His Reluctant Salvation (The Orlov Dynasty #1)

Chapter 1 Mikhail

MIKHAIL

The call ended with a definitive click.

Receiving the news that my daughter would be returning to me marked the end of an era. The end of an arrangement with my estranged child calling Moscow her home. Sixteen years had come and gone, and now she would come “home” to me.

Fuck.

I shook my head slowly, my mind numb and hesitant. Adjusting was imperative in my line of work. Usually, I could roll with the punches.

But this?

I grimaced, unsettled with this change.

Anya was coming here, to my turf, my rule, my kingdom.

It just didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t see it going well.

Fuck it all.

While the anticipation of her arrival in New York City where I reigned as the boss of the Orlov Family should’ve felt like a new beginning, my enthusiasm was slow to come.

Idle and vacant, I sat at my desk, staring at the opposite wall as I let the news sink in.

No excitement came with the prospect of my absent teenage daughter returning to me.

This state-of-the-art building in the center of the financial district wasn’t her home.

I had my late wife, Olga Volkov, to thank for that.

I also had her to thank for the fact that I didn’t even feel like Anya’s father after not seeing her once, in the flesh, all her life.

There wasn’t much I could be thankful for from the wife I had been forced to take thirty-two years ago.

She’d protested the arranged marriage to me, a rule my father struck as his dying wish.

That proclamation he’d issued on his deathbed had chained Olga to me, and me to her.

And she’d used every second between our wedding and her death to resist being my wife.

Good riddance.

But Anya wasn’t someone I could dismiss as easily.

“All these years…” I muttered to myself as I swiveled idly in my chair.

Since the moment my daughter was born—no, since she was conceived—I hadn’t been present in her life. Olga visited me as requested, mistook me for a guard she wanted to fuck, flew home to live with her parents, and realized she was pregnant. That was how remote I was from my daughter.

I’d never known Anya as a baby or a child. Never met her or spoke to her. Pictures and a verified paternity test were sent to me in the beginning, but other than that, Olga banished me from Anya’s existence.

Her parents did, bitter that their daughter had been forced to marry me, not Niko Popov.

Thinking of the sneaky bastard, I rolled my eyes. Then and now, I had few reasons to care for the asshole. Generations of rivalry and no trust wouldn’t be changing the shitty connection we had anytime soon, either.

Back when I took Olga as my wife, I hadn’t troubled myself with how the Volkovs wanted her to marry into the Popov family.

And I didn’t lose sleep about anything to do with Olga now.

I'd ceased thinking about her since the moment she left me the first time, living across the country and despising the fact that I was alive.

Now, though, this news of Anya returning had to matter. She was coming “home” whether I wanted her to or not.

Sixteen years.

It felt like a lifetime, but it wasn’t. All those years had come and gone with her over there, under the guardianship of the Volkovs since Olga killed herself three days after Anya was born.

All that time, I’d been here, in the city I ruled, taking the Orlov family to new heights of power and wealth.

Sixteen fucking years. And now I was expected to just take her in.

Anya was a distant memory to me. A minor thought tucked into the back of my mind. Yet, she’d soon be an inconvenience very much in my face.

Almost two decades of distance between us had been no doubt filled with criticism, judgment, and insults. Anya couldn’t be coming here willfully or with glee. Olga hadn’t lived with me as my wife. She’d been encouraged to go home since she’d done her duty by marrying me.

Honestly, it turned out fine for me. I didn’t have to deal with her and she let me raise our first-born.

That was the only reason I could ever be grateful to her—for my son.

For the mere action of consummating her marriage with me, the marriage forced upon us by our fathers, she had given me my son.

With Andre, I ran this city. In him, I had a legacy and a future to look forward to.

But Anya?

She was nothing more than a mistake, relocated to live with the Volkovs so they could poison her against me. Until now.

I groaned, rubbing my face and wishing I hadn’t taken that call right then.

Anya wouldn’t be my legacy after the years of her grandparents telling her how awful I was. Anya wouldn’t contribute to my success after all that time of being brainwashed to loathe me, just like Olga had.

I seldom gave a shit what others thought of me. Every plan I made revolved around how it would impact my businesses and further strengthen my forces.

Anya didn’t apply to any of that. She couldn’t fit in with any part of my world. Any chance of our even forming a father-daughter bond was over with. With how she had been conditioned to hate me from the Volkovs, I didn’t even give a fuck about her coming here.

It was callous but true.

I heaved out another deep exhale. “I just don’t give a fuck,” I muttered. I had too many other things to concentrate on.

“You don’t give a fuck about what?” Andre asked as he strode into my office, catching the tail end of my remark. He moved quickly and with ease, showing that natural athleticism he had, proving he’d never lose that confidence I’d taught him to always show.

Tall, strong, and proud, he was my right-hand man. My lethal and calculating killer who never failed to put family first.

I gave a fuck about him. I always would. Alongside my nephews, Sergei and Roman, Andre played a significant role in the organization as one of the uppermost leaders in our family.

They were the ones I depended on. They were the ones I looked out for. Ones I cared deeply about—unlike this bratty, bitter distant daughter I’d have to put up with now.

Andre raised his brows, expecting an answer. He exuded power. Intelligence. Grit.

Not malicious hatred, which I damn well knew to expect from the daughter I’d never met.

With that one phone call I’d just taken, it was clear the days of our “good old boys’ club” would be over.

“Father?” Andre prompted when I stared at him.

“I just received a call.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, at ease as he stared me right back down. Too trained to ask stupid questions and demonstrating his patience, he waited me out to explain, knowing that if it was something he needed to know, I’d tell him.

“A call from Moscow,” I added.

He shrugged.

“It appears your sister is coming back to live with us.”

That got a reaction out of him. He huffed a wry laugh. “Coming back?” he asked sardonically. “When was she here in the first place?”

He had a good point. She had been born in Moscow and neither of us had met her. Andre had been almost thirteen when she was born. A birth I only knew about from pictures and a verified paternity test.

“She’s coming here,” I corrected.

“Why?”

“Her uncle passed away.”

He rolled his eyes. “And no one else in the fucking Volkov family can take her in?”

“No one else is left. No one with wealth or power to dictate what should happen to her.” It was my turn to shrug. “While it’s not my fault the family is now destitute because of their piss-port management of finances, she is my child. It’ll be up to me to provide for her now.”

“And I bet Olga will be rolling over in her fucking grave,” he replied.

No love was lost between my son and my dead wife.

Since his birth, she'd avoided him. As soon as he was delivered, she ran off to Moscow, leaving me to raise him on my own.

When she was expected to visit me with her parents, she avoided even seeing her son, totally uninterested in him.

All to fuck me by accident and run back home once more, where she lived until she killed herself.

“Whose grave?” Sergei asked as he entered the room, just on time for the meeting I’d called with them. Roman walked in after him, straightening his tie and looking a little disheveled—likely coming straight from one of the dancers he liked to fuck.

“Olga’s,” Andre said, never referring to his mother by anything other than her name. She never had been a mother to him. “It sounds like Anya is moving here.”

Sergei furrowed his brow. A more serious man than the others, he never looked happy or at peace. This news only added to his natural appearance of annoyance. “Why?”

“Her guardian died and she has no one else to provide for her,” I explained.

“Fuck. She’s coming here?” Roman cringed. “What the hell are you going to do with her hanging around?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, too racked with the old resentment that surfaced any time I thought of my wife. Of how she hated me and the idea of a marriage I hadn’t cared to enter either. I was willing to do my duty and make the most of it, yet she hadn’t.

All she’d done was shy away and hide, hate me and act like I was the devil. She’d abandoned my son.

Fuck you and all you’ve done. Wishing her ill wouldn’t change a damn thing now. I’d be stuck with the inconvenience of my daughter who’d loathe being here. Having a woman among us would be a big adjustment. Trying to welcome someone who didn’t want to be here felt like a headache.

“Maybe I can find a tutor or nanny or something to keep her out of my way.” I sighed, already committed to procrastinating on the details of Anya’s arrival. “I’ve got too many other things to worry about instead.”

“We do,” Andre said. “I’m sure you can hire someone to babysit her.”

I smirked, unamused and unsurprised that he wouldn’t care about a sibling coming into his life. I doubted he even saw her as a relative.

“Because I’ve got two men bringing in a Giovanni spy as we speak.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “They found him near the warehouse in the district near the docks.”

I gritted my teeth. “Another fucking spy there?” Shifting my ire from my daughter to the Italian Mafia family was instantaneous. I was sick and tired of Roberto Giovanni fucking with my turf.

“And I’ve got a lead on where one of the Popov lieutenants is trying to sabotage one of our places,” Sergei said, crossing his arms like the rigid and tough soldier he was.

This was how it was. Work, work, work. It never ended and it was all-consuming.

And I’m supposed to make time for my daughter?

Welcoming her when she won’t even want to be here?

I had zero time for anything but running my empire.

I tipped my chin up at Roman, noticing he hadn’t reported in with his current issues of the day. “What about you?” I didn’t micromanage them, but with all of us having our apartments and offices within one large city block, we were always up-to-date and nearby, always together as a team.

“I was, uh…” He tugged at his collar. “I’ve been otherwise preoccupied this morning.”

Andre laughed once. “By the mark you got right there,” he said, pointing at Roman’s neck, “you either got mauled by a fucking monster or found a woman who can do some magical things with her mouth.”

I rolled my eyes, standing to go with them to interrogate the Giovanni idiot brought in for questioning. “Preoccupied, huh?” I teased my playboy of a nephew.

Hell, I was occupied with so many things, with keeping this empire running among the threats from enemies, that I couldn’t even count on making time for my estranged daughter’s arrival.

Thinking about making time for a good fuck or the company of a smart woman would be even further down my list of priorities.

I had no time for anything but running this organization, and as I left with the three of them following me, I knew that wouldn’t be changing anytime soon. I wouldn’t change anytime soon.

Not today. Not tomorrow.

Not ever.

I shook my head and wondered if I would ever feel like I could just be and breathe.