Chapter 2
DIMITRI
Dawn hasn’t broken yet when I arrive at the cemetery, but that’s the point. I come before the sun rises, before anyone else is here to see.
The last thing I want is for my men to witness their boss kneeling in the dirt, talking to a headstone like a madman.
I can’t see the cracks in the carefully constructed front I put up every other hour of the day.
Four days. It’s been four days since I buried my baby brother, and I’ve come here every morning. It’s at the same time and it’s the same routine. I park at the far edge of the cemetery, walk through the pre-dawn gray, and kneel beside the fresh earth that still hasn’t settled over his grave.
The black granite headstone is simple with his name carved in sharp letters. Alexei Volkov. Beloved son and brother.
The dates underneath are too close together. Twenty-eight years.
That’s all he got. Twenty-eight years of life before someone put two bullets in his chest and left him bleeding out in a warehouse.
I kneel in the damp grass and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“I should have been there,” I say quietly. The words have become a ritual and a confession I repeat every morning. “It should have been me at that meeting. Not you.”
The headstone doesn’t answer but I don’t expect it to. But I keep talking anyway, because the alternative is going back to my empty estate and sitting in my office and pretending I’m fine and that I’m still in control when everything inside me is falling apart.
“You begged me,” I continue, my voice rougher than I want it to be.
“You wanted more responsibility. You wanted to prove you weren’t just the baby brother anymore.
And I—” My hands curl into fists against my thighs.
“I was so fucking proud of you. You were finally taking initiative and wanting to be part of the business. I thought it was a safe meeting. It was just border territories on neutral ground. It was just negotiations.”
But it wasn’t. It was a trap. A fucking execution.
And I let him walk into it.
The guilt is a living thing inside my chest, clawing at my lungs, making it hard to breathe. Every morning I wake up and for one blissful second, I forget. Then reality crashes down and I remember. Alexei is dead. My baby brother is dead. And it’s my fault.
I should have gone. I should have sent more men with him. I should have suspected something when the Ashfords suggested neutral territory. They never suggest neutral territory. I should have been more careful, more paranoid, more—
“You’ll make yourself sick.”
I don’t turn around, but then again, I don’t need to. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
“Uncle Konstantin,” I say flatly. “You’re up early.”
“So are you. Every morning for four days.” His footsteps crunch on the gravel path behind me. “The men are worried.”
I scowl. “The men can mind their own business.”
A Styrofoam cup appears in my peripheral vision, held by a weathered hand. Coffee. Black, from the smell of it. I take it because refusing would be more trouble than it’s worth, and press the warm cup between my palms.
Konstantin settles beside me with a soft grunt.
He’s sixty-two, my father’s older brother, and he’s been in this business longer than I’ve been alive.
Silver-haired now, but still sharp and still the strategist who’s guided our family through four decades of territorial disputes and power struggles.
He’s also the closest thing I have left to a father.
“You can’t keep doing this, Dimitri,” he says quietly. “Coming here every morning. Torturing yourself. It won’t bring him back.”
“I know that,” I bite out.
Konstantin raises an eyebrow. “Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re trying to will him back from the dead.” He takes a sip from his own coffee. “The business needs you. Your men need you. This family needs its leader, not a ghost haunting a cemetery.”
I want to snap at him and tell him he has no idea what I’m going through as he didn’t lose a brother so he can’t possibly understand.
But that would be a lie. Konstantin lost my father—his younger brother—fourteen years ago from a heart attack. Konstantin never got to say goodbye.
He understands.
“The Ashfords,” I say instead, redirecting. “What’s the latest?”
Konstantin sighs, recognizing the deflection but allowing it. “They’re fortifying. Called in reinforcements from their East Coast operations. Vincent Ashford knows retaliation is coming and he’s preparing for it.”
“Good. He should be afraid.” The rage that’s been simmering beneath my grief surges to the surface, hot and sharp. “We could hit them now. Tonight. Wipe them out in one coordinated strike. I’ve already drawn up the plans.”
“And start a war that would draw in every family in the region?” Konstantin turns to look at me, his expression grave.
“Think, nephew. The Ashfords have alliances. Business partners. Families who owe them favors. You go after them directly, you’re not just fighting Vincent and his brother.
You’re fighting half the Eastern seaboard.
We’d lose as much as we’d gain—maybe more. ”
“I don’t care,” I snarl. “They killed Alexei. They murdered my brother and you want me to—what? Just let it go? Pretend it never happened?”
Konstantin shakes his head. “I want you to be smart about this. Your father would have—”
“Once again, my father is dead,” I cut him off. “As is my brother. So forgive me if I’m not particularly interested in being patient right now.”
We sit in tense silence, the only sound being the morning birds beginning to wake in the trees around us. The sky is lightening at the edges, dawn creeping in whether I want it to or not.
“Vincent Ashford reached out to me,” Konstantin says finally. “Yesterday. With a proposal.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “A proposal? What, is he offering to throw himself off a bridge? Because that’s the only proposal I’m interested in hearing.”
“A peace treaty,” Konstantin says calmly. “Binding. Legally enforceable. A way to prevent the war neither of us can afford.”
I turn to stare at him. “You’re joking.”
“He’s offering his daughter,” Konstantin continues, watching my face carefully. “His oldest, Vera. Twenty-four years old. In marriage. To you.”
For a moment, I can’t process what he’s saying. The words don’t make sense. Then they do, and revulsion hits me hard.
“Fuck no,” I spit out. “Absolutely not. I’m not marrying one of them. I’m not—”
“Hear me out,” Konstantin says, holding up a hand.
“Just listen. She would live in your home, under your control, essentially a hostage to ensure the Ashfords’ good behavior.
They won’t move against you if their daughter—Vincent’s oldest child—is in your hands.
And legally, through marriage, you’d bind their territories to ours.
Their business interests become intertwined with yours.
It’s protection and expansion in one move. ”
I want to reject it immediately and tell him there’s no way in hell I’m tying myself to an Ashford, let alone marrying one.
But my strategist’s mind—the part of me that’s kept this family alive and thriving for the past decade and a half—is already turning over the proposal, examining it from every angle.
A hostage. That’s what she’d be. Living proof that any move against me would result in her death. Vincent Ashford couldn’t touch me without signing his own daughter’s death warrant.
And more than that…
I could make her life hell. I could make her pay for what her family did. Every single day, she’d be a reminder to the Ashfords of what they took from me.
Every morning when Vincent Ashford wakes up, he’d know his daughter is in my home, under my control, suffering for his mistakes.
The idea shouldn’t appeal to me. I’m not a sadist. I don’t take pleasure in causing unnecessary pain.
But then I look at Alexei’s headstone, and a viciousness takes root.
“What happens if the peace breaks?” I ask slowly, one finger scraping against the Styrofoam of my cup as I think through everything. “If they move against us anyway?”
Konstantin’s expression doesn’t change. “Then she pays the price. Everyone understands that. It’s the nature of these arrangements. She would be your wife, yes, but more importantly, she’d be your insurance policy.”
I raise an eyebrow. This seems too good to be true. Who on earth would ever agree to this? “And Vincent Ashford agreed to this?”
My uncle shrugs before draining the rest of his coffee.
“He’s desperate. He knows war would destroy both our families and this is his way of preventing it while saving face.
He sacrifices his daughter to save everyone else.
” Konstantin stands, brushing dirt from his expensive slacks.
“Think about it. You don’t have to decide right now, but think about what this could mean.
For the business. For your position. For—” He glances at the headstone. “For justice.”
Justice. That’s what he’s calling it but we both know what it really is. Revenge. Cold, long-term revenge that would let me hurt the Ashfords every single day for the rest of my life.
I could keep her close. Watch her. Use her. Make her suffer in ways that wouldn’t violate the terms of the peace but would remind her—and her family—exactly what they’d done.
It’s brilliant. Sick, twisted, but brilliant.
“I’ll think about it,” I say finally.
Konstantin nods, satisfied. He starts to walk away, but pauses. “The wedding would need to happen quickly. Within two weeks, ideally. Before either family has time to reconsider or outside parties try to interfere.”
Two weeks. From grieving brother to married man in two weeks. The absurdity of it should make me laugh.
Instead, I just nod.
“Uncle,” I call out before he can leave. He turns back. “Have you seen Alexei’s forensic report? The full one?”
Something flickers across his face, but it’s too quick to read. “No. Why?”