Page 62 of Hate to Love You

“...And Polina has already made the cook cry and threw a vase at Mrs. Devan.”

Well, that’s not ‘better.’

I roll my eyes.

“Of course, she fucking did,” I groan. “Because God forbid, we just have a normal family dinner at that house.”

“That house,” Pasha snorts, shaking his head. “You say it like it belongs to someone else.”

“It does. That’s father’s house.”

“No, Ro,” he pulls off his sunglasses and folds them, tucking them into the collar of his unbuttoned shirt. “It’s your house. It belongs to the leader of our family, and last I checked, that’s you, ever since our selfish fuck of a father died.”

This time I can’t help but smirk.

Pasha is my real “Ride or Die.”

And just like I watch out for him, he’s always had my back, in ways that he might not even realize.

Pasha doesn’t have a lot of memories of our father, but the ones he does have are brutal.

For the most part, my father ignored Pasha, which was honestly better than the alternative. Because when my asshole father did turn his gaze to Pasha, it never ended well. I can’t recall the number of times I had to come to my brother’s defense when he became the recipient of my father’s misplaced rage.

I too have plenty of horror stories about good old dad, and plenty of justifiable reasons to hate him.

However, this is just the way of our life. From the moment I could walk, I’d been groomed and trained for the role I would eventually have one day. Heirs were taught to be smart, strong, and fearless, and in order to accomplish those desired attributes, my father had to be constantly pushing my boundaries, desensitizing me to the world around me, and to the gruesome realities of our world. Naturally, I had all the regular educational lessons, but the minute my school day ended, my mafia education began.

I saw a man die at seven.

I was able to fire a gun by eight.

I could hold my own in a fight by nine.

And the list went on and on from there.

Our father had a complicated polarity to him, but by Russian mob boss standards, he was mild. He was a gangster and businessman in every regard, including with his family. He was callous, hard, and cold, and in his mind, the best thing he could do was to make me into a man who didn’t flinch when it came to danger.

He also made it repeatedly clear that if I ever disrespected or blatantly disobeyed him, he’d snuff me out and give the responsibility of his legacy to Lev, the firstborn of the twins. And after seeing firsthand the harsh realities of leadership, I made up my mind to try and protect my siblings from as much pain as I could.

“Show up. Do the job. Keep your mouth shut.”

Another one of my father’s favorite pearls of wisdom, which was also often followed by:

“Betray me and they’ll never find you.”

And he made sure to show me what he meant by that. Any time someone dared to cross him, or even question him, they were executed…and I was required to watch. So, no matter what it was, what I thought, or what else was going on in my life, if my father told me to do something, I did it, without complaint, and without fail. I did everything.

My twin brothers being next in line were also put through the ringer when it came to training, but not to the same degree. But Pasha, being my mother’s favorite, and the least likely of the boys to take over the family, was spared the same grueling training. I doubt my father ever saw much leadership potential in Pasha, but what was worse was that he saw softness, which to a Russian gangster meant weakness.

He refused to tolerate weakness. So, for the most part, he refused to tolerate Pasha.

And then there were my sisters. While they couldn’t be more different, they were both my father’s princesses. And they were untouchable. Or at least Anastasia was. She was also the only one to ever make my father break tradition.

Typically, in our mafia families, boys are born for legacy, and girls are born for alliances. They are married off for whatever cause, or to whatever family provides their father the most benefit.

But Anastasia never fit that mold. My father referred to her as his “ugly duckling” but in his own, strange way, it was a term of endearment. And he didn’t have many of those.

Perhaps it’s because she defied the mold and never expressed any interest in the things typical girls did. Instead, she could often be found running with us, wreaking havoc with her crazy brothers, and was just as wild and untamed as we were. As she grew older, she developed a fast affinity for software and technology, and as the millennia dawned on America, she knew more about it than anyone in our family.