Married with Blood (The Volkov Bratva #2)

1. Maksim

MAKSIM

Irested my elbow on my desk, chin in hand, and sighed as I read on my computer.

“This had better go as planned,” I muttered to myself.

Keeping tabs on all the business endeavors that fell under the Volkov empire was not a simple task. My brothers and cousins and I oversaw millions of dollars’ worth of activity.

Our sources of revenue mostly fell on the “wrong” side of the law, and as such, they required more checks and balances.

Not only to keep things on the down low and avoid being caught, but also to track whether anyone was messing with us.

Alongside my three brothers and two cousins, we counted on a diversity of commerce to ensure we stayed the wealthiest Bratva on the west side of the country.

Although we worked as a team and everyone pulled their weight, I wanted to double-check the details on the next shipment coming tomorrow. I typically oversaw the arms distribution that we were involved in. All the illegal firearms. Black-market weapons.

After all the headaches we went through recently when Elena, my new sister-in-law, unearthed all the interference with our Volkov accounts, we were all more on edge, more prepared for the shitty news that someone was fucking with us and our businesses.

No, not just someone. I narrowed my eyes, seething at the discovery all over again.

Fucking Uncle Gregori.

Until Elena had been given to my older brother, Adrik, the interim Pakhan and boss while our father slowly died, we’d all assumed Uncle Gregori was dead.

As in decades ago, he’d perished under the fire from the bomb he had set.

It was all thanks to Elena that we knew he was alive and that he had been creating a shadowy network all this time.

Because he was out there, and because Elena’s father had funneled money to him from our accounts that the Morovov Financials firm was supposed to manage as our bankers, we expected trouble.

That was why, regardless of the long day I’d already put in, I was here in my office. Rereading emails. Double-checking the routes. And even skimming over what Elena had sent me from her “department” that ensured no lies about insufficient funds would pop up.

If Uncle Gregori—or anyone else on the face of this earth—wanted to sabotage us again, they’d need to try a lot harder to trick me.

The Garcia Cartel would be sending us a large load of weapons to distribute. They’d been allies and business “partners” with our Bratva since the time my father, Dmitri, had sought new business projects some twenty years ago. Miguel Garcia passed away a decade ago, but the alliance was solid.

They'd better hope it is.

We’d all assumed that John Morovov was a dependable provider for us, too, delivering on the role of covering up our money trails. And look where that had gotten us.

Receiving a bad rep about being weak right when we found out Father is dying.

I shook my head, annoyed all over again by how Morovov had fucked with us.

At least Adrik got Elena out of that, though.

My brother and his new wife were now expecting their firstborn, and that was something we’d all celebrate. A continuation of our legacy.

Right now, I had to do my part in making sure our legacy survived. And that meant making sure this massive arms shipment wasn’t screwed up.

Lev, my youngest cousin, was the control freak. If he were in charge of this part of it all, he’d be stressing the fuck out. Me? I just liked to know what problems I might be facing so I could solve them as soon as possible. It was what Adrik counted on me for.

And I’d never let him—or the family—down.

“Are you still here?” Alexei, my older cousin, asked as he knocked and entered my office.

While I didn’t live as close to the Volkov estate as the others, we were all in and out of each other’s homes as we saw fit. He strolled in, raising both brows at finding me at the computer.

“Yeah. I told you I wanted to check some things. I was too busy earlier to get to it.”

We never reported to each other, not officially. Now that my father was in a coma and dying, Adrik was in charge for now. We did answer to him, but we still co-existed as a brotherhood at the top of the organization.

“Busy?” He dropped into a chair and snorted. “You call chasing down a couple of fucking rats and liars something to keep you busy?”

I shrugged at his reference to what he and I had been dealing with for the better part of the afternoon and evening.

Some greedy assholes had tried to go rogue with some of our drugs, and it had taken more time and effort to catch them—and punish them—than I thought it might.

“All in a day’s work,” I joked dryly, skimming over another email that Dean, one of our runners, had sent to me about the shipment tomorrow.

Alexei rubbed his face. His knuckles were still cut and raw from the beating we’d given—and taken—from the soldiers who’d thought to go to the local gang for backup against us. “I guess. Adrik didn’t even want confirmation that we’d handled them.”

“So what? He knows he doesn’t need to micromanage us.” My father never did, either.

“I thought he’d want to know that we’d handled it or something.”

“He already knows we’d handle it,” I said in defense of my older brother. Alexei and Adrik had always had a simmering antagonism that operated as friendly bickering.

“He’s just so much busier now that he’s married,” he said. “And expecting a child.”

“That’s kind of expected.” Sensing that my loner and gruff cousin wanted more than a couple of lines of small talk, I closed out the windows on my computer and locked it down to give him all of my attention.

He wouldn’t take his “issues” to Adrik, not to his face.

But since I was the second oldest, maybe he thought he could air his grievances with me.

“And I doubt it’s the fact that he’s married or that Elena’s pregnant that he’s so busy.

It’s the fallout from Morovov stealing money from us and siphoning it to Gregori’s network.

And the fact that he’s even fucking alive. ”

Alexei didn’t argue with me on the topic of his father. He—like Lev—wanted nothing to do with Gregori after he killed our grandparents and almost killed my father, too.

“I’m just saying that it’ll be a bad look if Adrik is too distracted while he takes over for the family.”

I rolled my eyes. “Again—so what? He can rely on all of us, too. Just like my father did.”

He nodded, smirking as he looked off to the side.

“What, are you getting bitter that he’s taking over the family instead of you?”

Dynastic rules dictated that from my father, the throne would go to his eldest son.

Adrik would be the full-fledged leader of our Bratva as soon as my father passed.

Then, it would trickle down to the rest of us brothers.

Alexei was the eldest of us all, a year older than Adrik at thirty-nine, but he wasn’t a son of Dmitri, only a nephew.

He narrowed his eyes at me and scoffed. “Shut the fuck up,” he growled.

I laughed lightly and nodded. I supposed the joke would get old. Even though he was the oldest of the six of us, he never would have wanted the responsibility of being the leader. He’d never wanted to train as the next Pakhan. Simply put, Alexei wasn’t a natural-born leader like Adrik was.

Neither was I. Feeling like the “spare” after Adrik, I never bothered with the worry of having to take the throne. Alexei and Lev had to feel even less of that concern. Viktor and Nikolai, my younger brothers, didn’t have to stress about being in charge either.

But there was no doubt I’d delegated myself as Adrik’s backup. His number-one confidante. We’d always been like that since we were kids, checking in with each other and almost always being on the same page about big decisions.

“If Adrik’s expanding his responsibilities as the interim boss and as a father—and as a new husband—then so be it.”

Alexei sighed. “I know. I just hate that anyone could view us as weak or unorganized.”

“Me too. That’s why I wanted to check back on everything for tomorrow.”

He arched a brow. “Need anything?”

I shook my head. Already, I planned to personally oversee the handoff near the border. From a distance, of course, since there was always a higher chance of the border patrol’s presence in the area.

Alexei stayed a little longer to discuss the shipment, but he didn’t linger all night.

After he’d left, though, Viktor showed up.

He arrived just as I saw Alexei to the front door of my sprawling ranch, just a few miles from the massive mansion Adrik now called home with his new wife and our dying father.

Viktor parked and approached me before I could head back inside. Enjoying the cooler air now that the desert sun had descended behind the distant mountains, I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to stop on my way home.” He stood on a step below me and furrowed his brow. “I picked up on some rumors from the men. Rumors about increased federal interest in the family.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again. Viktor was blunt. He was the most direct of all of us, but sometimes, he took things too seriously. I prided myself on being a problem solver, but that only made sense when there was a problem to address.

“There’s always federal interest in what we do,” I reminded him unnecessarily, shrugging it off.

“Yeah. No shit. But with this arms shipment tomorrow?—”

I shook my head. “Nothing to worry about there.” I hoped those wouldn’t be famous last words that I would regret. “I’ve just checked in with Dean and a couple of others. Our transport rigs are good to go and everyone’s well aware of how important this handoff is.”

It was more important than usual for this handoff to go well because it would be the first big transaction or delivery since the drug shipment that had been initially screwed up with Morovov Financials doing us dirty.

Viktor nodded slowly, clearly still bothered about the rumors.

“I would suggest that you not bother Adrik with rumors.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I think he’d want the heads up on more shit hitting the fan before it actually does.”

“Sure. But until those rumors about the Feds upping their interest in us becomes more of a fact, I wouldn’t bother him about it.” I wasn’t saying that to be my brother’s gatekeeper, but truly, it was nothing new. The Feds were always getting hard about bringing us in or taking us down.

They hadn’t succeeded with that—ever. Generations of power had stayed in the Volkov Bratva line, and many more would yet.

Once Viktor was appeased, both with my advice not to take this to Adrik and also for getting it off his shoulders to tell someone about what he’d heard, he continued on his way to his house, further from mine and the others’.

That was two out of five, so far. Nikolai and Lev were likely off managing something else and had no reason to express their concerns with me. Adrik was no doubt staying up late at the mansion and dealing with more bullshit.

But we’ll always be ready.

Gregori wouldn’t catch us by surprise again. And so long as we could rely on the teamwork we’d always fostered, no matter our ranks and specific responsibilities, we would always stay strong.

Regardless of any plots from our loathed relatives who’d come back from the dead to fight again.