Chapter 2
Galina
My father taught me three things before I turned ten.
Never ask a question unless I am ready for the answer.
Never make a threat unless I am ready to carry it out.
Never trust a man who smiles before he speaks.
By twenty-eight, I have made up a fourth.
Never walk into a meeting unarmed, even if it is held in your own house.
I smooth my black dress over my thighs—Givenchy, tailored to hide weapons—and check the custom ceramic knife strapped to my right thigh. The blade gleams against my skin like a promise.
When I open the door, I see my father sitting behind his mahogany desk with a crystal tumbler of Armenian brandy in one hand, amber liquid catching the morning light, even though it’s only nine, and a manila file open in front of him.
His hair has gone more silver than dark in the last few years, salt-and-pepper at the temples spreading outward like frost, but it has done nothing to soften him.
His eyes remain obsidian-hard, calculating.
Men still go quiet when he enters a room—not the respectful silence given to businessmen, but the stillness of prey sensing a predator.
He looks up with a grimace, which I know by now is his version of a fatherly smile. I don’t return it. Not because I don’t love him, but because it’s a pointless action.
“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the chair in front of the desk.
“Why am I here?” I ask, sitting down and crossing my legs to cover up the blade.
He sits back and stares at me, his gaze sweeping over my dark hair, wrapped neatly in a bun on top of my head, to the black boots with the killer heels that sit just below my knee. “You come armed to a meeting with your old dad?”
Now I smile. It’s the one I have perfected in the mirror, which serves to put men like him in his place. “I go everywhere armed.”
He nods slowly. “I taught you well.”
“What is this about?” I ask, wanting to cut to the chase.
“I have created waves in this sea we call North London.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“The details? No. It’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that Baron Voronov knows about this, and he wants a meeting with me later.”
“Baron Voronov?” My blood runs cold. “What did you do?”
He smiles and takes a slow sip from his glass. “Played a very dangerous game and hope to reap the rewards.”
“Game? Dad, you don’t play games with the Voronovs.”
“No, most people don’t. You forget who you are talking to.”
That’s fair. To me, he is Dad. To the rest of the London Bratva, he is someone to be feared by name only. “I never forget it,” I say. “I just spend a lot of time wishing I could.”
His mouth hardens. Not insulted. Interested.
“That is the problem with you,” he says. “Too much conscience. You got it from your mother.”
I nearly laugh at that. My mother had a conscience in the way a snake has table manners. She simply hid her bite better than he does.
“What exactly did you do?” I ask again, turning the bitter-sweet moment back to business. “If this is need to know, I need to know because I have a feeling it involves me somehow.”
He closes the file and taps it once with two fingers. “I tested a route. I tested a response. I tested whether Baron still controls his people as tightly as he claims.”
My stomach turns. “You hit a Voronov business.”
“I touched one broker.”
“And got men killed?”
His silence gives me the answer.
I exhale slowly and keep my face still. “How many?”
“Three.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
“I’ll take any fucking tone I like if you’ve just dragged us into a war.”
His gaze sharpens. For one ugly second, I feel twelve again, standing in this same room with blood on my hands after breaking a cousin’s nose, waiting to see whether I’d be punished or praised.
With my father, it can be both. Luckily for me, I earned my stripes that day.
For a girl, anyway, which in Bratva speak, isn’t as liberating as you might think.
He sets his glass down. “A war, no. Voronov doesn’t want that. If he did, he wouldn’t have asked for a meeting. He would’ve simply attempted to blow me off the map.”
I squeak in horror. “With me along with you, I assume! Dad! This was too risky!”
“Nah,” he says with a slow smile. “I know Baron. His gut instinct is war, bloodshed, but his sons and nephews keep a calmer head.”
“You are putting a lot of faith in these sons and nephews.”
“Baron has no war without them in it. They like their lifestyles. They appreciate their status and wealth. Ruining it all with a pointless Bratva war is not on their agenda.”
“You are diabolical,” I hiss.
“Thank you,” he says, taking it as a compliment instead of otherwise.
I stare at him across the desk and feel the old, familiar urge to either hug him or stab him.
Usually both.
“What do you want from me?”
His fingers rest on the closed file. He taps it once, then stills. “You will attend the meeting.”
I go cold. “No.”
His brows lift. “That was not a request.”
“You start trouble with the Voronovs, and now you want me in the room while you sort it out? Why? So, if Baron decides to shoot you, I can catch the bullet?”
His expression turns flat. Dangerous. “Don’t be a smartarse, Galina. I catch my own bullets.”
“And ones directed at me?”
“Why would he shoot you?”
“To get to you,” I hiss.
He actually rolls his eyes at me. “You underestimate Baron Voronov. Nothing he does is so overt.”
“And yet you just accused him of wanting to blow you off the map.”
We hold each other’s gaze. This is what people never understand about daughters like me. Love does not make us obedient. It makes us stupid enough to stay in the room and fight.
He exhales once through his nose. “You will attend because I want them reminded that I have more than men at my disposal.”
I laugh, sharp and ugly. “You want me on display as something you can trade.”
It sits like a cold snake in my veins. I wondered if this day would ever come. I’ve seen it happen to lesser women than me and those who are stronger. How I made it to twenty-eight is a mystery that has just revealed itself. I’m the nuclear option.
And Viktor Rusanov has just flicked the switch.
If he wants to trade me, fine. Let him. But I will not go into another man’s house as a parcel to be opened and shelved. If they insist on making me part of the bargain, then I will make myself the sharpest part.