Chapter One
Ablazing inferno burned deep inside me.
Not a well of tears or a wall of sadness. My tears were dried, and now all that was left was a deep, jagged pit of hostility and rage. My eyes burned as I watched them lower the casket into the ground. Just a few plots away from where Vas had planted a headstone for Libby.
Her casket was empty. Void of any physical presence. Her ashes still rested in the urn Vas commissioned for her, waiting to be spread at sea. Except that the seas of Seattle were stormy, and honoring her wishes was near impossible.
Rain fell from an overcast sky in a torrential downpour. A sea of black umbrellas was spread across the cemetery. The deluge did not keep the men and women under Matthias’s command from paying their respects to the former Pakhan of Seattle. News of his death spread like wildfire, and not just to his allies.
Rival gangs who’d been pushed out to the farthest reaches of the city were chomping at the bit to reclaim their former territories.
And they were not alone.
One week.
That was how long the planning took to safely put Matthias’s funeral together, and in that time, Vas managed to keep surveillance on Christian, who was spotted numerous times meeting with the leaders of some of the most notorious gangs in the region.
Money exchanged hands, and it wouldn’t be long before they made a push into the city.
A bloody one.
I drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before releasing it. The warm air cascaded from my lips into the cold air, creating a tendril of smoky condensation, basking in the brief peace.
Grief was a fickle thing.
After my mother was murdered, the psychiatrist Elias forced me to sit down with informed me that there were five simple stages to the grieving process. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and last of all, acceptance.
I snorted. Simple my ass.
What she neglected to advertise about those stages could fill a library. In hindsight, however, she’d been on Elias’s payroll, and she’d spent most of our time together talking about accepting my new circumstances rather than teaching me the proper coping mechanisms for the slew of nightmares that threatened to drown me at the time.
No wonder I turned to drinking the moment I was free.
In the week since my husband’s death, I’d cycled through every stage and back again, repeating a few of my favorites like anger and depression. I had screamed, cried, and come to terms with his demise time and time again since his death.
And it meant nothing.
Locked away in my room at Liam’s, I settled myself to cycling between anger and depression. Anger at how Matthias shielded me from being shot. Anger at Kenzi for having fired the bullet. At Vas for not being with Matthias in the ambulance.
At myself for loving him so damn much, even in the end when all he’d done was break my heart.
When the harsh, dangerous emotion would finally subside, it was replaced with the sickening crack of depression, and with it, a wall of guilt.
Those two emotions were fucking chummy.
Guilt burrowed deep inside me as the anger lessened its hold on my heart. I felt guilty for the fury I felt at Matthias’s sacrifice. A sacrifice that showed me he’d cared for me in some capacity. Then there was the guilt for blaming Vas for not dying alongside the man I loved. He didn’t deserve that anger or resentment. There was nothing he could have done, and if he’d tried, there would have been two lives lost that day instead of one.
That would have been unacceptable.
There was something darker lurking beneath the surface of those simple stages of grief. It ran deeper than the anger and the guilt and the crippling depression. It was something more sinister. A feeling they’d glossed over in the “guide to overcoming your trauma” pamphlet the doctor so subtly handed me when I was eleven.
It was ever present and lingered at the forefront of my mind. I thirsted for it every waking hour. Dreamed of it when the call of unconsciousness pulled me under. It was a parasite digging its way beneath my skin, creating a well of darkness that stretched across my soul.
Revenge.
That should have been a stage every psychologist added to their ridiculous therapy.
I’d never thirsted for it before. Not even when Libby was murdered. Then again, I never needed to worry about revenge. Matthias had been the sword of justice I needed. Now I needed to become my own weapon.
My rage coursed hot enough that it could burn the whole city to the fucking ground. And that was exactly what I was going to do.
Just as soon as this fucking funeral was over.
“Tomas wants to meet you,” Vas whispered. He stood at my right hand, dutifully holding a large black umbrella over the two of us. “Pay his respects.”
Pay his respects.
I couldn’t help the derisive snort that rattled through my mind. Those were the same soft platitudes I received all day from his people. Mumbled condolences and quiet murmurs of “we stand behind you” and “we’ll go wherever you lead” filtered through nearly the entire crowd as they passed us on their way to my late husband’s grave.
Vas bowed his head respectively as each person strolled up to pledge their allegiance to him, the new Pakhan, but their eyes were fixed on me. Judging me. Pitying me. I was done with it. There was no doubt in my mind that my ties with Vas and his brethren would soon be severed. The string of fate cut short. I wasn’t part of the Ivankov Bratva, I was simply one wife among many.
Another piece of collateral damage.
But that didn’t matter.
My thirst for vengeance wouldn’t stop, even if they no longer gave me their backing. Not when my father and brothers would gladly step up to the plate. They’d already promised the manpower in helping to dispatch Christian—just as soon as their own mess was cleaned up.
Leave it to my brothers to find trouble. Our family was good at that, apparently. In the week leading up to the gala, the twins managed to secure themselves a captive after she’d witnessed them take out Jimmy Burlosconi, the man who’d tried to knife me on the dance floor of their club, Clover. The man was a two-bit thug who thought he’d kill me and walk away with a couple million in his pocket.
His mistake.
Now he was lying with the fishes—or something like that. I wasn’t exactly sure where the bodies went, and I didn’t care to know.
The problem that hung over their heads was that the witness was a reporter and the daughter of one of the most powerful motorcycle gang leaders on the West Coast. Bailey Eriksen was a force to be reckoned with but was probably a bit dick drunk. For someone who’d been kidnapped, she did not seem to be in a hurry to leave, and from the sounds coming from their room at the end of the hall—she was sure as hell enjoying herself.
That was a mental image I could have lived without.
Whatever the three of them got up to in their spare time must have hypnotized her because less than twenty-four hours after she’d been kidnapped by them, she’d avidly agreed to be Kiernan’s personal “pet” in order to gain unfettered access to the flesh auction taking place beneath the gala we’d attended.
Technically, she’d agreed because it gave her the opportunity to find her missing friend and mentor, whom we thought might have been sold at auction herself. It was also a chance for me to find out what happened to Maleah. So maybe dick drunk was pushing it.
The newest setback? Bailey was now missing.
Okay, so missing was a bit of a stretch. Bailey had been sold. An unfortunate byproduct of Kiernan and Seamus fucking up the operation by not identifying all the key players first. If they would have looked deeper into who ran the auction, Bailey wouldn’t have been sold to the very person she’d spent countless hours searching for.
Her friend.
A betrayal of the cruelest kind, and a plan that we believe was put into action long before Bailey ran into my brothers.
Nearly a week had passed since Bailey was taken, and the twins were coming up short. Guilt gnawed at my bones as I thought about the poor girl in some brothel somewhere. I had done nothing to help them find her. Instead, I’d secluded myself in my room, letting the guilt and depression weigh me down. It felt like a betrayal now that the cobwebs of grief had thinned. Time and time again, my family proved to me they were sticking by my side, and here I was, hellbent on avenging a dead man when there was every possibility Bailey was alive.
That was going to change.
As the funeral closed and the attendees filed out of the quiet graveyard, Vas and I remained. For someone who wanted to speak with me, Tomas sure was taking his sweet ass time. Then again, he didn’t get out to the West Coast all that often, and it was clear as day from the way they bowed their heads and shook his hand that Matthias’s people respected him.
Fuck, this guy was the Russian version of Barack Obama with his smooth swagger and amiable smile.
“Hello, Ava.” Well, shit. His voice was something akin to liquid gold. It was deep, his accent slightly thicker than Matthias’s, with a rich undertone that made me wonder if the female population of Boston surrendered their wet panties to him as he walked down the street. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
I took his offered hand, giving it a firm shake. Amusement glittered in his eyes as he pulled it away. “Likewise,” I told him. “Thank you for making the trip.” I might as well keep to the niceties before he throws me to the curb like yesterday’s trash.
“Matthias was like a son to me.” Tomas’s jaw clenched, the muscles of his throat tightened, and he shook with barely contained fury as he gazed over at Matthias’s grave. “There is nowhere I would rather be, but I am unfortunately short on time. I have my own problems to contend with back in Boston, and I must be getting back. Why don’t we go grab a quick lunch, hmm?”
That wasn’t what I was expecting.
Was the man honestly going to make me wait in dreaded anticipation while we got a meal? Didn’t that just prolong the time he so adamantly said he didn’t have?
“I’m sure we can have the discussion here.” My eyes found his, and I held his stare unflinchingly. He searched my face, the lines of his forehead creasing slightly as he took in my tight features and clenched teeth. Could he hear my heart pounding beneath my rib cage as the fear of the looming ax above my head was drug ever closer?
Sweat collected along the back of my neck the longer the silence wore on. He was studying me, this giant man whose aged face still resembled a Greek god.
Tomas was timeless in his three-piece black suit and Armani shoes. His graying brown hair was swept up and back at the top, flanked by slick, shorter sides. His hazel eyes were piercing beneath thick lashes and bushy brows.
Long stubble was spread across his lower face, drawing my attention to his full lips and the sharp cut of his jawline. The resemblance between him and Vas was uncanny. Their resemblance was closer to brothers than father and son.
“No.” Tomas’s amused smile didn’t waver. “This is better discussed somewhere less out in the open, don’t you think?” My brows knitted in confusion, head tilting to the side slightly as I tried to decipher the meaning.
“I don’t—”
“Come.” He didn’t give me the chance to decline his offer or to figure out what the hell was going on. “There’s this nice little piroshki shop near to here.”
The fucker turned to leave without giving me a second glance. He knew I was going to follow him. I didn’t have a choice, and that was the worst part.
“And I thought Matthias was a cryptic asshole,” I muttered as I begrudgingly followed Vas’s father to his car.
Vas chuckled. “Where do you think he learned it from?” he teased. “They may not look alike, but personality wise Matthias is a carbon copy of my father.”
Was.
I resisted the urge to correct him. Matthias was—not is. It wasn’t the first time Vas had slipped into present tense when referring to his best friend and former Pakhan. I didn’t have the heart to reprimand him. It felt wrong to chastise the man who’d lost just as much, if not more, than me. Matthias was my husband, but we’d only been married for a little over a month. Vas had been his best friend and second in command for years. They were like brothers.
“How’d you turn out so normal?” I joked to ease the broiling tension beneath my skin.
Vas lowered the umbrella, shaking out the excess water before he wrapped it up and handed it to his father’s driver. “I take after my mother. The only one with a real personality in my family.”
“That woman knew how to get herself in a spot of trouble,” Tomas cut in with a wink. “She once glued down everything on my desk because I was late for dinner.”
“It was your anniversary.” Vas rolled his eyes.
“And I sent flowers.”
“Which she was allergic to.”
“And chocolate.”
“Which she hated.”
“Yes, I became vastly aware of that when they ended up smeared all over my Armani and Versace suits the next day.”
“How long had you been married?”
Vas snorted. He took my hand to help me into the back of the large SUV before taking his seat up front. His father ignored him and settled himself next to me.
“Three years.”
I stared at the man, dumbfounded. The driver pulled away from the curb and into the flow of traffic.
“You were married three years, and you didn’t know she was allergic to flowers and didn’t like chocolate?”
Hell, I was pretty sure Matthias had known my blood type, the kind of toothpaste I preferred, and what deodorant I used before he even got his hands on me.
“It was a…” Tomas hesitated, “strained marriage in the beginning. We were young and stubborn, and neither of us wanted an arranged marriage. Up until that point, she’d never voiced a complaint or stood up for how I initially treated her, but with time, I learned to watch and listen. And she learned to obey.”
And there it was. The mafia code for women of made men. Everything always seemed to come back to the one word that demanded so much. Obey.
“From what I understand from Matthias, you weren’t much for obedience yourself,” the man teased, his murky eyes lighting up.
I met his gaze, once again expecting to find anything other than the blatant amusement shining through them.
“I liked to keep him on his toes,” I admitted with a shrug, letting the tension in the vehicle roll away for the short ride. It wasn’t long before the driver nosed us into a parking spot conveniently located in front of the piroshki shop. “But if you ask me, he’s the one who kept me on my toes. That man ran so hot and cold I needed a thermometer everywhere I went just to detect the change in temperature.”
My mind rolled back to all those times. Seemingly caring one moment and inexplicably standoffish the next. Tomas didn’t need to know that, though. I let the reference hang in the air between us, refusing to elaborate any further. Not that the Boston Bratva leader seemed to care. He gave me a short nod and a knowing smile before he slid gracefully out of the door his driver opened for him.
Taking a moment, I breathed in, letting the air fill my lungs, the fragrant scent of cloves surrounding me before I slowly released it. Vas waited patiently, his brow etched with concern and his gaze softening as I exited the vehicle.
Did he know what was coming? Was he choosing not to warn me? Would he do that? Would he let his father kick me out of their lives without so much as a sliver of protest? He didn’t owe me any loyalty, but I hoped we’d gained something akin to friendship since I’d married Matthias.
Only time would tell, I guess.