14. Chapter Fourteen #2
“When you and Mikhail tried to save us. I was the one who hesitated. I was the one who questioned if we could trust Mikhail. But if we had just kept walking, then maybe Uncle Denis wouldn’t have found us. Maybe we’d be safe with you.”
A tear slips down my face. “Oh, Sasha. Don’t beat yourself up over that. You didn’t know Mikhail. How could you have trusted him? It’s ok. Just stay strong. Tell Irina and Ana that I love them. Mom too. And… I love you as well. You know that.”
“I haven’t always known that.”
I flinch. “Well, you know that now. I love you. Stay strong. I will find a way to save you from marrying a man Denis chooses.”
“Thank you. And I will get you a name as soon as I have it. I have to go now.” She hangs up before either of us can say goodbye.
Mikhail
I’m at war with Nico. Cillian betrayed me. And Denis hates me.
I have my fair share of allies that can help me in this war but Nico and Cillian and Denis all have their own men too. And now Nico and Cillian are working together to go against me.
And Denis is against me.
And I have to save Natalya’s family before they get hurt because I don’t want Natalya to be hurt.
And I’m running out of fuckin options.
So, when Natalya bursts into my office, I’m already in a bad mood.
I stifle my sigh. “What is it?”
“Sasha called me. She managed to sneak her phone from Denis. He’s trying to marry her off.”
“Did he say to who?”
“No. She doesn’t have a name. He didn’t give her one. But she did say he wanted her married off within a few months. It’s happening fast, Mikhail. You have to do something. Please.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been working on a way to get them out of there. I had a way and Denis foiled the fucking plan. I am trying, Natalya.” My tone is a lot harsher than I intend for it to be.
She flinches. “I’m just worried.”
“I know. But if you can’t stop, I will have to spank you again.”
“Is there no way to help her?”
“If I had a name, I could try to kill the man.”
“That’s what I told her. She’s going to find out.”
I shrug. “Then that’s what we have to do. We have to wait for her to find out the name.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t find out until her wedding day? What then?”
“Then I go in with guns and shoot down your uncle and her husband and save her. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like she could be put in danger. That my entire family could be hurt. I just lost my father, Mikhail. I can’t lose my mom and sisters too.”
I run my hand down my face, tamping down my anger. It’s not anger directed towards Natalya. It’s anger from this entire shitty situation I have found myself in.
“I can… I can try to talk to Denis,” I say slowly as a plan forms in my mind.
“Talk to him?”
“I can try. That is if he doesn’t shoot me first. I can suggest a deal. That we work together.”
“Isn’t he angry with you for killing Antoni and marrying me?”
“Yes. He is. But I can offer… I can offer him power. I can suggest that I play a part in who Sasha marries.”
All the color leaves Natalya’s face. “Play a part in who she marries? I don’t want her to have to marry anyone!”
“Don’t snap at me,” I remind her gently.
I can see the challenge it takes to tamp her own anger down. “I’m sorry. But is this the way?”
“Your father was going to marry you all off at some point. Wasn’t he?”
“…yes,” she admits. “But he would have made sure to marry us to men who would not hurt us.”
“And you think I’d marry Sasha off to someone who would hurt her? You think that low of me?”
All the fight leaves her and she slumps into the chair across from my desk. “I’m sorry, Mikhail. I really am. You’re right. You promised me you’d save my sisters.”
“I did. Right now, I’m not sure I can get Sasha away from your uncle. But I can offer him a deal. I can suggest that we work together and choose someone we both agree on to marry her too. Someone that will benefit us both. It’s the best thing I can do right now.”
“What if he kills you? You dying is not the best thing right now.”
“I’ll bring multiple men with me. I’ll choose a location we can both agree on. Somewhere public. It will lower my chances of getting killed.” I sit back in my seat. “Come here.”
Obediently, she does as I say.
I pull her into my lap. “I will be careful. And I will try to save your sister. But I know I can’t just ask Denis to hand your sisters over. He wants to use them for his own gains. So let me try to make a deal with him that will help us all.”
“Would you try to backstab him then?”
“It did cross my mind. But for now, I have to be sincere in making a deal with Denis. Otherwise, the whole plan will fall through.”
“What if he doesn’t want to make a deal?”
“Then we’re back at square one. But I can try this and we’ll go from there.”
“You can’t tell him Sasha called me. I can’t get her in trouble,” she says.
I cup her face and she leans right into my touch. After what happened at the party the other night, I’m glad she’s still comfortable with my touch. I can’t bear the idea of my own wife being afraid of me.
“I understand,” I say. “I won’t mention Sasha. I’ll just tell Denis it’s been something I’ve been thinking of for a while.”
“Thank you.” She gives me a small kiss. It’s one I want to sink into more but I have work to do.
So with a heavy sigh, I pull away from her.
It takes some convincing but Denis finally agrees to meet at a public restaurant that neither of us owns and no one in the mafia owns either.
We both have two guards with us who wait in the table across from ours.
“So, you wanted to talk,” Denis says. “I should kill you for trying to take my girls from me.”
“They’re not your girls, Denis. They’re Lev’s daughters.”
Denis clenches his teeth together. It’s obvious from even across the table. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to offer you a deal. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Nico Bernardi and Cillian Kennedy are working together.”
He takes a sip of his water. “I may have heard that.”
“So, it only makes sense if we start working together. We’re both Bratva. If we combined our forces together, we could easily take both of them down and become richer for it, instead of fighting each other all the time.”
“Mmm. It’s not a bad proposal. Too bad I don’t like you. You worked with my brother and you know that my brother and I were never close.”
“Why did you hate each other? Lev never said.”
Denis scoffs. “He was the perfect son. Everyone loved him. He had the young, pretty wife. The young, pretty daughters. Why wasn’t I granted the same young, pretty wife? The same young, pretty daughters?”
“You could have met a woman and married her.”
“Not in the Bratva. You know that. My parents wanted me to marry some ugly bitch and I did marry her. Until she died a few years ago. Don’t look at me like that. She died of breast cancer. You can look it up.”
“Fine. I believe you.”
“She was no Tatiana, I can tell you that.”
“Tatiana is beautiful,” I agree. I saw her at the funeral and was struck by how beautiful she is.
“Exactly. So you can understand why I hated my brother.”
“You were jealous of him.”
“He had everything and I had nothing.”
“So, now you’re trying to take over his life, is that it? Force his daughters to be your daughters. Force his wife to be your wife.”
He slams his hand onto the table. “I haven’t touched Tatiana.”
“Because she won’t let you.”
Denis ducks his chin, telling me I’m right.
I lean forward in my seat. “But you tried. Didn’t you? You tried to touch her.”
He flashes me a glare, confirming my suspicions. “What exactly do you want, Mikhail?”
“Like I said. To work together. With me, you can gain more power than you’ve ever dreamed of. You could become even more powerful than your brother was. And together, we could decide the fates of Natalya’s sisters.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you want to marry them off. It’s obvious. You want to use them to gain you more power. Natalya is worried you’ll marry them to men who could hurt them.”
He scoffs. “Why does it matter what Natalya wants? She left her sisters. She left her home. She left me when she wasn’t supposed to.”
“You were going to marry her to Antoni. She wasn’t going to live in her father’s house forever.”
“But she would have been under my thumb. She wouldn’t have been able to shoot me.” He nods at his shoulder where his arm still hangs limp.
“Things got off to a bad start, I’m afraid. But all Natalya wants is to be in her sisters’ lives. Let’s work together, Denis. We can choose who to marry them to. We can gain power together.”
“I don’t trust you and I never will.”
“So, you’re just going to let Nico and Cillian take over this city? Is that it?”
He glowers and slumps back in his seat more. All I can think as I look at him is how much of a pale imitation he is compared to Lev. No wonder Denis was jealous of his brother. Denis is not half the man Lev was.
“I can’t trust you, Mikhail. And while you do offer an interesting proposition for me, I’m not sure I can take it.”
I can feel this deal slipping through my fingers. “Is there anything I can offer you? Anything else?”
He considers it for a moment before he shrugs. “Divorce Natalya and I can marry her to a man of my choosing and then we can work together.”
I clench my hands together under the table. “You know I’m not going to do that. You’re asking the impossible from me.” I sigh. “Which is your answer. You don’t want to work with me and nothing I can say will change your mind. Am I right?”
“You’re right. And you just played your hand. You’re desperate for allies. I know your weakness now, Mikhail. You have a soft spot for my niece, don’t you?”
“I could easily shoot you.”
“And I could easily shoot you .”
I chuckle and unclasp my hands, willing the tension to leave my body. I knew this would probably be a lost cause but I had to try for Natalya’s sake. And now I’m going to have to return home to her and tell her the bad news.
“You have a nice day, Denis. Enjoy returning to your brother’s home and to your brother’s wife and to your brother’s children. None of it is yours and it never will be.”
“It will be when I marry all those girls off and make strong alliances out of them.”
“Sure. You do that. But I’ll just find out who and kill them all like I did Antoni. You’re going to regret not working with me, Denis.”
He stands and shouts, “You’re going to regret speaking to me this way!” Spittle flies from his mouth, only making him look more pathetic.
“Have a nice half-life, Denis. You’re never going to be Lev.”
I leave the restaurant with my men in tow before Denis can shoot me.
I can’t help but worry as I drive away that speaking to Denis might have made everything worse.