The Bratva Contract

Chapter 1

DIMA

H ot blood pours down my arm from the hole in my shoulder.

I clamp my hand over the wound, crimson trickling between my fingers, and sink to my knees on the oil-slick alley.

I sag against the car and let my lids flutter shut.

My heart hammers, pain searing like a blade.

When he bends down, gloating in my face, I peer at him through narrowed slits.

“The great Dimitri Petrov, bleeding out in the street. I wish I could film it and watch every night!” he crows.

“To see the head of the Petrov bratva brought so low by my hand. You think you can just drop in on a delivery point to make sure everything is A-OK?” He laughs.

“All you had to do was stay in your fancy office, and I could have stolen the payoff and made off with the goods instead of handing them to your lackeys, but no. You ruined my plans!”

I shift, a low growl of pain rumbling from my throat.

“Oh, it hurts,” he says gleefully. “I clipped an artery. There’s too much blood. You won’t last long this way. Now I’ll just take your phone so you can’t call for help.”

The bastard reaches for my inside pocket, certain one bullet has taken me out.

What a fool. As he tears my jacket open, my knife flashes from its hiding place, and I bury the blade in his neck just below the ear.

He jerks, eyes wide, then flops backward when I twist the steel.

I rise and circle to the driver’s side of my car.

My driver’s body sags over the wheel. I haul him onto the pavement and slide behind the wheel.

The steering wheel is tacky with blood, smeared across the instrument panel and pooling on the floorboard where it splatters my shoes.

I’d only had that driver a couple of months, but he was a solid man, and it’s a damn shame.

I’ll speak to his family tonight and make sure that his death is not in vain.

I hit the ignition and roll out. With one hand, I put my phone on speaker and dial my top lieutenant; the other clamps a handkerchief over the bullet wound.

“Piotr, we’ve got trouble. I need a cleaning crew at the drop point.

I was right. Kapov had ideas above his station, and I had to deal with it.

No, don’t apologize. We’ll need a new supplier; I don’t trust his downline.

Send the doc to my place, I got winged in the shoulder.

Looks like a clean through-and-through, but I’ll need stitches.

Yeah, the son of a bitch thought one shot would take me down. ” I scoff.

Driving home, I’m mostly aggravated that the upstart little shit thought he could rob my network.

But there’s a nagging voice in my head that I can’t ignore.

This could’ve been lights out for me. I could’ve died in an alley and the organization would get picked clean by the vultures, left without an heir.

A power struggle would follow my death and the empire I’ve worked all these years to build would be torn apart, fought over and dismantled.

It sickens me. Twenty-five years I’ve led, my whole adult life, burned away to nothing but scraps.

I didn’t work my ass off every waking moment for decades just to leave it in ruin when it’s my time.

Piotr calls back a couple of minutes later. “I’ve got a crew on the way. You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s nothing,” I say, voice steely. Piotr may be my oldest friend, but I’m not the kind to whine about my mortality or what a fucking scare this ambush gave me. “I’m irritated that some shitty supplier thought he could get the drop on my men, much less on me.”

“I got his info here. You think I should go visit his family?”

“The sooner, the better,” I say grimly.

“You got it.”

Dr.Lin waits inside my residence. He moved here from Singapore on my father’s orders more than thirty years ago and has been our family physician since I was a kid. Something in me eases when I see him, as he always was reliable and stalwart in the same chair he’s occupied countless times.

“Dima, it has been a while since we had to do this. Are you well?”

“I’m good. I dropped in on a delivery and it’s a good thing I did.”

“That depends on what you consider a good thing. Piotr told me you were shot.”

He helps me shrug off my coat, and I drop into a chair. The trim older man adjusts his glasses, snaps on gloves, and cuts away my sleeve before studying the wound.

“Not too bad. The bastard was a poor shot. I expect he panicked when he saw you.” His voice is even, as steady as his hands. He cleans the wound and I grit my teeth, wince but make no sound.

“I spoke with Mrs.Lubov,” he says, referring to my longtime housekeeper. “She is an excellent woman, something of a dragon I believe.” He gives a small smile and takes up his tools to stitch me up.

He pauses to angle the lamp for better light, then resumes his work, murmuring as he goes. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that Dr.Lin’s calm voice and gentle chatter heal a wounded man almost as much as his needle does.

“Mrs.Lubov assures me she will check on you throughout the night and alert me if you show any signs of shock or infection.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Of course you are, Dima,” he says fondly, as though I’m still the boy he first stitched up. “But it doesn’t do for a man to carry his burdens alone, even in the best of times. And, having been shot, you’ll agree this is not the best of times.”

I nod grudgingly, my jaw tightening as his tiny, neat stitches tug at my flesh. “I don’t need my hand held.”

“You might be surprised,” he says. “I was married for fifteen years, you know. A physician uprooted from my homeland to Russia. It was so cold.” His face pinches with displeasure.

“Your family is good to me, but I do not like the weather here,” he adds with a wry shrug.

“It is lucky that this is my only real complaint about life. My wife, however, disliked everything about this country, so she returned to her family. I was very sad for a time. We did not suit one another, or she would never have wished to leave me. I know this. Yet there are days I wish she were still here. We used to drink tea in the evenings and talk about the day. She kept a flower garden at our first home, and I helped her pull the weeds.” His voice turns wistful.

An old man, I tell myself, clinging to memories, romanticizing the past. Yet a pang flickers in my chest, and not from his needle. I refuse to name it. I’m too busy to be lonely.

“She remarried a few years later. They’re happy, by all accounts. She sent a card when my mother died, offering sympathy. I kept it for a long time, Dima.” He sighs.

“Are you telling me you’ve been pining after the woman who left you twenty years ago?”

“Not pining. That would be foolish,” he scolds. “I miss the comfort of a companion. Sharing the day with her, knowing I could reach for her hand when I was uncertain. It is no bad thing for a man with great responsibility to lean on his wife.”

“I have no wife.”

“I’m aware,” he says with a wry smile. “The stitches are finished. Here, your drink.” He hands me a glass that looks like water, but I know better.

I toss back the vodka in one swallow and set the glass on the table, a little unsteadily.

“It’s past time, Dima. Your father would tell you the same if he were here. ”

“My father would box my ears for acting on impulse, like barging in on a supplier because I sensed he was a cheat. He would’ve sent someone else to handle it.”

“I knew your father well. He would have let the delivery play out and punish the supplier afterward. He believed in wait-and-see, if you recall.”

“Yes. It killed him in the end. But he always said I was reckless.”

“And yet you’re still alive,” Dr.Lin replies mildly. “Perhaps you’re reckless in just the right measure. No disrespect to your honored father, but his restraint did not grow the business the way you have.”

“Thank you, Lin. Stay for a drink?”

“I will, thank you. Though I ought to get home, there is no one there to wait up for me. I will inconvenience no one if I stay here a bit longer.” When he takes a seat, I notice that the lean older man seems to slump in his chair for a moment before resuming his always correct posture. I offer him a drink.

“You can say you’re keeping me under observation,” I offer. “Stay in a guest room tonight. Mrs.Lubov commands an excellent cook who’ll give you a breakfast you won’t forget.”

“Ah, pity the lonesome old man, that is sobering,” he says ruefully. “I won’t impose on your hospitality or the formidable housekeeper. She might wonder why I spend the night under another man’s roof as though I can’t keep a house of my own.”

“I don’t know that she’d give it that much thought.”

“If you believe that woman misses any detail, you’re not the clever man I thought you were.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “You seem to think highly of Mrs.Lubov. Trying to poach my housekeeper?”

“Hardly. I have a cleaner in a few times a week and send my laundry out. What do I need with servants?”

“Perhaps your interest is more personal,” I say, lifting an eyebrow. His gaze shifts away for an instant, and I snap my fingers. “You like her!” I crow.

“Do not be absurd. I came to your residence to provide medical attention, not to flirt with your housekeeper.”

“Then thank you for your good work tonight. I’ll have a car take you home, Lin,” I say, walking him to the door.

“You must have an heir, Dima. A wife would bring you great happiness, but an heir is essential in your position,” he says.

I keep my face neutral, but his words land.

Not because I’m lonely. No, never that weak.

After he leaves, I pinch the bridge of my nose.

Maybe this headache is blood loss, maybe irritation.

It’s more than both. Tonight was a close call; I was lucky, quick enough to take a life instead of losing my own.

I won’t always be so fortunate, and even if I start taking fewer risks, death comes for us all.

The night feels grim, the house too quiet.

I wouldn’t mind a woman’s warmth in my bed.

Someone who understands this life, its dangers, its isolation.