Chapter 7: Mikhail

New York.

As I speed down the winding road leading to my father’s house on my motorcycle, the ghost of the princess’ touch lingers on my skin.

It taunts me like the frostiness of the weather. Like her, it’s neither here nor there, but there’s an unshakeable presence.

The marks her fingernails made on my shoulders are still there, too, imprinted on my skin although I never took my clothes off. She gave me those marks as I made her come and submit to me, giving herself over to pleasure.

The same pleasure I can’t shake from my mind.

I haven’t been able to shake her from my mind either.

I wanted to take her right there after I tasted her and took in her fear and arousal. The deadly combination was more potent than any drug I’ve taken.

Like a fucking addict, I fed off her fear and wanted more.

But all in good time.

Now we’re in New York, we’re in my world, and we can play by all my rules.

Last night, she was scared and caught up in everything that happened, but I expect her to be the spoiled bitch I’ve heard she is soon.

The princess would have landed an hour ago, and I’m assuming she’s either still on her way to my house or already there.

I left Mexico last night because I didn’t want to stay another second in that house. I didn’t care how late it was or how tired I might have been, I planned to fly back home even before I left.

I take a right turn and slow down as the two mammoth-sized silver gates guarding the house I grew up in come into view.

The guards open them for me before I get there so I can ride right into the heavily guarded fortress that became home to the brotherhood more than two decades ago when my father became the Pakhan.

The stately home that emulates many of the chateaus and manor homes in Europe rises into view as I head down the drive.

It undoubtedly looks like the home it should be, but it also has that vibe that lets you know business is conducted here. My father always said he preferred business and home to be one and the same. Not because he’s a workaholic. It’s because he’s a good leader who’s immersed himself in his responsibilities.

Usually, there are three meetings here on a weekly basis between the elite group, the Brigadiers and the senior members of their brigade. The larger meetings are held at Dmitriyev Ltd., our family company, in the city.

Father used to attend all meetings, even when he was first diagnosed with brain cancer. By the time he became terminal, my mother insisted on him focusing on the meetings here.

I park, take off my helmet, and get off my bike. I then acknowledge the men guarding the doors to the entrance.

They bow their heads as I walk, showing me the same respect they give my father and brother.

I make my way inside, and as always, I take in the fervent atmosphere when I turn down the large hallway leading to the meeting room.

The atmosphere emanates from the décor and design my father chose for this particular section of the house. The Renaissance paintings lining the walls on either side are what does it.

This is the only section of this house where you might believe you’re walking the halls of an Italian family home. It’s the route our men would take and what they’d see on their way to meetings.

As an avid lover of great art works and an artist himself, my father chose the paintings that depict the most powerful images of war and death. As such, he favored Caravaggio for the emotion he evoked in his art.

The paintings serve as a reminder that although times change and so do the players, similar problems exist over time. Those who are in power will try to maintain power and gain more, and the weaker parties will either ally themselves with those in charge or overthrow them. Such was the case with many revolutions in history, and often what brought down the powerful are the things they overlooked or making the simple mistake of thinking they were invincible.

Walking down here is like taking a walk through the Vatican in Rome, where I’ve always felt the old mythological world had been preserved somewhat within that space. I have the same feeling here, but today, the images of war and death remind me of my own situation, because we are at war with an unknown enemy.

Raul Alvarez was only a piece of the puzzle that still mystifies me, and I need to get to the heart of what’s going on before it comes back to screw with me and my family.

I walk into the meeting room and find the people I need to talk to are both inside.

At the head of the table is my father, whose face brightens when he sees me. Some of the life returns—a sign he was worried about me. Next to him is Ivan, my brother—my half-brother, but as Father keeps reminding us, the same blood flows through our veins. It matters not that we have different mothers or we’re ten years apart. We’re brothers.

I know he wants us to be the same kind of brothers he and his brother were, but unlike his brother, Ivan would never take a bullet for me.

The flat, emotionless look in his almost black eyes reminds me of that and is a tell he’s jealous as fuck that I’ve just done something neither expected me to do.

Sophia, my aunt and my father’s sister, walks into the room from the other side with a stack of papers in her hands.

When she sees me, she rushes over and hugs me.

She’s the balance in our dark world. She’s the closest thing I have to a mother now, and like my mother, she’s always been there for me.

She was the first face I woke up to when I came out of the coma, and she’s been on edge ever since worrying over my safety.

“Thank God, you’ve returned,” she mutters, tears filling her eyes as she gazes up at me.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Father says in that same powerful voice he’s used to command the legion of members in our Bratva and our allies. “This is my son, Sophia. Of course, he has returned.”

“I’m just happy to see him return unharmed,” Sophia says.

“Thank you, Auntie,” I say. I only call her that in special moments like these when we’re together as a family. At other times, I refer to her by her name for business purposes.

Sophia might appear soft because of her good-natured ways, but she’s the equivalent of a consigliere in the Italian Mafia to my father. Nothing gets past her, and she’s the backbone to our organization.

“And what news do you have, brother?” Ivan asks, running a hand through his dark mane of hair that has the same unruly style as mine.

That’s perhaps as far as our similarities go.

I reach into my pocket and pull out Raul’s ring. I walk right up to the table and hold it up so they can see it.

“We now have control of the Alvarez Cartel.”

Father nods his approval. He’s proud of me. “Well done, my son.”

“Thank you, Father.”

Getting control of the cartels in Mexico is a massive achievement to be proud of, but the key reason he looks like that is because of the justice I got for my mother and sister.

I put the plan together as soon as I could walk.

I left my hospital bed against doctor’s orders and raced against time to find my sister. I already knew finding her would be a lost cause.

I never expected her to still be alive after I’d been out of action for three months with the truth of who took her locked away in my head. I still hoped to find her though.

The time spent looking for her, however, was to no avail. We just discovered what we already knew. That she was dead, but worse had happened to her.

By the time those bastards Raul sold her to were finished with her, we didn’t even have her remains to bury. She was sold as a sex slave, raped, and killed. Then they burned her.

I was never going to find anything.

That revelation is what hit me only days ago, so my next move was to kill Raul and usurp his empire.

“Did you get the girl?” Father asks.

“I did. I plan to marry her in a month. The cartel heads will all be here to witness it. I have left Sebastian in Mexico, along with the only remaining lieutenant, to tie things up.”

It turns out the old man was useful, after all. I kept him alive at first because I thought he’d be able to tell me who Raul was working with. Although I never knew his name, I’d seen him several times before and knew he was like a lapdog to Raul.

Last night, after I finished with the princess, I tortured him, too, and only decided to keep him alive because he was the last one left who would know the cartel dealings. He will tell me everything I need to know about the cartel and be the liaison between the other heads.

“Wonderful.”

“And when do we get to meet the future Mrs. Dmitriyev?” Ivan gives me a stiff smile.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Bring her to dinner on Sunday,” Father cuts in.

We always have dinner together as a family on the first Sunday of every month. This Sunday is that day. That gives me one week.

“Of course.” I dip my head.

That dinner is going to be interesting. Fuck knows what kind of state I’ll be in by then after being around Adriana. In the short space of time I’ve spent around her, I’ve flit continuously from being so hard I want to fuck her to being so angry her father was Raul that I want to kill her.

“Then we’ll get to see if the rumors of her beauty are true,” Ivan adds, cutting into my thoughts.

The devious flicker of mischief in his eyes speaks of his interest in her, which is a problem, because he’s not getting her.

She’s mine. I’m not going to allow him to play his little fucked up games to take her from me and screw with my plans.

“The rumors were very true, brother,” I answer, giving him back the same stiff smile. “Her beauty surpasses the goddess Aphrodite herself.”

“Good for you.”

Yes, motherfucker. It is.

I’d say exactly that to him if our father weren’t present. Father doesn’t like the tension between us. Or the competition.

Everything has always been a competition between Ivan and me. He is my rival in every sense. Even now as I stand here, the competition is on as to who gets to be the next Pakhan of the Baranov. Him or me.

Ivan is the Sovientrik, and he got that title fair and square. He’s been in the game longer than I have, and when the position came up, it was a given he’d get it. It was also a given that he’d be the next Pakhan.

Until our father changed the rules.

Like most of the brotherhoods in our alliance, in the Baranov the oldest son of the current leader becomes the next Pakhan when he retires or dies. It’s only in circumstances where there are no heirs that the current leader chooses the next from the other members of the Brotherhood. If that happens, the Sovientrik usually gets the position because he’s the closest to the Pakhan in leadership.

This is the first time that a leader has changed things up and practically created a competition between his sons.

A competition Ivan hates because now that he’s thirty-eight and I’m twenty-eight, and we’re both already part of the leadership, we’re both on equal footing to get the lead. He’s no longer entitled to a God damn thing.

Being the leader of the Baranov is not something I’m going to allow him to take, either, if what I’m doing is pushing me ahead of him. I singlehandedly brought down the Alvarez Cartel, and I own it. That’s going to bode well for me.

“Well, it will be good to meet her in person,” Father says. “I’m sure that will help keep her in line.”

“I agree.” Meeting everyone—essentially, more people like me—will scare the shit out of her. That will definitely keep her in line. But on to more important matters to discuss. My family meeting Adriana is the least of things to be concerned with. “We need to discuss the bigger picture. Eliminating Raul was just part of the problem.”

“I think you’re right, but one thing at a time, son,” Father replies, and I tense. I knew he was going to say that to me. I think that advice is more about the intensity of the last few weeks than anything else. “You know what the cartel men are like. They aren’t going to like us taking over. They’ll be looking for a way out. Although the strongest element you have is marrying Raul’s daughter, you will need to assert your dominance over them. It would be better to make use of your resources to do that.”

“Father, we are being targeted,” I point out, respectfully. You don’t relax when that is the case. Fuck knows what could have happened during the missing time I was down. “What happened to Mother, Talia, and me was an assassination attempt. Now that everybody knows I’m back from the dead, the question is when they’re going to strike again.”

“Raul was a powerful entity, comparable to us, and you took him down. That’s going to be a large percentage of the problem gone. It’s also possible he was the only problem. Nothing else happened to any of us during that three-month span you were down.”

“Maybe nothing happened because whoever was watching us knew not to strike, or they were waiting.”

I don’t believe for one second that we weren’t being watched all the time. Or that my survival was kept a complete secret.

My safety while in the hospital was down to 24/7 surveillance. My father was also there most of the time and oversaw my care. That’s what I was told. Even with all that regimented care, however, it doesn’t mean we weren’t being watched.

“Father, it was clear to me Raul was working with someone else, or other people. I think it’s someone big. Raul refused to give me information, and he never shared the details of his plans with his senior lieutenant. I think if it were just him to worry about, he would have given me something more than his silence. Whatever he knew was strong enough to make him believe dying in silence was worth protecting his daughter. That is something we need to pay attention to.”

“Ivan and Sophia, leave us,” Father says, meaning he wants to speak to me in private.

Ivan and Sophia exchange glances, then leave. Once they’ve gone, my father stares at me with worried eyes.

As he motions for me to sit opposite him, the sunlight catches his white hair, making him look like he’s already wearing a halo. He looks older than just a few days ago.

My father is eighty. He was older than my mother by thirty-five years, but I swear he looked to be about the same age as her when she was alive. Now, his age and illness are more noticeable.

I sit before him and drag in a sigh, knowing he’s going to tell me something I won’t like.

“Mikhail, you’re going a million miles an hour, and it’s going to get you killed,” he points out.

“I’m taking care of our security.”

“Of course, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you need to take a moment to deal with what’s happened and with our losses. No one can keep going on a train of vengeance without stopping.” He clears his throat.

“I feel if I stop, that’s more time wasted. I was in a coma for months.”

“Mikhail, you can’t blame the time your body needs to heal. You almost died. Please remember that.”

As if I could forget. Almost dying feels like a weakness I shouldn’t have had.

For as ruthless and strong as I am, I was unable to protect my mother and sister when they needed me most. No one will ever know how that makes me feel.

“I do remember.”

“While you were away, the team came back with the results of their investigation on Raul, and they didn’t find anything we don’t already know. Ivan worked with them personally, and they triple-checked everything.”

This is the same team that was able to track down where Talia was taken to after I told them about Felipe and Raul. It was difficult to investigate before without names.

Our security team is thorough, and you can usually take what they say as gospel, but my gut tells me there’s more to find and this is far from over.

“We were waiting to find out if you found more in Mexico to investigate. If you had, I’d say look into it, but there isn’t anything right now,” he adds, and I can’t refute it. “So, I want you to focus on the cartel for the moment, because you will need to. But, of course, keep your eyes open. We have to always keep our eyes open. I’m not suggesting that just because we found nothing, there’s nothing more to find, but it’s a possibility. What I’m suggesting is to direct your focus on what you can see and control. Besides, with the upcoming leadership change, we’re going to need to think of that, too.”

“I know,” I reply.

My insides always tighten when he talks about the leadership changes.

It’s happening in a little under eight weeks.

As much as I want the chance to be Pakhan, the thought of losing my father aches my soul.

After the doctors gave him a year to live, he told us he’d be passing the torch. That happened two months before the accident, so he now has seven months by their records and will eventually begin to deteriorate in health and mental capacity. He didn’t want to be around the men in that state.

Father has kept his sickness hidden for the best part of four years. We fought long and hard, but this is the end of the line.

“My plans to go back to Russia and die there are the same. I’ll be leaving a month after the change of leadership. I just… won’t have your mother with me.” His hands shake at the mention of her, and I’m grateful he knows he can be real with me. “I can’t believe she’s gone, Mikhail.”

“Me neither.”

I might not have any regard for marriage, but my parents were the best examples of love to have.

In this dark criminal world we live in, it was different to witness the love they had for each other.

My mother wasn’t Russian. She was American. It didn’t matter where she was from, though; she loved Russia and would have loved to go there with my father to live out the rest of his days.

“My beautiful angel and my daughter are both gone. I’m going to be your father now, and tell you that I need you to be careful. It was a close call, and the way it happened was fucked up considering who we are. That’s why I’m telling you to keep your eyes open and take things in their stride so you can focus. You hear me, son?”

“I do.” I nod with assurance, but I already know I won’t rest because of that feeling in my soul telling me I can’t.

I understand the grief he must feel, but he’s had three months to deal with it.

Everyone went through the motions, but to me, everything is still fresh.

It’s three weeks fresh, and I’m the only one with the memory of that night I’ll never forget.

I’m the only one who looked into Raul’s eyes and knew the bastard was hiding answers I need to solve this mystery.

I missed my mother’s funeral and buried what remained of my sister last week. So the raging beast inside me forbids me to stop digging for answers.

The only thing I’ll allow to soothe my inner turmoil is defeating Raul and taking his daughter for myself.

I’ll take my pleasure in terrifying and taunting her to break her, then owning her body over and over again. More importantly, every time I’m with her, I’ll remember Raul’s agonized cries before I ended him. I’ll remember I singlehandedly took away her father and her love for that bastard Felipe. I’ll remember that I ruined her and the future her father wanted for her.

Her face will be a memento of my victory over the man who took everything from me.

I just hope like fuck that victory will lead me to conquering the bigger problem.

If I don’t fix the problem, I’m still dead, and so is everyone else.