Chapter Nine
Dragna
It’s one in the morning and I can’t focus on anything other than a girl who I know hates me.
Sitting in my home office with a glass of whiskey, my laptop open and my phone in front of me, I realise I’m in over my head.
I couldn’t help myself by texting Willow earlier tonight. It was harmless, just a simple text to let her know I’m here to help should she ever find herself in need of it. She never replied and I’m not too surprised considering how our only interactions so far have consisted of me being a jackass.
It also means she’s a smart girl because what twenty two year old would really reply to a thirty four year old unknown man’s message on the new phone he sent to her work address. The work address she also never gave him.
Blyat.
I set my drink down and scrub my hands over my face while breathing deeply.
What the hell am I doing? She’s a kid, and an innocent one at that.
She doesn’t need me trying to enter her life and putting her in any kind of danger.
Especially now with this shit with the Italians and Nero.
Ironic that this shit with Nero runs deeper now because of her.
The Italian scumbag cried too easily giving us all the information we needed about his guy who drugged her, which is the second reason for me being awake this late.
I’m currently sat watching the cameras we installed outside his house, waiting to see my men grab him and take him to one of our warehouses.
I watch as they pick the lock to his back door, silently making their way inside the house while a few men stay back outside to keep watch and I turn the sound on to listen in for when they let me know they have got him. The house is in darkness but we know from the cameras that he’s home.
I watched him bring a girl home, a girl who isn’t his wife, who we know is currently away for a girls trip in Rome, and I waited until the girl had left before giving my men orders to proceed.
I keep watching, trying to focus on this mission and wanting to see him in my mens hands.
I’m disgusted in filth like him. For starters he drugs women, secondly he cheats and lastly, he’s Italian. I don’t know how my mother ever put up with my father and his roulette wheel of women or how he treated her so bad for so long.
I would find her some nights crying in bed and as a five year old boy who thought his mum was sent from Heaven just for him, I would get in beside her and comfort her. I was only young and never understood why she was so unhappy when we had everything we could ever dream of.
It wasn’t until I was around fifteen years old I heard my grandfather, my mother’s father, and her talking one evening that I realised what my father was doing.
It was after we had dinner at my grandfathers estate, I was in the dining room with Lev and some of the other kids whose parents were also there for dinner keeping an eye on them all. My mother was crying in the kitchen saying she caught my father with one of the maids, again.
I had seen my father kissing a woman before in his office when I was younger but I was walking past quickly while playing with a remote control car, it never dawned on me that it would of been anyone other than my mother.
It sank in then that the woman I had seen in his office maybe wasn’t her and I had seen him being unfaithful with my own eyes.
I hated him then.
He was never a present father to begin with, he was Capo to Matteo which is how back then, the Italians and Russians had a truce.
He and my mother married for business and then once I was born, he was always busy with Italian business, but the fact he was hurting the woman I loved most in the world, I despised him from that day forward.
A year later my mother was sick. She said she had fallen down the stairs and thats why my grandfather had moved us in with him, so that his staff could look after her.
I heard her sobbing uncontrollably to him one night, so I got out of bed and made my way to her bedroom door. I saw through the open gap that my grandfather was holding her and brushing her hair away from her face.
“He will pay for this moya doch” He said to her.
I found out through talk of the maids the next day that my mother had been pregnant.
She had lost the baby, most likely from the stress of my father and when he found out, he beat her.
She had never fallen down the stairs, the marks and bruises were from my disgusting father.
He had beat my mother, I could of had a brother or a sister and it was just all too much for me to handle. The anger, the sadness, the pain.
I ran to the woods at the back of my grandfathers estate and stayed there all day until darkness claimed the sky. My grandfather found me covered in dirt, shaking and with split knuckles from the trees I had taken my anger out on.
“Moy sil’nyy mal’chik.” He said to me, even though I didn’t feel I had a single ounce of strength left.
“You’re going to be the man of the house soon. You know what that means don’t you?”
I did know. I had grown up in the underworld so I knew exactly what he meant.
He was going to kill my father, which not only was going to cause the truce to end, but that my father was going to cease to exist, and even as a sixteen year old boy, I could comprehend that just fine.
“We have him boss.” A voice comes through my laptop breaking me out of the memories and I press a button on the keyboard and speak.
“You know where to take him. I’ll be there in the morning.”
I watch them carry him out through the back door, closing it shut behind them and leaving everything exactly as it should be, as if the bastard just decided to get up and leave on his own accord.
Tomorrow he will wish for death.
I stand and take another drink of my whiskey, deciding I need to try and get at least a couple hours of sleep.
Making my way through the house to my bedroom I’m brought back to thoughts of Willow again, wondering if she’s sleeping peacefully when my phone chimes.
As if on instinct and having my Pakhan mind on full alert I heave a sigh thinking it’s from Lev or one of my men as I unlock it.
My body comes to a halt however as I see the name staring back at me and the text she’s sent. Just two simple words and my heart beats faster than it ever has before.?
—————————————————
I didn’t sleep last night. I stared at Willows text until five in the morning like a fucking idiot teenager who has his first crush until I finally got up to get ready for the day.
I’m not a virgin by any means, but I sure as hell have never longed for a woman before. Even as a teenager or when I was Lev’s age I didn’t concern myself with hanging around anyone long enough to develop any kind of feelings.
I’ve always been business minded and it paid off. I didn’t care whether I went months, or in my case now, years, without being intimate with a woman.
So what kind of fucking witchcraft has Willow pulled for me to fall apart at her feet.
I’ve decided I’ll keep my distance for her sake. If Lev brings her and Alina to the club, I’ll make myself busy. If she texts me again, I’ll ignore it. If she calls, I’ll forward it to Mikhail to take. If it isn’t an emergency I’ll just ignore her completely.
I pride myself on being ruthless and powerful when it comes to Bratva business, so I can be ruthless and powerful over my own feelings towards a twenty two year old girl I’ve met briefly for fuck sake.
I throw my lit cigarette away before stalking through the warehouse doors to find my men keeping our little pet occupied.
“Boss.” They greet me one after the other with a nod.
I set my gun and phone on one of the tables along the back wall, then taking a leaf out of Lev’s unhinged handbook, I walk right up to our new friend while rolling my shirt sleeves up to my elbows and when I reach him, I waste no time and punch him directly in the nose.
Blood pours from his face immediately and he wails like the bitch we all know he is. Any man who has to drug a woman is a pathetic, weak cretin.
Flicking my hand out to the side to get rid of some of the blood thats now all over me from his nose, I decide to address him.
“Dobroye utro Enzo. Sleep well? I didn’t, which means you’re not just getting the version of me who already wants you dead, you’re getting the version of me who is sleep deprived, even more angry than usual and who wants to make your death as slow as possible just because I fucking can. ” I sneer at him.
He looks at me with nothing but fear in his eyes.
“Ne—” He tries to speak and I punch him again and again in his face, his sternum, his ribs, as hard as I can, just because I can.
I don’t want his words. I want his screams, his pain, his fear. Everything that could of potentially been felt by Willow that night had she not of had the type of friends that she did with her.
“Ne…” He wheezes when I finally stop my onslaught on him.
My men really did a number on him during the night so he was already a mess, but now due to the beating from me, he’s on deaths door. His breathing is laboured as he continues trying to speak again while I start unbuttoning my shirt.
“Ne…ro…”
“He ratted you out Enzo.” I cut him off.
“He can’t save you now, so no point in calling out to him.” I say casually as he continues to struggle for air.
“He… his… pl…plan.” He battles against what must be his lungs and chest burning with pain as he speaks.
“It was his plan?” I raise a brow at him
“Funny. He said he only saw a pretty girl he wanted to dance with and it was all you who took it upon yourself to drug the other. Was pretty convincing too, the poor fucker even pissed himself out of fear.”
All my men around us chuckle, myself included as we remember Nero literally shedding tears and pissing himself before we finally decided he had received enough of a punishment as we could give him before we ended up in another war with the Italians.
“Tr…uth.” Enzo whispers into his own chest while he can no longer hold his head up.