Sinful Hearts: Chapter 34

Anger is a powerful thing.

Anger is a drug that’ll restart your heart if it stops. It’ll keep you going when you just want to fall down and die. It’ll sustain you when you’re too broken and fucked up to eat, drink, even sleep—at least, for a time.

Maybe forever. So far I’m on day five of running on pure anger, and I don’t remember the last time I did any of those things, so who the fuck knows.

Since the blast ripped through The Banshee, my world has upended. On the plus side, Callie is healing and Ya-ya was cleared to leave the hospital. She’s doing okay aside from a bunch of painful bruising she took in the explosion. Eilish is on bed rest at Mt. Sinai, but she’s going to be back home at the Kildare brownstone in just a few days.

So, those are all good things.

Everything else is on fire.

It started the night of the bombing, when the Russians went on lockdown. When we got reports the next day of more Reznikov muscle being flown in from Europe and Russia, the defcon meter moved a little higher.

Then, three days ago, a laundromat that’s a front for an underground high-stakes casino run by one of our vassal families went up in flames. The day, Kratos and I blew a hole in the keel of one of the mid-sized yachts Gavan owns and keeps moored at Chelsea Piers Marina, sending it to the bottom of the Hudson.

And this morning, the expected return shot came, in the form of one of Ezio Adamos’ construction projects getting shut down by Homeland Security because of “personnel security concerns”.

Guess which fucking Russian bathhouse the head of the New York division of Homeland Security has a membership to.

At this point we’ve moved past bullshit.

Now, we’re gearing up for all-out with Gavan Tsarenko.

The good thing is, though, when you’re mainlining anger, you don’t have time to be sad. To feel the way your heart is shattering inside of you.

Betrayal stings. Losing the woman you were ready to hand your whole goddamn soul to is a motherfucker.

But anger? Anger’s got your back. Anger will smother the whole fucking thing, until all you can taste is bitter rage, and all you breathe is revenge.

Well, currently, it’s actually more a mix of revenge, gun-oil, and the plasticky scent of body armor fresh out of its packaging.

We’re in the basement of my family’s Central Park South building, which is an all-in-one armory, garage, and fortress: Ares, Kratos, and I, plus Castle, because an attack on Eilish or Neve is an attack on his blood, and now he’s gunning to bleed more of it into the streets.

There’s also about twenty other Drakos men and another fifteen from the Kildare side, all of us strapping on body armor and loading up magazines. In about forty-five minutes, the hounds of war are about to get loosed from their chains.

“Hades.”

I glance up to see Ares giving me a piercing look.

“Yeah?”

“You know you don’t have to do this.”

My jaw tightens.

“I mean…” he clears his throat. “If she’s working with Leo, there’s a chance she’ll when we—”

“I don’t give a fucking shit.”

Without another word, I go back to coldly pushing rounds into the magazine in my hands.

“Guys?”

We all turn at the sound of Callie’s voice to see a fierce, hard look in her eyes.

I sigh. “If you’re here to talk us down from this, you’re wasting your fucking—”

“Oh, you mean all of ?” She snaps, nodding her chin past me. “This insanity?”

Ares looks up, frowning. “

is the game, Callie. When someone comes for you or hurts you, you make hurt. I don’t a fucking war with Gavan. But what I want or don’t want doesn’t matter when he’s the one that just bombed Pearl Harbor. We’re this now.”

He sighs heavily, shoving his fingers through his hair.

“Now, please. Go back upstairs until—”

“I need you to listen to me!!!” she snaps. Callie bristles, stepping closer to the four of us as her throat bobs. “I also need you to come upstairs.”

“

,” I growl.

“Because Vanya Mirzoyan just showed up at our door, and you really need to fucking listen to her.”

I’ve spent the last five days drenched in anger. Bathing in it. Feeding on it, and becoming its closest friend. So when I see that same vicious emotion carved into Vanya’s face when we walk into one of Dimitra’s sitting rooms, it gives me pause.

Ares grimaces. “I owe your father a phone call, I know, apologies. But there’s a bigger issue at—”

“You’re going to war with the Reznikovs,” she says coldly. “Yes, I know.”

I glance at my brothers and Castle, then shrug. “And?”

“And I think you might be going to war with the wrong people.”

“Excuse me?”

“My father is a ,” she spits, her eyes darting from me, to Ares, to Kratos, to Castle, to Callie.

Ares frowns. “Kindly elaborate?”

“

,” she hisses venomously. “My father decided to spend the last three months telling me he was dying of fucking cancer. That is why he wanted to make this deal happen, so that my brother and I would have more money than we’d ever know what to do with once he was gone.”

My jaw grinds. “What do you mean, he’s been he has cancer?”

“Oh, should I be clearer?” she snaps, shaking with anger. “I mean he’s been . I just found out that he’s not sick at all. The bastard’s completely . He’s just been using me as a fucking pawn to push that message.”

My brow furrows. “Jesus. I’m sorry, Vanya.”

“Yeah, well, I’m done. I’m done playing the ditzy mob princess daughter for him. I’m also done being his chess piece. And I’m done pretending that all I want in the world is for some big macho he-man to come marry me and put me in a goddamn ivory tower somewhere. Because all of that is fucking thing from what I actually want!”

She looks away, raking her fingers through her long hair. “I have an undergraduate degree and a master’s degrees in business from goddamn , for fuck’s sake!”

I glance at Ares and then turn back to her.

“What can we do for you, Vanya.”

She smiles bitterly and shakes her head, looking away like she hasn’t heard me.

“My father thinks I went to Harvard to have something pretty to put on my socialite resume, and to maybe meet a husband.” She grimaces, rolling her eyes. “You know what I did instead?”

She glances back at me, smiling triumphantly.

“I minored in linguistics. He doesn’t even know that I speak four languages.”

I clear my throat. “Vanya, I hate to rush this, but—”

“Including….” Her smile widens, darkening. “

. Now, Hades, do you know when it’s nice to be able to speak and understand Russian when no one around you realizes that you can?”

“No,” Ares growls. “But I think I’d very much like to.”

Her eyes narrow to murderous slits. “It comes in handy when your lying of a father has been having regular meetings, both in person and over the phone, with Leo Stavrin.

.”

I stiffen. Ares swears under his breath.

“I wasn’t happy about it. But I was willing to keep his secrets and let him play his little games, because I was focused on my own exit. But that was before he lied to me about , and before people started to get hurt. Before…”

She shakes her head, brushing a tear away from her eyes. Callie moves towards Vanya as if to comfort her. But the Albanian woman shakes her head, holding a hand up.

“No, let me finish. Please.” She swallows, sniffing back the tears. “I don’t know what they’re planning. I honestly . But Leo and my father are working together.

Gavan as well,” she quickly adds. “I mean just Leo, with just my father.”

Her lips twist.

“Oh, and I’d bail on this deal you’re so hellbent on working out with my dad.”

Ares frowns. “Why would we do that?”

Vanya’s lips twist. “There’s a sub-basement under the main office of that parking garage you’ve got your eye on.” She smiles wryly. “The one you think is going to get rezoned.”

My brothers and I glance warily at each other.

“Or, should I say, going to get rezoned,” Vanya continues. “Believe me, he knows all about that.”

I frown. “So why on earth would he be willing to sell it to us for the price on the table?”

“Because it’s not the deal of the century you think it is.” She swallows. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I’ve heard them discussing something that’s in that basement that’ll kill any development deal. He’s selling you a lemon.”

Vanya draws in a shaky breath, smiling sadly at me.

“My father is a good man, Hades. And he has forgotten the bad blood between your family and ours, or between Gavan’s and ours.”

Ares folds his arms over his chest. “I have to ask…”

“Why I’m helping you?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

She sighs heavily. “Because I never asked to be born into this life, and I don’t want it.”

I frown. “Okay, but you telling us all of this is a bit more than giving the middle finger to your old man, Vanya. This could—and probably will—have consequences for you…”

“I was in love with someone.”

Vanya looks away, tears brimming in her fierce eyes.

“Her name was Katja, and she was our household chef. Seven months ago, after hiding it my entire life, I came out to my father.

came out; Katja and I.” Vanya turns to level a broken look at us. “Do you know how he reacted?”

My jaw ticks at the pain and rage in her face.

“He fired her, got her visa revoked, and had her deported back to Ukraine.” Her face shatters. “She was killed by a Russian bomb outside Bakhmut last night. I just found out.”

.

“Vanya,” I growl quietly. “I’m so fucking sorry—”

“

. So, Hades?” Her voice is like broken glass as she looks at me with tear-filled eyes. “There already have been ‘consequences’ for me. It’s his fucking turn now.”

She pulls her phone out, her face a mask of livid anger as she taps on it. Mine buzzes in my pocket.

“Watch that.”

The video she’s just sent me is blurry and shaky. But it’s pretty obvious what it shows: Serj Mirzoyan and Leo fucking Stavrin, along with the late and unlamented Pascha Andreev, talking on what must be Serj’s back garden patio.

“I don’t actually speak Russian myself…”

“Then ,” she hisses thinly. “They’re talking about starting a war between the Reznikovs and the Drakos-Kildare alliance. Serj is giving them a list of potential targets, including a warehouse full of stolen high-end electronics that belongs to your family. Pascha is talking about plans to start using violence on the streets against the children of Kildare and Drakos vassal families, made out to look like Reznikov Bratva aggression.”

My mind flashes to poor Theo Petrakis getting lit on fire with Russian vodka, and Nick Eliades losing his prestigious spot on the Cornell hockey team after getting beaten to shit.

“They want to stoke the anger between you and the Russians, until you’re all forced into open war. When it gets bad, my father’s plan is to pretend to side with you, to get close, while Leo will cozy up to Gavan. At a certain point, they’ll both make moves to kill their respective kings—Gavan by Leo’s hand, and you, Ares—along with Cillian Kildare if possible—by my father’s.”

I glance at my older brother, whose face is a stony mask.

“Your father left a message for me this morning, actually,” he hisses quietly. “Asking how he could help with the mounting hostilities between our family and the Reznikovs.”

.

On the video, Leo and Serj grin and shake hands.

“That handshake is Leo and my father agreeing to split the spoils once both empires are up in flames.” Vanya’s face is lined as she looks up at me. “You want to go to war with the Russians, believe me. You’re all being played.”

An hour later, Ares, Kratos, Castle and I are using a crowbar to break down the door to the sub-basement under Serj’s parking garage at nine-fifty-two Lincoln Place. Kratos hits the light switch on the wall, and a string of construction site bulbs illuminates an old staircase that leads down to what looks like an earthen floor basement.

“The fuck is this?” Ares mutters as we all carefully descend the stairs.

It’s mostly full of nothing but old boxes. But at the far wall, there’s a plastic curtain drawn across a black hole. I frown, yanking it back and peering into the darkness beyond.

Castle steps next to me. “What is it?”

I shake my head. Just then, Ares steps forward, turns on the flashlight on his phone, and shines it into the darkness.

.

The first thing I see is the skeletons—

ones, too, from the looks of it, covered in dust and dirt. Past them, there are two honest-to-God , and a giant pile of huge-ass cannonballs.

“What the fuck?” Castle mutters. “This shit looks like it’s been here for a century.”

“Two and a half centuries, actually.”

We all turn to Kratos, who is staring at a big, yellow, official-looking notice tacked to the wall next to the plastic curtain, with “New York City Historical Preservation Society” emblazoned across the top of it.

My brother grimaces as he turns to us.

“This says all of this was discovered six months ago while they were trying to expand the sub-basement. It’s an old storage house from the Revolutionary War.”

“Mother.

!” Ares groans, turning and kicking a piece of rock across the dirt floor. “It’s a fucking historical preservation site. Rezoned or not, it be developed.”

Ares scowls as he takes a breath.

“Vanya’s right. We’ve all been fucking —”

“Thank you.”

The four of us whirl, yanking guns out at the sound of the voice behind us.

voice.

And he’s not alone. There’s four of us, but Gavan’s brought three times that, and every gun in every Russian hand is currently pointed straight at us.

Tsarenko smiles, cracking his neck as he too raises a gleaming gun in his tattooed hand.

“Thank you for saving me the trouble of digging you all a grave.”