Roses & Ruin

Chapter 30 (Lexi)

        As the car with the blacked out windows was pulling up to the gated entrance I wasn't surprised to see the very large home my father and brother's will be staying in while they're here. It's gated for their protection and it's luxurious and spacious because they wouldn't settle for anything less.

Nerves sat in my gut all last night and into this morning. My nerves are shot at this point, but still my insides clench at the sight of the opening gate and looming front door.

It isn't the exciting jitters you get when seeing family after a long time. It isn't warm. It's cold and it's calculated, the feeling between myself and my family.

        It wasn't always this way. I grew up with a loving mother who gave me the best life she could manage while being a Russian immigrant technically running from her crazy ex husband. It never felt that way inside our home though. She always warned me how to live a precautionary life, but she wouldn't scare me with the details.

It was all like learning the rules of life as you grow up. It was just a thing amongst other things. That's until my mother died in a car accident. How cliche a way to lose a parent. My only parent as far as I'm concerned.

I guess my father was informed of her death due to them being previous spouses. I don't really know how he was alerted to that, but he showed up not long after she was gone, and it's everything my mother wouldn't have wanted.

        I feel no familial bond towards the Petrov men. Not really. I didn't grow up with them. Well, I did until I was seven and then we ran off to America, and I met them again when she died and only lived with them a few years before I managed an excuse to run off again.

My brother's aren't even my full brother's. They're my half brothers all connected through my father. My father has many children from various women. Like the half sister I've mentioned from a different mother. But I actually like her.

I'm not Vitaly's only daughter, but I am his oldest daughter. That's why a lot of responsibility falls on me. That and because I swear my father holds contempt against me because of my mother.

        My mother is probably the only person who has ever successfully gotten away from him and stayed that way. That was a dangerous life, a dangerous choice, but I never felt afraid or unloved. Not one single day.

I miss my mother a lot, but I promised myself I wouldn't let it cripple me. My mother wanted me to be full of life, so why would I waste that life after she's gone? I live for her.

        Today doesn't feel like any of that though. Once the car stopped in front of the house I thought I might have a damn panic attack at the thought of getting out of this car and going inside. It sounds dramatic, right? It sounds dramatized that I consider these men to be the end of the world for me. But when choice is taken away from you isn't that exactly what that is?

The end of your world and the start of playing a part in another person's world for you.

        "Miss Petrov" I heard the heavy Russian accent of the man who drove me here. He realized I hadn't exited the car yet and was peeking at me through the rear view mirror. Boris was already outside of the car, and he rounded it so he could open my door for me. Not necessary at all, but he probably knew I wouldn't get out myself if not for his small push.

There were all types of scowling men with large guns and black guardsmen uniforms. Not much different to what my father has around his house in Russia.

Vitaly Petrov is the boss of the entire Russian Bratva mob. My brother's Dmitriy and Andrei are the underbosses.

        "Miss Petrov..." I heard my name again. I didn't realize how literally frozen in place I felt until I was facing the door and not moving towards it. Boris had to literally, but subtly, move me along so I could actually get to the front entrance, now wide open and waiting for me.