Chapter
Two
Nikolai
The lights were obnoxious, the music too loud. And the people grinding and bumping against each other reminded me of cattle. They stunk, were sweaty, and I found myself curling my upper lip in disgust.
I followed my older brother Dmitry through the dance floor, the bodies parting ahead of us, my fingers twitching because all I thought about was pulling out my gun and shooting the next drunken asshole who elbowed me.
We finally made it to the backroom, and once the door was shut behind me, I leaned against it, crossing my arms over my chest, my leather jacket stretching across my chest, my hand close to my gun tucked in the holster at my side.
Dmitry had been silent for the last twenty minutes since we found out we had a motherfucking traitor right under our noses. I could feel the tension and aggression seething from him because of it.
My brother walked over to the scarred wooden desk across from the door, a stack of papers on one side, the rest scattered across the top. The grey, old as fuck chair behind it was pressed to the wall, the large black stain and three holes on the backrest a lasting memory that had me smirking on how it got there.
Because of me. Because I’d shot the bastard who’d been sitting in it just last year. Fucker had been cooking our books and skimming off the top.
I made sure to put that problem to rest real damn fast. And I got a thrill of pleasure every time I stared at that dam near black stain from where I’d put three bullets in his chest.
“Where is he?” Dmitry finally spoke, his voice deep, rough, and filled with a hell of a lot of emotions.
“They’re bringing him in, Pakhan.” Vladislav said, staying to the side, his hands clasped behind his back and taking on the stance of a good and loyal soldier.
And the prick they were bringing to us? Stupid asshole had also been stealing from us. But that wasn’t even the biggest issue. If that had been the only issue that had come up I would have made an example of him by cutting off his hands.
But nah, the bastard was also giving intel to our enemies, making back alley fucking deals to line his pockets and gain connections. Fucker actually thought we wouldn’t find out.
So now there wouldn’t just be sawed off hands, but also a hell of a lot of other painful things I’d do to remedy the situation.
That’s where we differed. Dmitry let his emotions control him. Although I wasn’t a fucking sociopath by the technical term, but I sure as hell knew how to keep my emotions in check and keep that mask in place.
Showing emotions was dangerous, and in our world that was nothing but a weakness.
Dmitry had his back to us, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his dark jeans. He stared at the wall, an out of date calendar tacked to it.
We all stood there in silence as we waited for the soon-to-be-dead piece of shit to make an appearance.
I stared at my brother, who remained like stone, his body tense, the dangerous fucking energy radiating from him.
I was glad he’d taken over as Pakhan for the Bratva in our city of Desolation. Because even despite his lack of keeping his emotions in check and staying cool under pressure, his fucking mind was like a work of art. All critical thinking and twisted plot reasoning.
The bastard was a damn mastermind.
“We expected this,” Dmitry said and turned to face me.
I didn’t respond, knowing he was talking about the traitor and what led up to this. Our father had been so consumed in his own greed and power struggle that he didn’t notice what was right in front of him. But we saw everything, so after he was taken out we saw a shift in ranks.
There were bastards who were trying to go against us in our own organization, and because they were trying to expedite shit, they were getting sloppy. When you didn’t take your time that's when mistakes started to happen… that's when you got caught.
Like what was going to happen to the bastard who would die by our hands tonight.
“With father out of the picture there’s bound to be those in the Bratva that push back with the change in leadership.”
I grunted my agreement.
Although we hadn’t confirmed that we’d been the ones to hire Arlo Milkovich to take out our father, we also hadn’t denied it. There’d been no secret that there was no love lost for our father.
We’d been nothing to him but pawns to use, pieces to move on the chessboard of his twisted version of life.
And he sure as fuck used us.
I knew he’d been working on selling off our youngest sister, an arranged marriage to a high-ranking Russian who would have ruined her in the most depraved of ways. And then there was Dmitry and I, who had been beaten and torn apart, “toughened” up for the world we lived in by our father's own hands.
I couldn’t count the number of men I killed at my father’s orders, brutal and torturous ways to send a message. This was how it had been since we were old enough to walk and talk, shaped and molded into the warped men that stood in this room today.
And although taking him out would’ve been necessary given the fact he was moving the organization in a direction that would have collapsed alliances and already laid plans for growth, I wasn’t going to deny, and I knew Dmitry wouldn’t either, that killing our father had also been a personal satisfaction as well.
The bastard had needed to be killed.
I relaxed my arms and looked down at my hands, picturing all the heinous shit I’d done with them over the years… all the fucked up acts I’d have to do with them tonight. By the time I left the club the sun would be rising and my palms and fingers would be stained red from taking a life slowly, painfully.
Therapeutically for my fucked up soul.
“We need to expedite your situation.” Dmitry’s hard voice pulled me out of my macabre thoughts and I looked at him. He ran a hand over his jaw, his expression lost in thought. “We need to push up the wedding.” My brother looked at me then but I made sure to keep my expression void.
“Move up?” We hadn’t even spoken about a firm date on when I’d wed the Bianchi girl, but it didn’t matter when it happened, just that it did.
Dmitry nodded. “Yeah. move it up to set things firmly in place.”
Before we hired Arlo to end our father, we set up safeguards in place for growing a Bratva. And that included an arranged marriage between myself and the daughter of Marco Bianchi of the Cosa Nostra.
Although alliances such as this, a bond between families was commonplace, in this regard, where the Bratva and Cosa Nostra were coming together for the “greater good” it wasn’t the norm. Not when we’d been battling for decades.
“We need to let all of those who think to rise up against us know what kind of power we have at our backs.”
And that’s exactly what this move was going to ensure. Anyone in the Bratva who thought to go against Dmitry or myself would see that not only were we vicious in going after what we wanted or taking out a threat, but we also had the west coast Cosa Nostra as a strong ally. And that kind of power would yield a union that was unstoppable.
I didn’t even know what my future wife looked like, didn’t know anything about her aside from her age and name. She could be a homely mouse for all I knew.
And I hadn’t cared enough to research her.