Koroleva: A dark mafia romance. From enemies to lovers and arranged marriage. (The Between mafias se
Introduction
Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka maya!
V sadu yagada malinka, malinka maya!
I hummed, bringing the bottle of Grey Goose to my lips, painted with Rouge Dior. It”s not that Grey Goose was my favorite vodka; there were better ones, but it was Yuri”s, and today I”m drinking to his soul.
The events of the past few months had led me to a determination: someone had killed my brother and put the pharmaceutical company in jeopardy. The dead were piling up behind me, and the one that mattered the most was like a hot iron piercing my soul.
”Yuri, Yuri, Yuri.”
I couldn”t stop replaying the tune of the song my brother dedicated to me when we were kids. He would sing it while I chased him around the garden, trying to find any trace that would reveal his hiding spot. After a few minutes, I would grow desperate; Yuri was always very skilled at that game.
I would start shouting and kicking stones because if there was one thing that got on my nerves, it was being without him for too long. Patience was never one of my virtues, although over time I had to work on it. As my father used to say, ”Impatience was the weakness of the strong, and patience, concentrated strength.”
My dear brother used popular rhythms to give me a clue to his whereabouts; he hated to hear me cry, and hearing my indignant shouts begin to turn into crocodile tears, as he called them.
We were four years apart, but that was never an obstacle; quite the opposite. My brother was always my accomplice, my protector, and it was strange for one of us to be somewhere without the other following.
One day, when I was about eight, I asked him why he always used that little song. He explained that it was because I reminded him of one of those berries mentioned in the song.
In the garden, we had several Kalinka bushes, a shrub with intense red bitter fruits that acquired a pleasant astringent taste with the first frosts. Inside, the seed was heart-shaped. Yuri always said that I was the little sister of his heart, which is why he decided to nickname me Kalinka in private.
We both enjoyed picking the berries to eat. We almost always ended up stained, and my mother would go crazy because red fruit juice was hard to remove, even if she didn”t wash the clothes herself.
We always lived more than well; at that time, there were three of us siblings. Yuri, the eldest; me, the middle one, and Irisha, who was two years younger than me and held the title of the youngest.
It would have been logical for my sister and me to be inseparable, or so my mother thought. But the reality was that the one I still couldn”t detach from was our brother, the heir to the Korolev empire.
I admired him so much; I always wanted to be like Yuri, he was my role model in everything. Plus, he was the one who managed to get my father to accept me by his side while he learned the tricks of the trade.
When no one expected the family to expand, mom surprised us all with the news that she was pregnant again. Sarka, the princess of the house, arrived months after my eleventh birthday. Closing the number of descendants at four; three girls and one boy
I took a breath, enjoying the salty perfume. In St. Petersburg, we also had the sea, so in a strange way, I still felt connected to my city. Smells had the ability to transport us to any place or memory.
I had left the pub where my sisters had decided to celebrate my ”bachelorette party.” I glanced at the gold watch resting on my wrist. In a few hours, I would be getting married, not far away, twenty-five kilometers away, in Marbella. So we decided to go to La Marca de Caín to spend my last night without a partner.
It was a safe place; I knew they would be more than protected if I wanted to leave during the night, and its owner wouldn”t mind because my little sister couldn”t enter the club as she was underage. It wasn”t a suitable place for her either.
The premises belonged to one of my ”acquaintances,” Kai Morgan, with whom I had common business.
La Marca de Caín was located right on the beach, in the idyllic town of Estepona, a perfect enclave to delight in the most spectacular sunsets and return, weary from indulging the body, to the welcome of an unparalleled sunrise etched in the retina. The good thing about the place, besides its exclusivity, was the wide range of possibilities it offered, most of which were not immediately apparent.
Any fantasy that crossed your mind had space at La Marca, in an environment of utmost elitism, where I moved like a fish in water. At another time, I might have enjoyed myself in one of its rooms, but this time I craved a different kind of entertainment.
I was walking straight, I needed a lot of alcohol in my veins to lose the rhythm and not follow the straight line of the ground.
The steps of my men, twenty-two yards behind my back, were camouflaged by the sound of the waves.
They followed me discreetly, without bothering me, but always alert to any mishap that could endanger my life. They were nervous because my clothing was very provocative, and I wouldn”t conceal my VP9.
It was always with me. It was my weapon, my ally, my best friend, the only one that never failed me, besides my sisters.
Family came first, and for them, I had made the decision to marry my greatest enemy.
The girls were not part of my plans, in fact, they were not part of anything. I had left them dancing freely on the dance floor without any explanation. They didn”t need it, they already knew my tendency to disappear and that if I did, they should return to the hotel alone. Besides, one of my men stayed with them and I knew that inside the club, with Kai and his men there, nothing could happen to them.
I smiled when I saw the place I was heading to; it caught my attention as soon as I laid eyes on it from the limousine.
A dive bar, of bikers, vulgar enough so that none of its patrons knew who I was. It didn”t matter that it belonged to the Angeli dall”inferno, a biker group that moved in the darkest part of my fiancé”s business.
Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka maya!
V sadu yagada malinka, malinka maya!
I took one last sip from the bottle, savoring the burn that engulfed my throat, my gaze fixed on the sky. I was sure Yuri was watching me, with that cynical smile pulling at the corners of his straight lips. I winked at him like we used to do when we were up to something.
”You can accompany me up to here, bratishka[1]” I sighed. ”I will avenge your death soon. No one had the right to take you away from my side when your life had just begun.”
I breathed in, taking all the air I could into my lungs, and the name of my fiancé formed in my brain. How I hated those two initials.
The wolf does not fear the sheepdog, but its collar of spikes, and if there was one thing I had, it was a whole hardware store, and I was eager to throw it to pierce him until I took his last breath. No one kills a Korolev and lives to tell the tale.
I squeezed the glass with rage and hurled the bottle onto the asphalt, shattering it into thousands of shards. I had just sealed a pact with my brother.
A single tear was brushed away by my index finger. I had cried enough for his loss; now it was time to hunt down that damn wolf in sheep”s clothing.
As soon as I said: I do, my revenge would begin, and this time, patience would not be lacking.”
I needed to focus, channel all that inner rage, and I only knew one way to quench my thirst for blood.
I would start by hitting my future husband where it hurt a man the most, his ego.
I focused my pupils on the only door of the venue, guarded by several bikes owned by some of those bearded, tattooed men who looked at me brazenly, as if they could turn me into their trophy with a snap of their fingers. If they only knew...
Fools!
I always chose, never was I the victim, always the executioner, and if today I felt like screwing a pig who worked for R, it was in my hands to choose the best specimen from the herd.
I set my Louboutins in motion and dashed inside.