Chapter 2
Zoya
The burning sensation on my ankle registers seconds after the scream leaves my throat. Hot liquid soaks into my socks, ruining my pristine trainers, but I can’t bring myself to look down. I can’t look anywhere. My vision blurs, the white front door swimming in a pool of sudden, violent tears.
“Ms Antonova? Are you there?” The voice on the phone is clipped, professional. Cold. It’s Alexey, my father’s second. He sounds like he’s reading a grocery list, not ending my world.
“Say it again,” I whisper, my hand gripping the phone so tight my knuckles turn white. “Tell me you’re lying.”
“The Pakhan is dead, Ms Antonova. It was a hit. I am on my way.”
The line goes dead before I can ask how, or why, or who.
Not that it matters. In our world, the who is always a shifting shadow, and the why is always power.
I drop the phone into my bag, my fingers trembling uncontrollably.
The rain has started to fall in earnest now, plastering my hair to my forehead, chilling the sweat on my skin from the Pilates class that feels like a lifetime ago.
“Daddy,” I whisper, the word fracturing on the exhale.
A car door slams behind me, and instinct snaps my head up. The Bratva life is bred into my bones, dormant until the blood starts spilling. If the Antonov Pakhan is dead, his daughter is loose change. I am exposed. I am a target.
Alexey looms into view, wrapping me in a blanket.
I’m not sure if it’s to keep the rain off me or to keep my identity hidden.
Although it’s a bit late for that now. Leaving my fallen latte on the front steps of the townhouse, he bundles me into the back of the black SUV with tinted windows, and the driver screeches away from the kerb, drawing more attention to us.
My heart is pounding. My blood is roaring in my ears.
We cut in and out of traffic, practically taking the side of a black Mercedes that blares its horn at us.
The driver doesn’t give a shit. He slides the window down, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and gives the Mercedes driver the middle finger.
“How?” I ask, my voice steady even though my entire world has closed in around me.
“Sniper. Golf course,” Alexey says.
“On the golf course?” I croak. Dammit, Dad! “Where was his security?” I demand, glaring at Alexey and fully taking this out on him. “Where were you?”
He swallows and avoids my gaze.
“Answer me. Now.”
Alexey rubs his hand over his face. “We were dismissed. Mr Antonov was…”
“Was what?” I grit out.
“With a lady friend,” he says, staring out of the window so he doesn’t have to look at me.
A lady friend. Fury descends like a red mist. Stasha. That bitch! That fucking slut who can’t keep her hands off my dad just got him killed. I’m going to peel her fucking skin off inch by fucking inch. My mother will be rolling in her fucking grave.
“Stasha,” I growl.
“Uhm, no, not Ms Villanova.”
My gaze snaps back to him. “Then who?”
Alexey shifts in his seat, the leather creaking under his bulk. He looks like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the till, not a hardened enforcer.
Removing my hand from under the blanket, I grip his wrist, digging in my pointed, black lacquered nails until he bleeds.
“Who?” My voice has gone slightly demonic.
But I need to know who to blame for this.
Ever since my mother died two years ago, my father has been with more women than I can count.
Whoever this bitch is, she convinced him to lose his security, and now he is dead.
“A hostess from Zoloto,” he mutters, his gaze fixed on the rainy streets of London passing us by.
I let out a harsh, jagged laugh that feels like swallowing glass.
A nobody. My father, the untouchable Pakhan of the Antonov Bratva, took a bullet because he was too busy chasing a skirt to keep his guard up.
It’s pathetic. It’s messy. It is so incredibly him of late.
He wasn’t always this way. He adored my mother and was crushed when she died. He became someone completely different.
But he was still my dad.
“Is she dead too?” I ask, my voice void of empathy.
“Yes.”
Good.
I turn away, pressing my forehead against the cold glass of the window.
The condensation chills my skin, grounding me while my mind spins out of control.
My ankle still burns from the hot latte, a petty physical sting to distract from the gaping chasm opening up in my chest. I want to scream until my lungs give out, to claw at the upholstery, but I can’t.
Not in front of Alexey. Not in front of the driver whose eyes keep flicking to the rearview mirror, looking for a tail.
In this world, grief is just another word for weakness, and weakness is blood in the water.
“Where are we going?” I demand, watching the familiar streets of Kensington disappear behind a veil of grey rain. We aren’t taking the route to the main estate.
“You are needed to identify the body.”
The body.
I nod. “After that, take me home.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Nowhere is safe,” I spit out. “Who is moving?”
He hesitates. He knows exactly what I’m asking. “Nik.”
Damn him. “How do we know he didn’t order the hit?”
“We don’t,” Alexey says. “But until we do, this is how the pieces fall.”
“Right,” I grit out and slump into my seat. I knew this day would come. I didn’t expect it to be today. I didn’t expect it to be as I was coming back from Pilates. My fucking charmed life all bought and paid for with Bratva money.
Now what?
If I think my cousin Nik is going to fund my lifestyle, I’ve got another thing coming and rapidly.
Nik has always looked at me like I’m a decorative vase he’s waiting to smash.
If he takes the seat, I’m not just cut off; I’m a liability.
A loose end to be tied off or married off to the highest bidder to cement an alliance.
Probably to some toothless vor in Siberia.
I shiver, pulling the soft wool blanket tighter around my shoulders.
The SUV slows, swinging sharply into the underground car park of a private clinic in Marylebone—the kind that accepts cash bricks and asks zero questions.
The overhead fluorescent lights flicker, casting sickly yellow shadows across the grey concrete.
It smells of damp and exhaust fumes. The scent of death before I’ve even seen it.
The car halts, and the locks disengage with a heavy clunk.
“Wait here,” Alexey commands the driver. He steps out and opens my door.
I slide out, wincing as my sticky, latte-soaked sock squelches in my trainer. My white yoga pants and bright pink sports bra feel ridiculous as I throw the blanket back inside. I straighten my spine, lifting my chin despite the nausea rolling in my gut.
“Lead the way,” I say, my voice devoid of the tremor vibrating through my hands.
We walk towards the service lift. As the metal doors slide open, I hesitate. It’s one second I need before I have to go and do the thing I’ve been dreading.
I step inside, and the doors close, trapping me in the rising box. Daddy is gone. My life as I knew it is gone. I can only hope he left me a bank account with enough money in it to invest and live off until I find someone in a job somewhere that will employ an unemployable Bratva princess.
This is not how I thought my day would go.