But Yakov was no enemy. Yakov Vorobev was his own brother, his don.
He had turned against the one man he was sworn to protect. He had turned against the flesh of hisflesh, the blood of his blood.
He’d broken the one rule.
I lift my head. “Loyalty. That was one f*****g thing he taught us to respect above all else.” My voiceis rising, shot through with steel cords of anger.
“Without loyalty, you will have nothing,” Bogdan says, repeating the words Otets had told us time andtime again during our training sessions.
I look at my mother. “You’re telling me he was the worst kind of hypocrite. The kind of man whopreached about loyalty in the open and then killed his own brother in the shadows. Is that what you’resaying?”
She nods, trembling uncharacteris
