Chapter 16
KIR
Understatement of the fucking century: I’ve crossed a major, serious line when it comes to Brooklyn.
Doing what I did that night when I saw those four motherfuckers trying to rape her was one thing. Of course I stopped it. What I do for a living notwithstanding, I’m not a psychopath.
I saw a young woman who needed help, and I stepped in.
Taking her home was the logical extension of that help, when it became clear she needed medical attention but didn’t want the authorities involved. That I could understand.
It’s everything after that which becomes…a gray area.
Maybe I could lie to myself and say that I’ve been coaching her because even though I know there’s no spot for her in Imperiya Korona— because it's earmarked for Inessa Moskovic —maybe if she achieves perfection, Ivan will find room for her, thus realizing her dream.
I could also say my interest in her—looking into where she lives, works, her financial situation— extends past dance and comes from a place of me wanting to be a Good Samaritan.
But there’s nothing noble about my growing obsession with Brooklyn.
…I think what happened the other night is a pretty clear indicator of that.
It's not that I merely want to help her. I want to know more about her. I see a sadness in her that makes me want to lift her out of her situation, whatever it may be, and surround her in safety and comfort. I want to wash the grime from under her nails and drape her in finery.
But also, I want to fuck her on silk sheets with her tight cunt strangling my cock.
Shit .
I’m practically twice her age. This should have stopped long before I took her over my fucking knee the other night and spanked her ass raw. Before I sank my fingers into her molten pussy and fingered her until she came all over my hand.
…Which I then licked off.
After Brooklyn left that night, I went right to the men’s room and stroked my cock, tasting her sweetness on my fingers until my cum exploded into the toilet.
Then I went home and did it all again.
This is a problem on several levels.
With a scowl, I rise from my desk and cross the office to the bar cart by the window. I pour myself a whiskey, put on Nirvana’s In Utero , and then glance out the huge old window at the grounds and the Manhattan skyline beyond.
This house—a vast, elegant thing built by the Vanderbilts—was one of my first “extravagant” purchases when I ascended to the level of power I hold today. I also keep a much more modern penthouse in Midtown, overlooking Central Park, but it’s here that I enjoy spending most of my time.
Not in the thick of things, but just outside the madness, with a view of it all.
I pick up the old photograph of my father on the bar cart, thinking how different it all used to be.
My father's organization was worlds away from the empire I helm today. Back then, in Moscow, we were one of a hundred little fiefdoms all fighting for scraps after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Moskovic Bratva, which was run at the time by Dimitri’s father, was another.
But that was before some of the stronger families consolidated power, looked down their noses at the hordes of small, would-be empires, and tried to snuff us all out at once.
One night, the authorities, on the payroll of a larger family, raided our home and dragged my whole family into the streets.
My mother was shot and killed when she tried to come to the aid of my crying sister, Polina, and bolted away from the men holding her down. Her brother—my uncle—was shot next when he fought back.
I wanted to fight, too. I wanted take as many of them with me as I could when I died.
But my father forcibly stopped me. He told me my time would come, but it would not be that night.
After that, my father went to work for the Vitevsky Bratva—one of the larger families that rose to dominate Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union. He gave them his money, his contacts, his connections, his routes…everything.
And me? At the age of eight, I was sent to Zavolzhsky Penal Camp Eighteen, in Siberia.
For six long years.
I hated my father for it. I spent ages thinking he’d sold me out, that he’d allowed his son to rot in hell while he served the men who destroyed our family.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized what he’d done for me.
He traded all of it—his businesses, his money, his power, even his freedom—to keep me alive. Yes, I was in hell on earth. But I wasn’t shot in the streets or thrown in a Moscow prison to be gutted in the showers.
It can't have been an easy choice. But it was the only one he had.
He was dead by the time I got out of Zavolzhsky, but he’d used the last of his money and connections to get me out of Moscow, away from the Vitevsky Bratva, and to a boarding school near Volgograd.
That’s what led me to Oxford. And it’s the connections I made there, together with the power I slowly and carefully built, that eventually got me back to Russia.
That was the lesson my father left me with when he grabbed me that horrible night and stopped me from trying to fight a platoon of armed police.
Don’t react impetuously. Wait. Plan. And then, when your enemies least expect it, strike with the force of thunder and erase them from history.
That's what I did when I returned to Moscow. Through a series of faked emails, manipulations, bribes, and determination, I arranged for the entire upper echelon of the Vitevsky Bratva to meet for a sit-down at Pyotr Vitevsky’s mansion.
Pyotr himself, both his sons, all his avtoritets and under-captains, his advisors, and the heads of his security wings were there. Also present were four corrupt police captains and three national ministers.
I had every window welded shut. Every door locked and chained.
Then I burned the place to the ground.
I don’t think anyone in the Bratva world will soon forget the night of the “Ashen Purge,” as it's become called.
So needless to say, there’s a reason I don’t have many people close to me in my life. Trust is part of it, but I also simply don’t have much family.
Polina, my sister, was saved that night because my father got her to publicly disown our family. She went to live with the family of one of her classmates and eventually married a good man.
They’re both dead now. But her son, my nephew Damian, is very much part of my life.
For a while, it seemed like he’d be taking over the Nikolayev empire one day, but he recently married Hana Mori, sister of Kenzo Mori, the leader of the Mori-kai Yakuza.
He’s still involved with the Nikolayev organization, of course.
But his life is in Japan now, with Hana and the family they’re starting soon.
Then there’s my half-nephew here in New York. We’re close enough, but for various reasons—me the pakhan of a Bratva family, him the don of an Italian one—we’ve decided to keep our relationship quiet. It’s just…easier.
And then there’s Freya, the daughter I didn’t even know about until recently, who’s also married into the Mori-kai family now.
Her mother and I only knew each other briefly, when we were barely eighteen.
It was a lifetime ago, and ultimately never something I think either of us wanted… and she, too, is long dead.
I take another sip of whisky, setting the photograph down with a sigh.
Needless to say, it would be pretty easy for a shrink to figure out why I stay away from personal relationships.
I have what I need: my nephews, the daughter I’ve reconnected with. Isaak, in a way, but that’s it.
There's been the occasional woman over the years, of course. But I’ve never pursued anything beyond a single night with any of them. When you let people in, they get leverage. Or else they become weaknesses. Vulnerabilities.
I’ve built everything I have on control and discipline. And Brooklyn Ellis is the exact kind of complication that takes that control and upends it.
Whatever fucked-up part of me wants to protect her, to save her from her demons, it needs to be cut the fuck out .
I finish the last of my drink, eyes fixed on the city beyond the window again.
Enough.
This thing with Brooklyn ends, here and now.
For her sake, if nothing else.