Bought By the Bratva (Mafia Kings Reverse Harems #2)

Chapter 1

MAKSIM

My suit jacket settles across my shoulders like armor, tailored precision over controlled violence.

I button it with the same deliberation I'd use to load a gun.

Each motion measured, each choice final.

The silk lining whispers against my shirt, cool and expensive.

My cufflinks catch the late July sun. Platinum.

Engraved with the Severyn crest. A ritual performed a thousand times, a reminder that the boy left bleeding on a Moscow floor is dead, and what rose in his place doesn't break.

"You sure about this?"

Zakhar's voice cuts through the humid air.

He stands to my left, arms crossed, shoulders squared.

Always the sentinel. His question isn't about doubt.

He knows I've calculated every variable, considered every contingency.

But he asks anyway, because that's what brothers do.

They witness your choices even when they can't stop you from making them.

I adjust my left cuff. The scar tissue pulls tight across my knuckles. Phantom ache from bones broken twenty-five years ago, healed wrong, reminders carved into flesh and nerve. My hands haven't played Rachmaninoff since I was fifteen. They've done other things instead.

"It's the logical step." My voice carries no inflection. Facts don't require emotion, and I deal in facts.

The Ainsley mansion looms before us, all weathered limestone and desperate grandeur.

Old money trying to remember what power felt like before it started slipping through their fingers.

The circular drive spreads beneath our feet like a stage, gray stone baking in the heat, and we're the final act in a production Arthur Ainsley can't afford to cancel.

Two black SUVs idle behind us, engines ticking as they cool. Armor plating. Bulletproof glass. Enough firepower in the trunks to start a small war. We don't do anything halfway. You either commit to survival or you die.

Alexei shifts to my right. Restless energy coiled in muscle and ink, the summer heat making him shed his jacket like a skin he never wanted.

He's scanning the property, mapping exits, sight lines, potential threats.

Even standing still, he vibrates with barely contained violence.

It's not rage. It's readiness. The man who stops moving is the man who dies, and Alexei refuses to be still.

I think of the path that brought us here.

Three boys who should have died in Moscow.

One left for dead in ashes, two abandoned to freeze in an orphanage that made Dickens look optimistic.

We survived by becoming what survival demanded.

Zakhar's iron discipline. Alexei's feral hunger.

My methodical calculation. We don't talk about those years.

We don't need to. The scars speak for themselves.

Now we stand at the threshold of legitimacy, and all it costs is a marriage.

"We have more money than we know what to do with," I continue, still working my cuffs into exact alignment.

The fabric must sit flush. Details matter.

Sloppiness gets you killed. "But capital without influence is just numbers in accounts.

Arthur Ainsley opens doors. Political circles.

Society infrastructure. The kind of power that doesn't require guns. "

"Power built on quicksand," Zakhar observes. Low. Factual. No judgment, just assessment.

"Which is why he needs us." I finally look at him. "The Albanians want their money back. Arthur lost it trying to be clever with other people's investments. We have what he needs. Protection, time, and enough weight to make the Albanians reconsider their collection methods."

Alexei laughs, sharp and dark as broken glass. "At the cost of your freedom, pakhan."

I turn and stare at him. He meets it without flinching, that feral grin still playing at the corner of his mouth, daring me to deny it. As if anyone could cage me. As if I haven't spent every day since I was fifteen refusing to be trapped, controlled, made helpless again.

"No one owns me." Each word drops like a stone into deep water. "This is an exchange of assets. Strategic. Mutually beneficial. Nothing more."

Alexei's grin widens, but he says nothing else. He knows when to push and when to let silence do the work.

We move as a unit up the stone steps. Our footfalls synchronize without discussion. Years of operating as one organism, breathing together, killing together. The door opens before we reach it.

A maid in a black uniform stands on the threshold. Middle-aged, tired eyes, the particular exhaustion that comes from working in a house that's slowly dying but won't admit it. She barely meets our gaze, trained to make herself invisible.

"Mr. Severyn?" Her voice carries the false brightness of someone performing hospitality out of fear, not welcome. "Mr. Ainsley is expecting you. Please, follow me."

The interior of the mansion confirms what I already knew. Rectangular shadows on walls where paintings used to hang. Furniture arrangements that don't quite work, pieces moved to fill gaps. The air smells like polish trying to mask decay, old wood and older money slowly rotting from the inside out.

Perfect.

Arthur Ainsley is exactly where I need him. Desperate. Out of options. Ready to sell anything—anyone—to stay alive.

The maid leads us down a corridor lined with family portraits. Generations of Ainsley men staring down with the particular arrogance of people who've never had to fight for anything. Their eyes follow us, these dead men in their gilded frames. Judging. Dismissing.

They're all dead. We're not.

She stops at a heavy oak door, knocks twice, and opens it without waiting for a response.

"Your guests, Mr. Ainsley."

Arthur rises from behind an ostentatious desk.

Dark wood, gold inlay, the kind of statement piece designed to intimidate.

On him, it fails completely. He's in his fifties, soft around the middle, with the blotchy complexion of a man who drinks to forget his failures. His smile is too wide, too eager.

Desperation masked as enthusiasm.

"Maksim! Gentlemen! Please, come in, come in." He gestures broadly, movements too expansive. Nervous energy burning through forced joviality, like a man trying to convince himself this is just business, not surrender.

I don't sit. Instead, I begin a slow circuit of the office, hands clasped behind my back.

Establishing territory. Reminding him who holds the power here.

Alexei drops into one of the leather chairs with deliberate casualness, legs spread, arms draped over the rests like he's evaluating which piece of furniture he'll set on fire first. Zakhar positions himself by the door, feet planted shoulder-width apart, hands loosely clasped in front.

Sentinel. Guardian. Executioner, if it comes to that.

Arthur tries to fill the silence. "Can I offer you gentlemen a drink? I have a rather exceptional—"

"Let's not waste time." I pick up a crystal paperweight from his desk. Heavy. Cold. I set it down without ceremony, dismissing both the object and his attempt at small talk. "You know why we're here."

His smile falters. Good.

I continue my circuit, touching objects, examining them, putting them down. A pen. A letter opener. A photograph in a silver frame of Arthur shaking hands with an influential politician. Each touch is a claim, a reminder that nothing in this room is beyond my reach.

"Your private banking business is failing. You lost money belonging to the Albanian Mafia while attempting to launder it. Creative accounting can't hide bodies, Arthur, and the Albanians are very interested in accountability."

Arthur's complexion shifts from florid to ash. He sinks into his chair like a man who's been gut-shot but doesn't want to acknowledge the wound.

"Fortunately for you," I continue, my voice still that same controlled monotone, "the Albanians are also an inconvenience to the Severyn Bratva.

Which means we have a vested interest in seeing them.

.. disappointed. We can provide protection.

Buy you time. Ensure you live long enough to repay what you owe. "

I stop at the window overlooking the back of the property. Manicured gardens slowly losing their battle with neglect. A pool sparkling blue in the afternoon sun, the water so clear it looks like cut glass. And—

My thoughts fracture.

A woman floats on an inflatable in the center of the pool.

Red bikini. Olive skin glistening wet. Dark hair spread around her like a saint's halo in a Renaissance painting.

She's wearing sunglasses, face tilted toward the sun, body utterly relaxed in a way that speaks of someone comfortable in her own skin.

One leg dangles in the water, toes breaking the surface in lazy circles.

Victoria Ainsley.

I've seen photographs. Society pages. Gossip blogs. The socialite daughter of failing American royalty, always impeccably dressed, always photographed at the right events with the right people. Beautiful in that untouchable way of women who've never had to fight for anything.

The photographs lied.

They didn't capture the curve of her waist where it dips before flaring to her hips. The way water beads on her skin and catches light like diamonds. The arch of her foot as she shifts on the raft, unselfconscious, unaware of being watched.

My pulse kicks up. Heat spreads through my chest, down to my groin.

The kind of base physical response I trained out of myself years ago because desire is leverage and leverage gets you killed.

I taught myself discipline. Restraint. The ability to look at a beautiful woman and see only variables, potential complications, strategic value.

I can't look away.