She smiles. It tells me more than words ever could. “It was so real that it made us think we had a future together,” she says.
Nikita nods. “I suppose it was another reason Yakov started dismantling the Bratva and selling it bit by bit.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “You were going to run away together?”
“We didn’t have a definite plan,” she admits. “It was such an impossible thing we were trying to do. But Yakov was determined to step back from the Bratva at some point.”
“Why didn’t he just hand it over to Vitaly then?” I ask. “He must have known that his younger brother had bigger ambitions.”
Nikita sighs. “That was the whole reason he came up with that plan in the first place. He wanted to stamp out the power of the Vorobevs so that if Vitaly did take over, he wouldn’t be able to come a
