Summary:

After Shane’s kidnapping, Ilya vows he’ll never let anybody touch Shane again. The voice in his mind that sounds like his mother—her face lost to time, now even her voice fading away—urges him to leave the family business and embrace Shane as an honest man. The voice that sounds like his father’s tells him to lock up his heart and throw away the key. That way, nobody can hurt him again. (Or: after Shane is kidnapped and almost killed, Ilya chooses a different path. He’s as much his father’s son as he is his mother’s, after all.)