Chapter 1 Reign
REIGN
Three Months Later…
Iclosed my eyes and let out a long exhale of the cigarette smoke I had been holding in my mouth, feeling some of the tension easing away from me at last.
For a moment, everything was quiet—from the outside world to all the fucking thoughts in my head.
For one brief, blissful moment, peace was achieved.
But like all good things, it ended much too soon.
Someone snapped their fingers in front of my face, and I opened my eyes to take in the annoying face of Baran Bocharov. The fucker was shooting me a stupid grin, his pupils expanding, taking over the greens in his eyes. He was high.
I didn’t react to him. He seemed to take that as a challenge and sat down right next to me.
I didn’t move away to make any room for him.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, moving in closer.
I leaned forward and stubbed the butt of my cigarette out on the ashtray on the coffee table before the stupid fucker could burn himself.
He smelled of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and desperation.
“What’s up, my brother?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s time for you to go home.”
“Home?” He looked offended by the word. “The party is just getting started.”
I looked down at my watch. It was nearing midnight. And he was right—the party was just getting started. I let out a small, tired sigh. Baran was like the rat from Cinderella. His true self would show at midnight, and no one wanted to be around for that shit.
Plus, we were getting too old for this shit.
It was a damn good thing it was only Baran and me here tonight. Had Makar and Fabian come along, I would have had to hunt them down before they could cause any more trouble than necessary.
When the hell did I become the responsible one in our group?
I didn’t fucking like it. Responsibility did not look good on me.
Plus, I didn’t have the energy or motivation to hunt them down.
Fuck this.
I was about to get up and pull Baran along when someone climbed into my lap.
The familiar strawberry scent hit my nostrils, and I looked over to the drunk, smiling face of Rose.
We didn’t come here together, but I shouldn’t be surprised that Rose had shown up.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, leaning forward and pressing her face there.
Beside me, Baran started to make a crude gesture with his arms.
I reached over and thwacked him on the head. The loud music drowned out his complaint.
“Take me home, Reign. I’m drunk.”
“Yeah. It looks like it. What would your dad do if he found out?”
She pulled away and frowned a little. “He wouldn’t care.”
“I doubt that,” I murmured.
She shrugged as if she couldn’t care less. “I don’t want to go home. Take me back to your place.”
She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
I didn’t say anything about that. Rose and I had hooked up before. We would surely hook up again in the future. But I didn’t mess with drunk girls.
I stood up with Rose still in my arms and turned to Baran. “Let’s go.”
“But Mommmm…” he whined, exaggerating the last word.
I reached out with one hand and slapped the back of his head. “Let’s go. You have an early training session tomorrow.”
“With who?” he asked defiantly.
“With me.”
“Fuck that. You think I’m getting in the ring with you after a night of drinking?”
I grinned. “Scared?”
He stood indignant, as I knew he would. “Of you?”
I shrugged. “Come on.”
At least he obediently followed this time. I shouldn’t care whether Baran spent his night here at this house or not, but the fucker was already on thin ice, considering he was caught in bed with a judge’s daughter just last month. The daughter who just happened to still live at home.
It didn’t help that the judge was in our pocket, and now the relationship was tenuous at best.
It didn’t take long to get out of the house. I took a deep inhale of the winter air as soon as we got outside, letting it settle in my lungs.
Fuck, but sometimes, it felt like I couldn’t fucking breathe.
We headed over to my car quickly, and I plopped Rose down in the back seat as Baran took the front. Then I drove both of them back to my place.
Baran settled himself on my couch without saying a word. He was already falling asleep before his head hit the pillow, and I placed Rose in one of the spare bedrooms.
Baran could have taken the other spare, but I wasn’t about to move his drunk ass just for his own comfort.
I quickly headed to my bedroom, hopping in the shower and turning the water on as hot as I could stand.
I stayed there and closed my eyes, letting the water wash over me.
I was feeling… unsettled these past few days… hell, weeks.
And I didn’t fucking know why that was.
I shook away the thoughts and scrubbed my skin raw until the unsettledness started to fade just a little before getting out of the shower.
My phone on the bathroom counter beeped with a message. Wiping my hand dry, I picked it up, only to see a message from Kingston—
Kingston: Go grocery shopping tomorrow. Make sure the purchase is right.
Translation: He wanted me to be there personally to handle the shipments that were supposed to drop early tomorrow morning.
I didn’t respond to him.
My brother and I weren’t close.
Not like other brothers.
Not even a little bit.
Mostly because the fucker was a fucking psycho. And I was sure he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if he thought he could benefit from that.
And there would be no remorse on his end either.
Like a fucking psychopath.
Which made him perfect as our father’s favored heir to inherit everything once the old man kicks the bucket.
I couldn’t fucking wait for the day to come when my father dropped dead, just to rot in hell for the rest of eternity, where he belonged. But that also meant Kingston would be taking over.
And when it came to ruthlessness, the old man’s got nothing on Kingston. And a part of me didn’t know what my place in the Bratva would be when that happened. Would Kingston see me as a threat to his taking over the family business completely?
It was fucking tempting.
And while a part of me wanted to compete, the other part of me didn’t want to compete with him.
I put the phone down and looked at myself in the mirror.
My blue eyes were dull.
I looked tired as hell.
And there was nothing to do about it.
I walked back into my room and got ready for bed.
I had to be up a few hours later to do this all over again.
I held in a yawn just as Baran and Makar came up and stood next to me.
Makar seemed wide-eyed, fresh-faced, and fucking bushy-tailed, while Baran looked like he had just spent the night in a fucking hole and wasn’t awake yet. I didn’t know which of the two I wanted to punch more.
Makar handed me a fresh cup of coffee. I nodded in thanks and took a big gulp, ignoring the scalding hot liquid as it flowed down my throat.
Fuck, but I was tired.
The sun wasn’t even up yet. I was here by three this morning, and already things were moving along.
I didn’t sleep. I lay in bed for about two hours, my mind racing a million miles an hour, and the fucking demon was running rampant in my brain, making it impossible for even a minute of peace before I dragged my ass out of bed and drove here with a still-drunk Baran.
I looked around me as men moved the goods off the ship and into shipping containers nearby. Those would be transported out of the port and into one of the Bratva-owned warehouses around the city.
There were cops posted at a shipping port, but it was the wrong shipping port, about three hours away from where we were. By the time they realized the information they got was false, we would have already moved the goods out of here.
“Is Kingston expecting trouble with the Caparelli Famiglia or something? Is that why he wants us here for this?” Makar grumbled, sipping his own cup of coffee.
“Or he just wants to show us who’s boss,” Baran said quietly under his breath.
I elbowed him on the side. “Stop talking shit and stay vigilant.”
“I doubt we need to be that vigilant. You already planned the entire thing to a T. We have men posted in and around the port, as well as within a five-mile radius. We will know ahead of time if trouble decides to show up,” Makar commented.
I grunted. I didn’t want there to be any surprises. It didn’t hurt to be extra cautious, and it wasn’t like the Bratva was short on men.
Still.
There had been a restless feeling inside that I didn’t know how to explain away.
It was as if something big was about to happen, drastically changing everything for me, whether I was ready for it or not.
Fuck me, but I didn’t know what that was.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Rose’s name flashed on the screen.
Shouldn’t she still be passed out drunk on the bed I had put her in earlier? Why the fuck was she calling me now?
“Aren’t you going to answer?” Makar asked when my phone vibrated with another call.
I held in the irritation I could feel building in my chest and answered the phone, holding it up to my ear.
“Baby,” she breathed out over the line. The hair on the back of my neck stood up on end, and I nearly hung up without saying anything. The only reason I stayed was that Rose was nothing if not persistent.
“What?”
“Where did you go? I miss you,” she slurred.
“You’re still drunk. Go back to sleep.”
“Am not,” she argued, sounding like a petulant child, which filled me with disgust.
I grunted.
“I’m going to sleep in your bed. Naked. I don’t know why you put me in the guest room, but I don’t like it. And when you come home later… we can play.”
I kept my face neutral, not saying anything. Baran obviously heard her through the phone, though, because he started making crude gestures with his hips. I kicked the back of his knees, knocking him off balance. He turned and glared at me while Makar snickered.
I hung up the phone without answering her.
She could sleep wherever the hell she wanted in my apartment. I wasn’t coming back home until later tonight, anyway. And hopefully, by the time that happened, she would already be gone.
“Brother, you either have to cut her off or marry her. The girl is clinging to you tighter than kittens to their mother’s tits,” Baran said.
I shot Baran a look.
What the fuck?
“The fuck went on in your brain to use that kind of metaphor?” Makar asked.
He shrugged, grinning. “Stacy’s been making me watch a lot of cat videos.”
“And she won’t sleep with you if you don’t?” I asked.
“Fuck you, I got Stacy in the palm of my hand.” He held out his hand in front of us, as if to prove a point. Makar shot me an amused look.
Yeah, it was the other way around. It was Stacy who got him trapped in the palm of her hand. He just didn’t know it yet.
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe you should worry less about me and more about when you’re going to marry Stacy.”
“It’s not like that,” he said, glancing away. “We’re just having fun.”
“Right,” Makar said, looking at me. “Just having fun.”
Baran reached out and punched his arm. I moved between them. “Let’s focus on the job, yeah? Go and direct everyone to get ready for transport. And send a few of the men out to start doing mock runs with the rented trucks, in case we were followed here.”
Baran and Makar nodded and got to work. I stood where I was for a moment, taking a deep breath before letting it out, seeing the white air billow in front of me from the cold.
Then I got to work.
It was going to be a long fucking day.