His Contract Queen (Kings of Moscow #2)

1. Aleksandr

ALEKSANDR

Ilean back in the high-backed leather chair that dominates the head of the long oak table, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee

This room is my inner sanctum within the Volkov estate just outside Moscow, all dark wood paneling, heavy velvet drapes drawn against the winter night, and the low amber glow of sconces that make every shadow look like it’s bending to my will.

A glass of vodka sits untouched at my right hand, condensation beading on the crystal like sweat on a man’s temple.

I don’t lift the drink to my mouth yet. I’m far too busy savoring something much more intoxicating—the knowledge that every man in this city knows exactly whose roof he stands under when walking through my gates.

Power isn’t loud with me.

It never has been.

It simply settles into my bones the moment I enter a room.

Six-one, two-twenty, black hair threaded with silver at the temples that only makes the rest of it look darker, eyes the color of deep water, almost black when the light hits them at certain angles.

Today, my suit is dark charcoal, tailored impeccably to feel like a second skin.

The collar is unbuttoned just enough to show the hollow of my throat and the edge of the ink that climbs up from my chest.

Fear and respect trail behind me like loyal hounds that I’ve learned how to keep well-fed.

I smile when I want to disarm, I laugh when I want to confuse—a sharp remark here, a lazy insult there, all of it just enough to remind everyone that I’m enjoying myself, no matter the situation.

Men expect monsters to snarl and rage, but I give them charm instead, let arrogance do the heavy lifting for me.

It unsettles them far more than brute force ever could.

As Pakhan of the Volkov Bratva, that title carries enough on its own, but it’s the way I wear it that matters—with a confidence so effortless, it borders on insulting.

I want them to wonder if I’m amused or bored, if they’re entertaining me well or if they’re already dead and just don’t know it yet.

Power, to me, isn’t something to clutch onto with white knuckles. It’s something you savor, roll around on your tongue, and taste until it dissolves into nothing. Control is sweetest when everyone else is tense and calculating, and I’m simply enjoying the game.

It’s one I always win.

Ramil Borchin is the kind of man who is the exact opposite.

He sits across from me the way men like him always do, with a rigid spine, chin lifted just a fraction too high, hands carefully folded as if his posture alone might convince the people in this room that he’s the one still in control.

He wears authority like a costume, tailored and rehearsed with each movement meant to project competence.

But his eyes give him away.

They always do.

They flick around the room just enough to betray the panic gnawing at him from the inside. He doesn’t look at me directly for long. He looks at the door, the walls, anywhere his mind can run to avoid the reality settling in front of him.

I’ve seen this performance countless times.

Before the begging starts and the hollow bargaining where men like him swear they will uphold their end of deal, that they simply need just a little bit more time to follow through.

It’s the illusion of bravado, the belief that if they hold themselves just right and speak just carefully enough, the monster across from them might be negotiated with.

They come into rooms like this one armed with assumptions and a comforting belief that we snarl and rage and announce ourselves with violence before anyone has time to breathe. Men like Ramil survive as long as they have because they build their defenses around that misconception.

They think if they remain calm enough, dignified enough, respectful enough, they can manage someone like me. It is a lesson I have had to teach many that monsters like me are never what people expect.

They’re wrong.

I didn’t get to the position I’m in simply by being walked over.

“I see you’re finally well enough for our meeting.” I finally say.

Ramil’s lips press into a thin line, the corners tightening just enough to betray his irritation for being called out so blatantly.

We both know his so-called “illnesses” are nothing more than a convenient lie to get me off his back for a while. He’s been dodging my calls for weeks, hiding behind supposed frailty and scheduled obligations he’s believed so far have placed him beyond my reach.

Under any other circumstance, I would never allow that kind of disrespect. When I call, people answer. They understand there is no negotiating their way out of a meeting with me when I call for it.

Ramil knows this.

I’ve let it slide for this long because he’s been useful. Reliable, even. A man with access where others don’t have it acting as a quiet conduit between worlds that prefer not to acknowledge one another is incredibly valuable in my line of work.

For years, he’s done exactly what has been required of him, nothing more, nothing less. That history bought him my patience and a longer leash than most men have ever been granted in my rolodex.

But that ends today.

His public image is polished brighter than the barrel of the service pistol he probably hasn’t fired in years. Private life? Gambling debts so deep, they’re drowning him.

Millions.

Patience is not my virtue. It never has been. It’s been a strategic choice I’ve made because so far, it has served me. Today, it does not. I didn’t come here to listen to carefully rehearsed justifications for why our loan has passed its payment expiration date.

Nor do I care.

“Yes,” he finally answers.

I reward it with an easy smile and lean back in my chair, letting the posture do the talking for me.

Power is most effective when it looks effortless.

Then, I lift my hand, palm up. One of my subordinates steps forward immediately, placing an unlit cigar into my fingers.

I roll it once between them as another flicks a lighter to life and holds the flame steady in front of me, waiting.

This is routine. Exactly where I expect the conversation to stay. What I am not prepared for is the offer that follows.

“I’d like to offer my daughter in exchange to wipe the debt.”

For a moment, my mind refuses to process what I’ve just heard. The flame dances inches from my cigar, forgotten.

For a second, I believe I’ve misheard him.

“Pardon?” I say, certain this must be a misunderstanding. A poor attempt at humor, even.

Ramil continues without flinching. “If you accept the agreement, you’ll be free to do what you want with her.

Marry her. Use her as a negotiation tool to gain another syndicate’s allyship.

Whatever it is, it’s up to you.” He pauses, then adds, almost clinically, “You will have full ownership over her.”

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been rendered speechless.

Offering up his daughter as payment, not merely as a bride to secure a political tie or negotiate some bloodless alliance like his type would usually lean toward, but as property. Ownership? Something to be used, traded, played with at my discretion or discarded if I so choose.

The way he says it, stripped of any shame, turns my stomach in a way I haven’t felt in years.

I’ve watched men beg on their knees, dignity leaking out of them with every shallowed breath they take.

I’ve watched them bleed out on marble floors at my feet while swearing they’d never fuck over their families, only to offer up everything else they owned in the same breath.

I’ve heard threats screamed through tears, appeals to honor, to legacy, to love.

But this?

This is different.

This isn’t desperation spiraling out of control. This isn’t a man cornered and grasping blindly for appeasement because there is a gun being held to his forehead. This is the cold calculation of a man who has looked at his own child and decided she was worth less than his reputation.

It is unthinkable coming from someone like him.

The rot runs deeper than unpaid markers and bad habits.

It lives in the way he’s able to justify this to himself.

In the medals pinned to his chest that catch the light every time he breathes in.

In the speeches he will no doubt give in the future about sacrifice and service while standing in front of a crowd who wholeheartedly believes he is being sincere.

My code has never been clean, nor has it ever been noble.

But it is honest.

I deal in fear. I don’t pretend otherwise.

I don’t hide behind a uniform meant to serve and protect.

There are no ceremonies erected in my honor or carefully constructed lies about virtue touted to support someone else’s idealistic view of me.

I don’t ask the world to mistake me for something respectable while I do monstrous things in the dark.

I know exactly what I am and I refuse to masquerade as anything else.

Hypocrisy disgusts me far more than violence ever could.

Ramil doesn’t even flinch when I don’t respond right away.

That, more than anything, tells me how convinced he is of his own righteousness.

He takes my silence not as hesitation, but as consideration.

As if this is a negotiation that only requires a careful amount of scrutiny to confirm the deal leans in my favor and not a question of morality.

“She will come willingly,” he says smoothly. “I assure you. She won’t give you any trouble. My daughter, Katerina, will understand.”

I study him for a long moment before finally speaking. “Understand what, exactly?”

He replies without missing a beat. “That this is a necessary sacrifice to keep my… dealings from being exposed to the public. She cares about the career I’ve built over the last two decades just as much as I do. It’s something we’ve both worked tirelessly to uphold.”

There it is. That word. Sacrifice. Always used by men who never intend to be the ones paying the price.

I lean forward at last, nodding once to the man holding the lighter. The flame flares once again, bright and steady under the dim lighting, and I bring the end of my cigar to it, rolling it slowly as I draw in. Smoke fills my lungs, grounding me, buying me time to think.

Nothing he’s saying makes sense.

As far as I’m aware, his daughter is in her early to mid-twenties.

Hardly the seasoned political architect he’s describing.

Ramil Borchin has been embedded in government for decades, long before she was anything more than a child trailing behind him at official functions.

So how exactly has she “worked tirelessly” to uphold his career?

She couldn’t have.

Which means this narrative isn’t for me.

It’s for her.

Or rather, it’s a story he’s already rehearsed. One he plans to sell her with the same polished conviction he uses on his voters and colleagues to get what he wants. It’s a narrative where duty replaces truth and obedience is framed as virtue.

And then there’s the larger question, the one he hasn’t even attempted to answer. If his debts are what put him here in the first place, why would his daughter sacrifice anything to save him? Why bail a man out of a grave he dug himself, especially when the shovel is still in his hands?

The answer is obvious.

Because he’s counting on love.

He isn’t offering her because he thinks she’ll agree. He’s offering her because he thinks she won’t dare to refuse him.

It tells me exactly how little he values the one person he claims to be protecting.

I don’t hear justification in his words no matter how carefully he packages them.

All I hear is the hypocrisy of a man who has spent his entire life hiding behind medals, uniforms, and speeches about duty, now turning those same ideals into weapons and aiming them at his own child.

He invokes sacrifice like it absolves him of responsibility when in reality, he’s engineered the situation so that he alone is spared the consequences.

He will not dirty his own hands.

He will never endure shame, exposure, or loss if it means taking a public hit.

Instead, he’ll offer up his only child to carry the weight of his failures, all the while dressing it up as service so he can sleep at night.

Trying to frame it as some noble choice when in truth he’s ensuring that nothing of value to him is lost while his reputation remains intact.

His career survives and that squeaky clean image of his stays polished and untarnished.

Sacrifice is just another word for cowardice, in my opinion.

I don’t argue with him.

There’s no point.

Once men like him decide they are virtuous, truth becomes irrelevant. It bounces off the armor they’ve built of self-justification and hollow accolades without care. Men like him will simply take the blows without remorse and move forward, dragging everyone else behind them, and call it leadership.

So I lean back in my chair and let a lazy smile pull at my mouth, the kind that will put him at ease because he’ll mistake it for indulgence instead of assessment.

“I’ll certainly think about it.” My tone is easy. Almost amused. Exactly what he expects from someone like me. The casual predator being entertained by the notion of leverage. I play the part flawlessly. I always do.

Inside, though, something else has shifted.

I dismiss him with a flick of my hand and a bored glance toward the door. He hesitates only a fraction of a second before standing, relief flickering across his face so quickly, he probably thinks I don’t see it. He believes he’s survived this for the time being, that he’s bought himself a way out.

He’ll leave unscathed only because I haven’t decided to put a bullet in his head the way he feared I might.

When the door closes behind him, the room feels heavier. The air settles differently, thick with something I can’t quite name. I sit there for a long moment, cigar burning slowly between my fingers, smoke curling up toward the ceiling.

I’ve dealt with criminals my entire life. I’ve made peace with violence and corruption and the necessary ugliness that comes with ruling the kind of world I inhabit. Death doesn’t bother me. Neither do threats, betrayal, or greed. Those are honest vices. They announce themselves plainly.

This is something else.

The depth of Ramil Borchin’s moral decay unsettles me in a way I don’t like.

It’s not his debt or his lies that bother me most. It’s how easily he justified them to not only himself, but to me too.

How neatly he’s wrapped exploitation of duty and called it “necessary”.

How convinced he was that what he offered me was entirely reasonable and something I would be interested in.

I tap ash into the tray next to me and stare at the closed door, a cold certainty forming in my chest.

Whatever decision I make next won’t be about money.

And it won’t be about mercy.

It will be about a rot that goes far deeper than unpaid debts and whether I’m willing to let it continue.