Heart of My Monster (Monster Trilogy #3) by Rina Kent

“I’m not taking anyone. He’s choosing to stay here of his own accord because I actually respect him as an individual. Something you’ve never done—”

She raises her hand to him, but I’m already capturing and twisting it, then throwing it back. “I told you not to do that again.”

Yulia snarls at me, then at Kirill, “I should’ve killed you and your demon sister when I had the chance. I should’ve ended your miserable lives before you were born.”

A hiccup comes from the other side of the room, and Karina shakes in Kristina’s hold. She was always the emotionally weak one out of the three of them and seems to have never gotten used to her mother’s treatment.

“Mother, stop.” Konstantin hauls her back with surprising force, his voice rising on her for the first time. “Stop. Just stop it already!”

Her lips part. “Kosta, what are you—”

“I’m done trying to find excuses for you, done being hated by my own brother and sister because they think I abandoned them all those years ago.” He stares at Kirill and Karina. “Mother said she’d send boats for you, too, if I went out of there first. Whenever I tried to explain that afterward, she’d threaten that she’d plot against Kirill’s next training mission or she’d have Kara sent to boarding school. The only way for me to keep you safe was to pretend I couldn’t care less about you anymore. Like you did when you tried to protect us from Papa, Kirill.”

My husband’s lips purse, and his whole wrath zooms in on Yulia.

But it’s Konstantin who goes on, “I never liked your suffocating care, Mother. I always felt like I had to walk on eggshells around you and had to meet your grandiose expectations. I started hating you when I realized you hated my siblings and didn’t hesitate to hurt them. I hated you more when you tried to make me loathe them as well. But do you know what the tipping point was? It was you trying to hurt my wife and child. That’s something I’ll never forgive you for.”

Yulia’s chin trembles, but she holds her head high. “I only want the best for you.”

“We’re your children, too,” Karina says in a small, brittle voice. “Why can’t you want the best for us?”

“Because your fucking father raped me!” she screams and turns to Kirill. “You’re the reason behind everything, you fucking devil. Roman wanted me and couldn’t have me, so he raped me over and over and fucking over again until I was pregnant with you. He made me marry him and tied me down because of you. He forced me to have you, even though I hated you and him more than anything in my life. Whenever I look at your fucking face, I remember how you were conceived, and I want to kill you with my bare hands. I want to stab you to death and watch you flounder in your own blood. You and your fucking sister were both conceived by rape, do you hear me? Every instance of sexual intercourse with your father was nonconsensual and painful, but you two came out of it like little demons. Konstantin is my son with the only man I ever loved, so, of course, I would love him and not you.”

Deafening silence falls on the living area as Yulia’s words slowly register.

Konstantin and Kristina are pale. Karina looks like she’s going to be sick, and even Yulia, who’s usually as emotionless as Kirill, is shaking.

On the one hand, all her deep hatred toward Karina and especially Kirill makes complete sense.

On the other hand, it’s still not right.

Out of everyone present, Kirill is the only one whose expression doesn’t change. But then again, he’s always eerily calm during extreme situations. It’s why he was the perfect captain in the military and is now highly fit to be Pakhan.

But just because he’s calm doesn’t mean he’s unaffected. He does such a wonderful job at erasing his emotions that he forgets they exist sometimes.

“Since Roman was adamantly against Konstantin having any form of power or inheritance, I suspected he might have a different father,” he says with baffling nonchalance. “Who is he?”

The others are still recovering from the weight of the news she just announced, but the woman herself glares at Kirill.

“Is that all that you care about?”

“What were you expecting? That I’d be a doting son when you were never a mother to me? News flash, Yulia, it’s not my or Karina’s fault that my scum of a father raped you. We didn’t ask to be fucking born to you or him. We had no choice in our existence, but you had all the choice to like or hate us, and you chose not to be our mother. I’m choosing not to be your son.”

“You killed him.” Karina leaves Kristina and slowly walks to her mother. “You killed Papa…right? All that time you were preparing his daily coffee…you…you’re the reason he got worse very quickly.”

Yulia lifts her head in the air. “It took years more than I would’ve preferred, but at least the idiot wasn’t suspicious.”

“You bitch!” Karina lunges at her, but Konstantin grabs her by the waist before she can hit her.

“What?” Yulia yells. “What? Are you all sad for that fool now? I’m the one wronged in this.”

“I’m the one wronged!” Karina screams back. “At least he loved me. He screwed my life up, but he loved me afterward. He kissed me good night and asked how I was doing. He might have been a horrible person, but he tried to be my father. You were never my mother!”