36. Kirill
Kirill
I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life. But for the last several years, yearning for the day I would be crowned as pakhan had been sidelined by waiting for the day I would find Sandrine.
With my wife home, my daughter safe, my position secure, I am complete.
Drago drops the ceremonial jacket over my shoulders with a smile I haven’t seen since his wedding day.
“Pakhaaaaan,” he rasps in a different way than he has in the last several months.
Tonight it becomes official.
I turn to stare at my reflection in the stand-up mirror wheeled into my new north wing office. The jacket is heavy, like armor, but ornate, like a palace. It belonged to Papa’s, his father’s, and a lot of other cruel Volkov men before it sat on my shoulders.
“This was meant to be,” Drago adds with a touch of menace in his voice.
Here we are after spilled blood, broken bones, and betrayal. Every step in my journey led to this moment.
I meet my enforcer’s gaze in the mirror, adjusting cufflinks with the cool metal against my skin.
“We’re not done, you know,” I say, holding his stare. “There are still traitors who’ve not pledged their support.”
“Some have gone into hiding.” Drago’s mouth curves into a wider smile, already tasting the blood he can spill. “But we will find them all and make them pay.”
The door bursts open before I can answer with the same brutality on my tongue, but I hold it back as my daughter barrels into the room.
“Daddy!” Violet rushes at me in a blur of white tulle with glittering gold.
I scoop her up. “Aren’t you pretty?” I nuzzle her.
“I’m a princess,” she declares with pride, twisting in my arms to get down. When her feet hit the carpet, she twirls. “Look, Daddy.”
“You’re the most beautiful Volkov princess,” I tell her, my fingers wrapping around a glossy dark curl.
She beams at me like my praise is candy. Staring at my daughter, I hear the noise in my head go quiet. I can forget about the weight of what’s coming, of what this night demands of me.
Who I am now, officially, and the permission it will give me to go on a warpath to secure myself as head of the American Bratva.
The air in the room suddenly shifts, and I feel Sandrine’s warmth before I see her. She’s perfumed in the sweet but musky scent I bought her years ago. I kept the bottle with her things. It’s the scent I’d spray on her dresses and sit in her closet. Cry and pretend she was still there.
Those were the difficult nights when I’d yell at clothes on a hanger: “Where are you? Why did you do this?”
But that horror fades quickly in my mind. She will never disappear from me again.
Turning around to glance at my wife, I feel my axis tilt.
Sandrine stands in the doorway of the office, framed by the amber light from the hallway sconces.
I did that. I made this happen. I gave my daughter her mother back. I gave Sandrine the daughter she lost.
God, that dress. It’s as thick and formal as a ceremonial gown should be, but it hugs her body in a way that makes a king want to ravage his queen.
My chest tightens, and different versions of her flash in my memory. The woman in the park who said yes and promised me forever. The woman in a hospital who birthed my daughter. The woman who, three weeks later, handed me our daughter and promised to return. But never did.
Only for a second do I see the ghost who haunted me.
“You’re staring at Mommy, Daddy,” Violet whispers, pulling my hand. “Tell her she looks pretty!”
I exhale slowly, forcing myself back into my body, into this office, into the man who will take an oath for a position I will own until my dying breath.
Pakhan.
“You look beautiful,” I tell Sandrine.
My praise comes out matter-of-fact, but the look I give her, which my daughter can’t see, carries enough weight for her to know the depth of my stare.
And what I want. Her. In my bed. Tied up. Me taking her however the fuck I want.
Her gaze meets mine, pride flickering there. “You look good too, Pakhan.”
I get chills when she calls me that.
I take Violet’s hand and walk toward the door, holding my wife by the waist as well. Drago follows and captures his wife’s hand as we make our way to the stairs.
With my father’s death, the entire north wing has been gutted and repurposed. I requested a ceremony room be built in my father’s old bedchamber. It will also double as a meeting space for senior leadership, trials, and punishments. My new office suite sits one floor below the new chamber.
To the world, I officially assumed the role of CEO of Mid-West Iron months ago when my father stepped down from our construction empire. Tonight’s ceremony is Bratva only. Those who swore to me.
I slide my hand from Sandrine’s waist and take her warm, steady hand. Feeling her fingers tangled in mine shoots electricity through me.
My bride. My queen.
Mine.
Sandrine and I share a look and move inside together as the first Bratva family.
Inside, the formality parts pass quickly. I attended this same ritual for my father as a child. I was a little older than Violet when his father was killed, and my father ascended to Pakhan.
The three of us enter to the sound of horns and drums, my Vory in a receiving line.
We step up to an anointed elder, where I kneel when required, stand when commanded, and accept my birthright with an oath I’ve practiced for months.
The role that had already been decided by my blood long before tonight.
There’s no crown. No swords. Just a knife in my pocket for later. And something else.
When it’s done, when the final acknowledgment ripples through the room like a startling verdict, I turn to Sandrine.
With my signal, she takes her place next to me, and when she lifts her dress to step onto the platform, I see she’s wearing flats.
She’s still having issues with dizziness.
I smile, though. She’s fucking mine, no matter what.
Looking regal, she pledges her loyalty to me. To the brotherhood.
She is the Mother of Kings to my people. There will be sons.
The elder announced that my anointment is recognized by the council, and cheers erupt in the room. Deep. Raw. Russian. And violent at my command. Anywhere, anytime.
The reception begins, and the atmosphere shifts from gothic ceremonial to modern celebratory. It reads like a wedding. There are tables with candles and flowers. The air is thick with cologne, alcohol, and power.
My wife moves through the room with me, a picture of grace. Her presence at my side makes this night feel whole and complete. It sickens me to think I would have had to do this with Tamara, as was planned since we were young.
Those false dates with her were tough to get through. But she loved them. Loved showing me off to her Instagram fans. It was all I could stand. But it was necessary. And it worked.
With Sandrine by my side, I greet heads of Russian families from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.
Those who have pledged to me. I never made any official announcement about the fracture in my marriage.
It was no one’s business. It’d been known in hushed Chicago circles outside the brotherhood that she'd disappeared. Perhaps her return is seen as convenient. Weeks before my father’s death.
Ha, this marriage is real between us again, and I’ve never felt more alive and powerful. I allow myself to believe that this revived physical connection we’ve made might hold.
Then I see another vision in white and gold, and the hand, not holding my wife’s, balls into a tight fist. Across the room, cutting through the crowd is Tamara.
Alone. Her expression is composed in a way that tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing walking in here tonight.
Dressed like a queen, in my wife’s colors.
Payback for missing that wedding in Miami. Good.
How the fuck she got in here is going to be written in someone’s obituary tomorrow as the cause of death. Her father is still powerful, though. Some are more afraid to cross Adrian Chernov than me. That will change tonight.
Tomorrow, Drago will find out who leaked my wife’s appointment at the dress shop. And when he does, someone is going to suffer for it.
My enforcer appears at my side, his voice low enough that no one else hears it. “We didn’t invite her. We invited her father. But he’s running late. She convinced the guards that he sent her in his place.”
“Adrian is too busy to come to my coronation?” I mutter about the third-most-powerful man in my brotherhood. “When he shows up, he will regret that.”