Keeping My Enemies Closer, Pt. 1 (The Bratva Duets #3)

Prologue

I was supposed to be in bed, but I wasn’t sleepy.

Even though it was night, it was still my birthday, and I still wanted to play with my toys.

My Aunt Verma had given me a Lego set that turned into a castle, and I wanted to finish it.

I couldn’t play with it until I built it, and I really wanted to play with it since it came with two dragons.

Viktor was also asleep already, so he couldn’t help me build the castle, but Father was always saying that I was a big boy, so I knew that I could do it by myself.

I could read a little bit, and there was a picture of the castle on the box.

I just needed a flashlight because I knew that Father would get me in trouble if I turned on the light in my bedroom.

Since it was night, the house was dark, and so he would see the light under my door.

As I climbed out of bed, I felt thirsty, and I didn’t think that I’d get in trouble for getting some water.

There’d been lots of times when Mama had gotten me some water when I’d asked for it, even when it was night outside.

I just had to be quiet and not wake Viktor up.

Viktor always followed the rules, and so I could see him getting me in trouble.

Leaving the light off, I snuck out of my bedroom, then went down the stairs, careful not to make any noise. When I got to the kitchen, I didn’t turn on the lights, using the numbers on the stove to help me find the fridge.

I was about to open it when I heard a loud noise, and even though I wanted to run back to my room, Father was always saying that we had to be brave in this life. Father was the Korolev Pakhan, and he always said that his sons needed to be brave because of that.

So, instead of racing back upstairs, when I heard the sound again, I walked over towards the garage, and that’s when I heard more sounds, and I could also hear voices talking over the loud noises.

There was something going on in the garage, and what if it was someone here to hurt my family?

Even though Father and Viktor were brave, what about Mama?

Mama was a girl, and Father was always saying that we had to protect girls because that’s what made a man.

My stomach felt funny, but that didn’t stop me from opening the door as slowly as I could. I didn’t want to give the bad guys a chance to get away, so I had to be quiet. I couldn’t let them see me, and I needed to make sure that they didn’t have Father or Mama before I got help.

When I finally got the door open, I saw Danya, Natan, Shura, and Father standing in the garage, and they were all looking down at a body on the floor. The body had blood all over it, and his clothes were torn and dirty.

“Postav' yego na nogi,” Father said, and Danya and Shura went to stand the man up like he’d said because no one ever defied the Pakhan.

Once Danya and Shura were holding him up, Natan tore the man’s shirt off him, and that’s when I saw the knife in Natan’s hand. It was a big knife, the kind that you saw on those hunting shows, and it looked like it already had blood on it, but I wasn’t sure.

“Davayte pokazhem yemu, chto byvayet s predatelyami,” Father said, and even though I knew that I should run back to my room, I also wanted to see what happened to traitors.

When the knife dug into the man’s skin, I watched as Natan carved the letter ‘K’ into his chest, and that was the letter of our last name. We were Korolevs, and Father was always saying that our last name had to be one that was feared whenever heard.

It wasn’t until Natan cut off the man’s ear that he started screaming, making me jump back behind the door, but his screams were too loud.

They were too loud.

Dropping on the floor, I slapped my hands over my ears, then began rocking back and forth, trying to ignore the man and what was happening on the other side of the door.

“The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round,” I sang, trying to not hear the man.

“The wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town. The people on the bus go up and down, up and down, up and down...the people on the bus go up and down, all through the town. The driver on the bus says move on back, move on back, move on back...the driver of the bus says move on back, all through the town...”

I kept singing the song with the babies, mommies, and horns, and I kept singing the song until I finally opened my eyes to see Mama staring at me, her face looking like it did whenever she was worried about me or Viktor.