Bloody Vows

1. Simone

SIMONE

M y father is dead, and someone will come for what is mine.

My father is dead.

Those four words beat around the inside of my skull until it aches as I stand in the middle of the grand entryway to my childhood home, a dull grief settling somewhere in the core of my being.

Not for my father, exactly. I don’t have any warm memories of him. There are no recollections of hugs or dolls or fatherly nicknames for me to recall as I stand here, looking around a house that’s far too big for one person.

I was never his princess or his tesoro . Never anything other than a means to an end, an only child that should have been a son, if he was only going to get one. A child who could inherit all of this, carry on his name, his empire, his legacy.

But I?—

I’m just something that can be bartered away. And since that deal was never closed, since no one put a ring on my finger before my father died, my position is both uncertain and dangerous.

There were potential suitors, of course. One, even, who nearly got as far as signing the paperwork for the betrothal. But before ink could be put to paper, my father blew it all up in the name of greed.

Acid burns in my gut at the thought of what he did.

I walk through the entryway, past the spiral staircase, my heels clicking on the marble as I stop in front of the door to his office.

I reach into my pocket, fishing for the ring of house keys that will open this door—previously closed to me. My keys, for now.

Not for long.

Someone will come to claim what I can’t. Inner strength doesn’t matter; whatever toughness I’ve cultivated over a lifetime of being not good enough won’t save me. I’m swimming in bloody waters, and the sharks will come.

Someone will swallow me whole and devour what my father built. And I have no way of stopping it. My father’s men are dead or scattered. I didn’t care for the man who could have been my husband; I know he won’t offer me any agency in all of this. And I can’t hold it on my own.

Money. Power. An empire.

I’m the key to all of it—to taking it legitimately, without blood or war. Any man who marries me claims the Russo empire.

My father’s office smells uniquely like him—wood, smoke, leather, the faint whiff of his cologne still lingering in the air. I pause in the doorway, still feeling some childish inclination that I’ll be in trouble if I’m caught snooping in here, but I shake it off.

My father has been dead for three days. In a coffin, in the ground, beneath piles of earth. He can’t control me any longer—but I also don’t have his protection.

I’m alone.

I step into the office, the click of my heel against the polished wood feeling like something momentous, a brief speck of time where my world is my own and no one has any claim on my agency but me.

I walk past the bookshelves slowly, sliding my fingers across the spines, tracing the back of my hand over one of the leather chairs in front of his desk, and finally circle around it to what was left there just before he died.

Paperwork, neatly stacked. A nonfiction book on the American economy at the turn of the 20th century that he must have been reading. A half-smoked cigar resting in a crystal dish. I stand there for a long moment, trying to picture what he must have been doing before he left.

He was gone for a week before his death. I thought he was gone on business. But Konstantin Abramov, at his funeral, painted a bloody and graphic picture of the truth for me… all of it.

My father was trafficking women. Stealing them from the clubs that he co-owned with Konstantin, the Bratva pakhan , and selling them to buyers in other countries.

My stomach twists every time I think about it.

My father wasn’t a warm man, or a kind one, or even someone I greatly respected, but I didn’t think he had that kind of evil in him.

I’m well aware of the moral complexities, all of the grey areas of the mafia life, the brutality and the killing and the blood that is often shed, but that…

I still can’t quite wrap my head around it.

Nor can I wrap my head around the rest of what Konstantin told me: that in the last week of his life he was running from Konstantin and his men, or that he died in a shitty safe house somewhere on the outskirts of Miami, taken down by a bullet from Konstantin’s enforcer, Damian Kutnezsov.

That my father had tried to infiltrate Konstantin’s estate, that he’d threatened Konstantin’s family, Damian’s family.

That he was far worse than the man I knew.

It feels like some kind of horrible nightmare, knowing that the man who raised me was capable of such terrible things, and I don’t have time to come to terms with it.

His legacy has been left unprotected and unclaimed because he was too greedy to see what the outcome of going behind Konstantin’s back would be, and too proud to think that he could ever be brought down.

So he left me—unmarried and alone—in a world that accepts neither from women born into families of power within it.

I sink down into his chair, pressing my fingers to my temples.

I want to be left alone. To be given time to grieve not only the loss of my father, but the loss of who I thought he was.

I’m going to get neither. And the knock on the office door reminds me of that, the sharp rapping noise making icepick jolts of pain shoot through my aching head.

“Come in,” I say after a moment passes, letting out a long breath. “I’m in here.”

The door creaks open, and Nora, our housekeeper, walks in gingerly.

She’s been in here before—at least to direct staff on cleaning and upkeep, but she looks as uncomfortable as I feel.

She’s wearing her housekeeper’s uniform—slacks, grey today, and a white button-down blouse—and her hair is up in a neat bun, her weathered face without a speck of makeup.

“Several men have arrived, Simone,” she says softly. “The heads of some of the families are here to pay their respects.”

The sharks have arrived. They paid their respects at my father’s funeral and the reception that was held after; there’s no need to do so again.

But they’re not here for that. They’re here to see just how bloodied I am.

If my eyes are red-rimmed, or my head is held high.

How hard I’ll negotiate for what happens to my father’s legacy, to his money, and to me, in the wake of all of this. If I’ll crumble, or if I’ll fight.

And, I expect, Konstantin Abramov is out there too, but possibly for different reasons.

He’s the only man I’m truly afraid of. With Don Genovese and now my father, Don Russo, both dead, he’s the most powerful mob boss in Miami, with no one else coming close in terms of money, alliances outside of South Florida, business interests, or manpower.

He rules Miami without question, and it goes without saying that whoever tries to claim me and my father’s empire will either need to ally with him—or be in direct opposition to him.

Or… he could kill me, and take it for himself.

Marriage isn’t an option for Konstantin—he’s already married. But my father wronged him. My father betrayed him, threatened him, and now…

Now I’m all that’s left of the Russo line.

Konstantin is known to be a man of diplomacy, a man who prefers words to bullets and peace to blood, but men change.

And it’s entirely possible that rather than allow a single speck of my father’s line to continue—rather than allow some other man to take up my father’s empire, Konstantin will simply kill me and take it all for himself.

There’s no one in Miami who could or would stop him. The thought is terrifying. It makes my blood run cold as I stand up, smoothing my hands down the front of my slim black pants and swallowing hard.

I have to face them. I have no other choice, just as I’ve never had many choices throughout all of my life. And for all I know, before the day is over, I’ll be in the ground beside my father.

It’s not fair. I allow myself a single, petulant, childish moment of thinking how very unfair it is that I was born into this life, without choices, without options, without anyone ever asking me what it is that I want.

And then, I let it go. My choices are few, but I still have some—namely, how I’m going to present myself to the men out there waiting for me, to the sharks. Whether I will be wilting or strong, frightened or brave, and I know what I choose.

I’ll never allow any of them to see that I’m terrified, even if I am.

"Tell them I'll be out in a moment," I say to Nora, my voice steady despite the way my heart is hammering against my ribs.

"Offer them drinks. Whatever they want." I need a moment to compose myself.

Just one. Inhale. Exhale. A moment to breathe and remind myself of who I am, that even if I was raised as a pawn, even the pawn has some control of the board.

Nora nods, her dark eyes filled with concern as she looks at me.

She's been with our family since before I was born, and she's the closest thing to a mother I've ever had.

My own mother died when I was seven, of a fast-moving cancer, and Nora stepped in to fill that void as much as she could, given her position in our household.

She knows me better than anyone, and I can see in her expression that she's worried about what's about to happen.

She knows the rules of this world, too. She knows what my place in it is, and to some extent, how my father left things. That I don’t have a husband, not even a fiancé. She knows how much danger I’m in.

"Be careful, mija ," she says quietly. "These men, they are not here for your benefit. They’re here for theirs."