Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Kolya
“Your wife isn’t ordering me to do shit,” I snapped at Kirill.
We were in his study at the main house. He personally fetched me from the carriage house, probably because he figured no one else could make me leave.
Chloe had locked herself and Sebastian in the room and I wasn’t stupid enough to break down the door and alienate her further.
As for Kirill, he was pissed. It unsettled him when his wife had a beef with me, or vice versa.
I wouldn’t hurt Lucy. I respected her as the pakhan’s wife and actually thought she was a great asset to the organization.
“I’m not ordering you!” Lucy shot back. “But you must admit it’s kind of dirty of you to play house with Chloe while you’re engaged to someone else.”
“He’s not engaged to someone else,” Kirill said. “If I had my way, I’d order him to marry Cassano’s sister. Serves the bratva better.”
“Fuck you, Kirill,” I spat.
My friend merely shot me his bland look and took a sip of whiskey. I downed my tumbler of vodka. Voices sounded from the outside.
I glared at Kirill. “You called Ivan?”
“No, I did,” Lucy said.
I transferred my displeasure at Lucy. “Why?”
“Because as the previous pakhan, he might have more insight into what’s going on.”
“Your wife doesn’t trust your ability to handle this?”
Kirill shrugged. “If what happened was before my time, then Ivan has more information. I’m a big fan of saving time.”
The door to the study opened, and Ivan walked in.
“Why didn’t you tell me the Vozhokari is pestering you?” he asked me.
“Have a seat, Ivan,” Kirill said. “If there was anyone Kolya should have informed, then it should have been me.”
Ivan huffed and sat in the chair in front of the desk.
Kirill had an ancient tome open and he’d been flicking through it.
A book that was a hundred and fifty years old and passed down for generations.
Everything about the Vozhokari was in there, including the time the Petrovs broke away from them and joined Russian organized crime.
“What does Vozhokari even mean?” Lucy was typing on her phone. “I can’t determine its etymology. Sounds Russian, even Japanese.”
I shrugged. “No one knows. Grigori suggested it might be a derivative of the Russian word for harbinger…predvestnik.”
Lucy frowned at me disbelievingly.
Yeah, Grigori was full of shit.
“Oh my God, what is that?” Lucy pointed to a drawing of a man fucking a woman on top of a stone slab. Torches and hooded figures surrounded the couple fucking on the surface.
“The blue-eyed Petrov warrior is to keep the line of the undying alive,” Kirill said, and the way he said it, he was trying not to laugh. He scratched his brow. “He is tasked with impregnating a vessel to continue the line.”
“Undying?” Lucy laughed. “What are you, a vampire?”
“There were rumors we were,” I murmured. “In reality, we were simply hard to kill.”
“The genetics of a blue-eyed Petrov,” Ivan said. “Duncan King was interested in the Petrov genetics. That was why we were associates.”
My brows drew together. “Is that why Esther knew about these Vozhokari assassins enough to hire them to go after Chloe and her mom?”
“Yes. Duncan regretted telling her about them.”
“When?” Lucy asked.
“Several times,” Ivan said. “He tasked me with watching over Renée. Even after Aralina was born, I kept tabs on Renée and Chloe.” He nodded to me. “Remember that time I sent you to Georgia because two assassins were after them?”
“So you had already met Chloe before then?” Lucy asked me, and I didn’t like the accusation in her question.
“I hadn’t ‘met’ them. My job wasn’t even them. It was the assassins.”
“I remember that incident,” Kirill said. “The bratva had to pay off an organization for interfering with a legitimate contract. That was the Vozhokari?”
Both Ivan and I nodded.
“Grigori kept bringing up that incident against me. What he couldn’t get was I owe my allegiance to the bratva.
Not the Petrovs, and especially not the Vozhokari.
” Because the Petrovs did nothing other than take me in when the Vozhokari killed my parents.
The Petrovs considered it a justified response when my father refused their vessel to marry my mother.
“Grigori said we were going against our tradition and I needed to pay.”
“With your sperm?” Lucy said with a straight face, but the twitching of her lips and amusement in her eyes irritated the hell out of me.
Kirill chuckled. “Apparently, Kolya has super-soldier sperm. Maybe we should bottle it up and sell it on the black market.”
“Fuck you, Zahkarov. That’s not even funny.”
“It’s not.” Lucy crossed her arms. “So if it’s a myth, why is Duncan King interested in the Petrov line? There must be science-based genetics backing it up, not merely mythology.”
Kirill leaned back in his chair, as if hanging on to some succulent information.
I wanted to roll my eyes.
“King Industries has a pharmaceutical research company that develops antipsychotic drugs,” Ivan said. “They own the psychiatric hospital, disguising it as a wellness center. That’s where Theo is keeping Jeremiah. That’s where Esther stayed most of the time, too.”
“The Astorian?” Lucy asked.
“How did you know that?” Kirill asked.
“It was in Ivan’s files on the Kings,” she told him.
“I don’t want to hear about Jeremiah,” Kirill said. “Tell me why they’re interested in Kolya.”
“This was decades ago,” Ivan muttered. “There was an iteration of the antipsychotic drug that had the opposite effect. It enhanced aggression. Investors in the defense industry were interested in the research. Grigori had the ambition to become pakhan, so he told Duncan about the Vozhokari and the myth about blue-eyed Petrovs carrying a rare DNA. Accelerated blood clotting, low emotional reactivity under extreme stress, and a high pain tolerance.”
“That could be me,” Kirill mused.
Lucy laughed; I chuckled. “Your wife is your kryptonite, comrade.”
“You almost fainted from blood loss,” Lucy reminded him.
“Maybe because it was you who shot me,” Kirill replied.
“Was anything done with that research?” I asked. Because sneaky Grigori managed to get my DNA to frame me for the Mistress Strangler.
“Wait,” Lucy said. “Would Sebastian be in danger from the Vozhokari? His eyes. They’re like yours, Kolya.”
“And he has the mark of a scythe on the back of his knee.” Mine was on my ankle. There was no telling where the birthmark would appear. Dimitri’s was on the back of his shoulder and the one belonging to my father was right smack in the center of the chest.
“Sebastian fits the myth,” I said. “That’s why I expect the bratva to protect my son.”
“Not even a question. We will,” Kirill said. “But Chloe needs convincing.”
“I don’t know how to tell her about the Vozhokari.”
“You should have come to me about them when they’d been harassing you,” Kirill shot back.
“Grigori is dead,” I said. “I figured that was over, but then Chloe and I hit the news and it caught the attention of my relatives in Russia.”
“So they couldn’t be the one who instigated the attack on Chloe’s apartment because it was after when your cousin called you,” Lucy said.
“Or they already knew,” Ivan said.
“I don’t see how.” I narrowed my eyes at Ivan. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.” The Vozhokari never worried me because they had no hold over me unless I took a wife or had a child.
“You think they’re not watching you?” Kirill’s father asked.
“They could have…once I was released from prison.” I stood and walked over to the window, where I could see the carriage house. This banishment was making me antsy. It felt unnatural to be separated from Chloe and Sebastian. Fuck. What if I couldn’t find a solution? Another thought occurred to me.
“Do you think Theo knows about the research?” Dread flared inside me. “What if he’s going to use Sebastian as an experiment?”
Ivan’s face went blank.
“You considered this?” I stalked toward him.
Lucy, who was standing, crossed my path. “Back off.”
I was going to shove her aside when Kirill shot up from his chair. “I’d think carefully before you lay a finger on my wife!”
Christ! I scrubbed a frustrated hand down my face. I would have sneered, but now that I had Chloe and Sebastian, I could understand his protectiveness.
But I didn’t really have them, did I?
“I’m out of options,” I told them. “Other than forcing Chloe to accept the bratva’s protection.”
“I’ll help you convince her,” Lucy said.
“King’s not gonna be happy,” Kirill pointed out.
“I don’t give a fuck. Aren’t we all going to be one big, happy family, anyway?”
“That’s true,” Lucy said. “Won’t protection extend to Chloe once Aralina marries Theo?”
“I’m pakhan,” Kirill said. “I can declare anything.”
“I don’t think that’s enough to stop the Vozhokari,” Ivan said.
Kirill glared at his father. Their relationship had warmed up ever since Lucy married into the family.
I preferred it when father and son were both sniping at each other.
They were entertaining as fuck, but admittedly their clashes didn’t help the stability of the bratva.
If I were like my cousin Grigori, who thought he could become pakhan, fostering animosity between the ranks was a sneaky way to do it.
But I hated politics. And that was why Kirill and Ivan trusted me.
“But…” Ivan added. “There might be another way.”
“Really?” Kirill sat back in his chair. “I’d like to hear this.”
“Chloe signed a covenant with Margo Winthrop, right?” Ivan asked.
Everyone in the room hitched their shoulders.
“Your point? I can’t marry Chloe unless I solve the Vozhokari problem.”
“The Winthrop covenants go back further than the Vozhokari,” Ivan said. “Two hundred years ago, covenants weren’t signed in ink; they were signed in blood and were known as the Winthrop Blood Covenants. They covered anything from ending wars to forging alliances through marriage.”
“That’s nothing new. Most ancient rituals did.”
“Yes, but even then, I believe the Winthrop Blood Covenants are absolute and supersede all prior claims from all factions, tribes, or organizations.”
“Do you have any proof of this?” Kirill asked in a dry tone.
“Margo. We can ask Margo,” Lucy said with growing excitement. “What if there are archives? Archives that Margo might not even know about.”
“You expect Margo to dig into outdated scripture? I’m sure her organization has transformed from ancient rituals,” Kirill said.
“How sure are we that it’s outdated or superseded?
” Lucy challenged. “Yes, organizations evolve through the ages, leadership, wars, and revolutions but who says they are no longer honored? That’s why there are secret societies, right?
Because modern society wouldn’t understand the practices that have endured for hundreds of years.
If the rules of the blood covenant remain valid, then it might be a solution. ”
“Isn’t that something similar to what you lawyers do?” I asked.
Lucy grinned. “Yep, legal precedent.”
“Margo doesn’t appear to be the kind of person who’d get her hands dirty in ancient dusty records,” Kirill said.
“I signed my initial covenant with her on my phone,” Lucy replied. “Their security is hard to hack, remember? They’ve joined the twenty-first century. But for the right price, dear husband, we can put in a request to the matchmaker. Everything has a price.”
“Where do they even exist?”
“There’s a rumor that the Marriage Ink building has a sublevel where all the covenants are stored. If proven that the covenant signed in blood is absolute, then we’ll have to convince Chloe to marry you.”
“I’m not her favorite person right now.” Thanks to the disastrous timing of Dimitri’s texts.
Chloe wouldn’t have kicked me out if I hadn’t just fucked her.
At that point we had no claim on each other except Sebastian.
It might even push her to consider that I was marriage material.
But now, she was seeing me as a backstabbing, cheating asshole. “But…do it. There’s nothing to lose.”
“Exactly.” Lucy stared at Kirill.
He shrugged. “Do it.”
Lucy’s gleeful expression appeared as if Kirill had handed her a blank check or the winning lottery ticket.
I hoped we would find that loophole.