a comic book? He never even read those when he was young.

Kids look up to superheroes; he looked up to me.

And clowns. He loved those fuckers for reasons unknown, and since Lia had a slight phobia of them, I often took him out to see those things.

Even from this view, he looks so much like me. My wife often hated that, especially when he was born. She was sad that he didn’t look like her in the slightest, but she eventually came to accept it.

I grab the back of his chair. “Is that the girl who helped that motherfucker Creighton kidnap your sister?”

My son finally notices I’m there, his slightly droopy eyes focused on me, his reaction delayed, probably due to being drunk—or getting there.

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

“Seriously? I take an eight-hour flight to this godforsaken island, and that’s the first thing you ask?”

“I…didn’t mean it like that. I’m surprised is all. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“Last-minute business meeting.”

“Are you sure it’s not so you can turn Creighton’s life into a living hell for daring to be with Anoushka?”

“There’s also that. I like multitasking.” I smile, then narrow my eyes on him. “You’re supposed to be helping me on that mission.”

“Sorry, Dad. I’m not in the mood to make her hate me.”

“Then what are you in the mood for?” I motion at the girl on the screen. “Revenge?”

His eyes, a replica of mine, to my wife’s chagrin, slide to the repeating video. He watches it for a silent beat, takes a sip from the bottle of vodka, then says, “She thought Creighton only wanted to talk to Annika and was completely unaware of the kidnapping plot.”

“Is that so?”

He nods.

“I assume you didn’t need to get the location out of her by torture as I initially thought?”

He shakes his head. “She freely offered it because she felt guilty about how you and Mom must have felt. She also helped Creighton because she felt guilty about how she and everyone else cut Annika off.” A humorless smile paints his lips. “She does a lot of things out of guilt, Cecily.”

“Cecily Knight. An only child. Her parents are Xander and Kimberly Knight. A businessman and a higher-up social worker, respectively. She has a grandfather who’s an ex-minister and an ex-prime minister. Another one is a retired diplomat. Her maternal uncle is taking after his diplomat father and has become an activist. She’s close with all of the above and belongs to the posh, rich British people’s inner circle, thanks to her parents. This means they’re close to many influential figures, including but not exclusive to Creighton’s parents, namely his fucker of a father.”

My son stares at me for a silent beat. “How do you know all that?”

I raise a brow but remain silent.

“I know you can get any information you want, but why did you do a background check on her?”

“She’s friends with Anoushka. I did a background check on all of them, but maybe I need to expand my intel since you’re so awfully interested in her.”

“There’s no need.” He takes another swig of his drink and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I let her go.”

“You sure? The repeating footage you’ve been watching for who knows how long suggests otherwise.”

He clicks a few buttons, letting the live feed of the cameras fill the screen, and then he goes silent.

Typical Jeremy.

Sometimes, I hate how much he’s like me. Unless we’re poked and provoked, we’ll never act. Unless we’re pushed to the limit, we’ll never talk. Usually, I’d give him time to recuperate on his own since that’s what I would need.

However, Jeremy isn’t on his own. Unlike my useless father, he has me, and I can tell when my son needs a father.

After a few moments of silence, I pull up a chair and sit beside him. “What’s going on?”

He throws a dismissive hand in the air. “Nothing you need to worry about. I just need tonight, and I’ll pull myself together and get on with it.”

“Bullshit.” I tap my finger in front of him. “Not everything can be brushed over and forgotten. Some things rot in your mind with every intention of destroying you from the inside out unless you do something about it.”

He pauses drinking and tilts his head in my direction. He looks at me like I’m still his hero. No. His father. And I couldn’t be more grateful.

“And…how do I do that?”

“It depends heavily on the situation. First, tell me about this Cecily. Has she been in your path since everything that happened with Annika and Creighton?”

“No. She was mine way before.”

Interesting.

He never mentioned her and probably didn’t tell Annika or my wife about her either. And I would’ve known, because our daughter is the exact opposite of her brother. While he keeps everything buried, she lets it all out.

“And?” I push him a bit further. “Why did you let her go?”

Another sip of vodka, and another.

And another.

“She liked another guy, but I unapologetically stole her from him. I thought I could have her fully. That with time, she’d forget about him.” His fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle. “I thought wrong.”

“Did you look at it from all angles before you came to that conclusion?”

“That footage.” He points at the screen. “That was during the initiation that she took part in just to spy for him. And he happens to be the leader of a rival group. How do I know she hasn’t been a spy for him ever since?”

“I don’t think she’s capable of that.”

“I didn’t think so either, Dad, but the quiet ones are the most conniving, after all.”

“She volunteers and believes in everything righteous. Not to mention that she acts like a mother figure in Annika’s little group. A person like that is physically unable to commit any harm unless backed into a corner. Did back her into a corner?”

He shakes his head.

“Then how can you be so sure of your allegations?”

“She told me herself that she spied for him. All this time, she was stabbing me in the back while asking for my trust.”

“Did that confession happen under duress?”

“No.”

“Then that should be a good sign.”

“Or an attempt to deceive me further.”

“Jeremy.” I grab him by the shoulder, forcing the chair to swivel so that he’s facing me. “Son. You and I have a pesky problem called lack of trust. We always think people are either out to get us or will eventually do so, and while that’s a good trait to survive and rule the Bratva, it’s bothersome in our personal lives. A long time ago, I didn’t trust your mother either, and as a response, she pulled away from me until I almost lost her. So if this Cecily means to you even a sliver of what your mother means to me, don’t repeat my mistake.”

“How can I trust her when I know that she has another man in her heart? No matter what I do, I’ll always be her second choice.”

The pain that drips from his voice does unpleasant things to me. Jeremy isn’t only my son, my blood, and my pride. He’s a part of me. He’s the chance I had to prove that I’m nothing like my father. So to see him in this much anguish makes me wish I could slaughter his demons for him.

But I can’t and I won’t.

“I don’t have the answer to that.

do. Any external intervention will only provide a temporary reprieve. If you don’t look inward, you won’t be able to loosen the knot.”

He slides his hand through his hair. “I don’t want to lose her, but right now, I can’t trust her either.”

“Then take your time. Not too much, though, or else she might slip between your fingers. Unless that’s what you want?”

“That’s not what I want.” He slides his hand over the comic book. “At first, she reminded me of Mom. She had these moments when she’d grow lethargic and escape into her mind, eventually turning into a ghost. I couldn’t help Mom when she was in that state, but I wanted to help Cecily. Now that I think about it, that was the first time I’ve taken so much interest in someone who isn’t family. I just wanted to make it better and own her at the same time. That plan backfired, but I was still able to take care of the reason for those blackouts. With time, it became so much more. I thought I was saving her, but it turns out, she was saving me from my own unresolved issues.”

I listen to every word carefully, watch every expression and every glide of his fingers on the comic book.

Despite becoming the perfect, responsible adult, I’m not foolish enough to think Jeremy has erased everything that happened while he was growing up. He wasn’t young enough to be able to forget all about his ‘Ghost Mommy.’

And I know that memories of that version of his mother were still fresh in his head when he was seven, eight, and nine, because he sometimes asked me if ‘Ghost Mommy’ was ever coming back.

However, he hasn’t mentioned it since Lia found balance again, and this is actually the first time he’s voluntarily spoken about it. “Saved you how?” I ask in a low voice to keep him talking.

“Growing up, I resented Mom a little for erasing you and me. For not recognizing us for days on end. For being so out of it that I often found her spasming in her sleep. For looking at us yet not seeing us.”

“Jeremy. Your mother has mental issues…”

“I know, but I still hated her sometimes. You didn’t?”

“I wanted to shake the fuck out of her, and she hates me sometimes, too, but that’s normal. We can’t be full of love and understanding all our lives.”

“Cecily told me that. She also told me not to blame Mom, because if she’d had the choice, she wouldn’t have become a ghost. And she loved us enough to fight her demons and return to us.”

I think I like this girl.

“Is that why you’ve been calling your mother so often lately?”

He nods.

“I learned to let go. To see Mom as the best version of herself instead of that horrible version from when I was a kid.”

I pat his shoulder twice before releasing him. “I’m proud of you, son.”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like myself right now. I should be trying to get over her, but here I am being her advocate and thinking of ways to get her back.”

“If you want her back, do it. Or else you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“What if it backfires again?”

“Talk to her and listen.

listen, Jeremy. Not with your mind, but with your heart and your soul. Listen to her with parts of you that she helped heal. And if you still can’t trust her, so be it.”

He starts to take a sip of the vodka, then decides against it and leaves the bottle on the table. “I’ll do it when I’m sober.”

“I agree. And, Jeremy?”

“Yes?”

“The talk we just had about your mother will remain our secret. She can’t under any circumstances find out about it or she’ll feel horrible, and we don’t want that.”

“I wasn’t going to tell her.”

“Good.”

“Thank you, Dad.”

“What for?”

“Listening to me just now, but also for being there for both me and Mom all those years ago. Thank you for not giving up on her or me, no matter how hard it got.”

I smile. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Malysh.”

This time, I’m the one who takes a sip from his bottle of vodka, and then I point it at him. “Once you get your girl, bring her home to meet us. Your mother will love her.”

“That is, if she wants to be with me.”

“There’s an easy solution for that, son.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t give up until she does. That’s what I did with your mother.”

Speaking of my beautiful wife, I better finish my business in this godforsaken country so I can get back to her side.

Being physically away from Lia is no different than breathing through a straw and biding my time for the moment I’ll have her in my arms again.

Jeremy thanked me for not giving up on her, but I’m the one who’s thankful that she never gave up on me either.

My son and daughter were always meant to leave, but Lia is the only constant in my life.

My wife.

My obsession.

Mine.