Untamed (Bratva Kings #2)

UNVEILED A DARK ARRANGED MARRIAGE brATVA ROMANCE

CHAPTER ONE

SEMYON

I shake my head and exit the warehouse, the relentless bite of a Moscow winter hitting me. I pull my coat tighter and check my watch. I wasn’t planning on delivering an ass-kicking right before the huge benefit my brother’s hosting, but here we are.

It was a problem I had to handle, and I couldn’t let it slide. Behind me, I hear the telltale sounds of my brother Rodion cleaning up the mess I left—the heavy scrape of a body being dragged across the floor, the dull thump of a weapon hitting the ground, and his unmistakable carefree whistling. Like one of the fucking seven dwarves.

Only my brother would whistle while running the clean-up crew.

But he’s impeccable, reliable, and takes pride in what he does.

My phone buzzes, the ringtone unmistakably Rafail’s.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Took longer than I thought.” My jaw tightens as I start the engine. The dickhead had more fight in him than I expected, and I wouldn’t let Rodion intervene.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, I flip down the mirror to check myself. My hands are clean, my suit is immaculate, and not a speck of blood mars the fabric.

“How’d it go?”

“As good as can be expected. The job’s done.” I blow out a breath and glance at the time. “Got ten minutes to show up fashionably late.”

“Good.” There’s a pause. Too long. I know immediately something’s wrong. He didn’t call to make sure I handled a job. Rafail knows better than that.

“Rafail. What is it?”

My older brother and I are tight. He became our legal guardian after our parents’ deaths, and he’s ruled the family with a tight fist ever since. I sit at his right hand. We don’t waste words or time explaining things to each other.

“I’ve got bad news.”

In the background, I hear Polina, his wife, murmuring in her low, soothing voice. She whispers something in Russian, and Rafail mutters back before speaking to me again.

I grit my teeth. I hate showing up late to anything. I plug the address into the GPS and throw the car into reverse. Rodion will get himself there.

When Rafail doesn’t tell me right away, my patience begins to wane. “Yeah? You wanna tell me, or do you and Polina need to have a little pillow talk first?”

“Semyon,” Rafail says warningly.

I pull the car into drive and ease onto the road before gunning the engine.

“I just kicked someone’s teeth in while making sure I didn’t get any blood on this fucking white shirt, Rafail. Patience? Fresh out.”

I press my lips together. Nothing short of full allegiance to my family would drag me out to an event full of Bratva vultures—enemies and allies alike. But tonight is important. Tonight, I have massive plans that will affect all of us.

I hadn’t intended to punish one of our men, but somebody had to do it. Rodion would’ve been happy to handle it, but I lost my patience.

It happens.

Rafail sighs heavily on the other end of the line. “Your buddy was sighted on a plane heading to Costa Rica twelve hours ago. He’s disappeared.”

I grip the wheel tighter and exhale slowly. Rodion would have punched the dashboard by now. Rafail would be seeing red. But I’ve learned to stay calm when everything is falling apart.

No one knows what you’ll do next if you don’t show your hand.

“Is that right?” My voice drops, cold and venomous. I glance at the GPS. Ten minutes out. “So I’m boarding a plane to Costa Rica tonight.” I’m already mentally combing the streets.

“No. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“What’s there to talk about? Borzov was supposed to give us the details on the shipment and the harbor security leak. That was literally all he fucking had to keep him off our shitlist. And now you’re telling me he’s gone? Vanished with the shipment?”

Sometimes, as a kid, you think you can tell how people will turn out. I thought I knew him. Borzov and I were as close as two brothers could be, unrelated by blood. We spent every afternoon by the creek in Zalivka, the city outside of Moscow where we both grew up, throwing rocks, climbing trees, swearing that nothing would ever come between us.

As teens, we bought each other condoms and borrowed each other’s weapons. We shot by the creek until Rafail caught us and kicked both our asses. We didn’t stop—we just got more discreet.

I should’ve seen it coming.

I shoot Borzov a text, watching the message hang before failing to deliver.

After all these years, after everything we’ve been through, he fucking betrayed me. All of us.

As if his family can fucking afford it.

“We don’t know if he’s dead or if he betrayed us. We don’t know if he was taken or if he left on his own. What we do know—and Polina’s confirmed it—is this: The Romanovs are circling. If we don’t secure this family now…”

“It’s war,” I finish with a sigh.

Motherfucker.

Rafail married Polina, the Romanov sister, after a series of events that could’ve demolished our entire empire. Mikhail Romanov made us a deal: provide critical intel, and he’d allow their marriage—and forgive our trespasses.

“How do you propose we secure the family if we don’t even know where he is and you don’t want me to go to Costa Rica?”

Rafail exhales sharply. “I don’t know. I can’t fucking think straight—not with Mikhail breathing down my neck. And he’s breathing down my neck because Novak’s breathing down his. ”

I hear him cover the mouthpiece of his phone, his voice lowering as he speaks to Polina. I can imagine her, torn as always—tight with her family but fiercely loyal to Rafail. Concerned for both our wellbeing and theirs.

When he gets back on the line, his tone is tight. “Polina says she can buy us time. Mikhail’s furious, but she knows his wife and is close with her brothers. She’ll talk to them, explain the situation. But our timing sucks.”

It does.

We’re already in debt to two of the most powerful Bratva groups: the Romanovs in America and the Morozov family in Moscow. If we falter for even a moment, we’re finished.

We can’t take another risk. Not again.

Rafail's voice dropped, just loud enough for me to catch, likely trying not to wake a sleeping baby. “I’ve given everything to keep us together. Don’t make me watch it fall apart now.” His words were a rare crack in the iron. For a moment, I’m not just his second-in-command—I’m still his kid brother, watching him bow under the weight of responsibility.

When my parents died, Rafail was barely an adult himself, holding us together with sheer willpower and a string of desperate decisions. He’s seen us through every struggle since then, and I won’t let him bear this burden alone.

“I’ve got this,” I promise him, even though I have no idea how I’m going to fix it.

“How?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. But I promise you, I will not let this happen. I’ll do anything it takes.”

He exhales again, the sound heavy with frustration, before continuing.

“Anything?”

A prickle of cold awareness slides down my spine at the shift in his tone. It’s the voice I’ve learned to mimic myself—the cold, calculating tone that signals danger and demands attention.

“Yes?”

“Anya will be there tonight.”

He doesn’t need to say her name. I know exactly who he’s talking about.

Anya Borzova . Elizar Borozov’s younger sister.

The girl who used to chase fireflies by the creek, her laughter making me smile when the world seemed dim and hopeless. The girl who would look at me like I hung the moon, with such wide and trusting eyes it would make my heart ache. She’d blush furiously and run whenever she caught my gaze.

I watched her grow from a shy, freckle-faced kid into a headstrong woman with too much light, too much innocence for this world. I kept her at a distance.

I had to.

She was off limits.

I knew the world we lived in and I knew how easily I’d corrupt her. In my mind, if she was still my best friend’s little sister, she would stay untouchable— safe.

If I could just pretend—if I could freeze her in time, hold her in my memory as the innocent kid who loved books more than people and dreamed of worlds bigger than ours—maybe she’d stay untouched by this life.

By me.

I play dumb. I need to buy time.

“Who?” I force the question out, playing dumb. I want to hear him say her name. I need to hear the words. Make them real.

“You know exactly who. Anya’s… an option.”

She could never be a fucking option.

I curse under my breath, gripping the wheel tighter.

But I don’t tell my brother no. I’m not allowed to and live to tell about it. Bratva law is unchangeable and I don’t challenge the law.

“Is she even legal?” I ask, shaking my head. For fuck’s sake. The last time I saw her, she was traipsing off on scholarship to college, aiming to get her degree. Her family couldn’t afford anything more, but she was determined. Always determined.

I’ve always had a soft spot for her. But now? Now, she’s… collateral.

If Rafail is thinking what I think he is…

“Be specific, brother.” My voice is ice, my back rigid as I watch the needle on the speedometer creep up.

“We go to her father and make a proposition.”

Why did we ever let them negotiate with us to begin with? They aren’t Bratva, they don’t know the risk they took…

Rafail continues. “…we forgive the debt owed to us in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage. And you, brother, take her home.”

No.

I shake my head, grateful he can’t see me right now. Rafail held us together when our parents died, barely an adult himself.

Now, every mistake feels like a betrayal of that sacrifice, a weight I can’t afford to drop. It wasn’t just our lives he was trying to save—it was our family, our name, our future.

And now that rests on my shoulders. Marriage will strengthen our family. We can’t afford a misstep.

Not another one.

I’m silent for long moments, unable to respond.

Anya . Beautiful, headstrong, willful, and brilliant. I remember her at five years old, sitting in the corner of her room with her freckled nose wrinkled in concentration, reading book after book while ignoring her chores. When she wasn’t risking her neck down by the stupid fucking creek, she was dreaming too big for her world.

“I can arrange a marriage with her father in the blink of an eye,” Rafail continues. “He has nothing to stop us from claiming her as collateral, and you know it. It means your world gets turned upside down, though, Semyon.”

Marry her.

“She’s a fucking child.”

“She was when you knew her. I promise you,” Rafail says in a low voice. “She isn’t now.”

A sharp thrum of blood pulses through me as I grip the wheel tighter, my teeth clenched.

“You mean to tell me…” I pause, breathing in through my nose to calm my temper, when realization dawns on me, “she’s all grown up, her brother’s fucked us over—and who knows who else in the process—and she’s at that fucking ball, alone? Dressed in God-knows-what? Vulnerable and single?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Call her father,” I snap.

An idea forms, one that just might work… at least at first…

“And Rafail?”

“Yeah?”

“Swear him to secrecy. He tells no one… not even Anya.”

I hang up and gun the engine.