Chapter 2
KARINA
I slam my palm on the table. I have his attention now.
“Calm yourself, daughter. That is unbecoming.” He sounds weary of my antics.
“Listen to me.” I lean forward, exasperated.
“Three more syndicates adopted my software last month. I designed it specifically for the bratva: highly tailored, completely discreet. No other system can touch its cybersecurity. The fact that our own family refuses to use it insults me. Look at these numbers.” I shove the iPad at my father, but he merely waves a dismissive hand.
“I don’t like those things,” he says.
I grab a binder and thrust it into his hands.
“I printed everything because I know you hate technology,” I say, my voice sharp.
“Now you have no excuse. I launched this company with one employee, and we’ve already grown to a thirty-person team working around the clock.
Last quarter I even hired a Hindi-speaking programmer for our new South Asian market. ”
He flips idly through the pages, glances at a colorful graph and shrugs. “Spyware?”
“It’s exactly the risk my software guards against. If anyone in your organization clicks a malicious link?—”
“Bah! I don’t do emails!” he says.
“No, but everyone else uses it,” I insist.
“You’re wasting my time with this little project,” he says. “Go have your nails painted or your hair done like your mother. There is no place for you in the bratva, daughter.” A frustrated groan slips from me.
“Look at this!” I tap the binder. “I understand this business well enough to create cybersecurity software tailored to your exact needs. Other families already use it, and they love it. Why does my own father refuse to consider my contribution?”
“Sons work in the business. Daughters enjoy the money and protection and marry well and have babies.” He clears his throat a few times and takes a drink of water.
“That’s it? Get my nails done and have a baby?” Fury pulses through me. “I’m no child, Papa. I’m twenty-four. I was the youngest to finish an engineering degree, yet you show no pride in my work. What will it take?”
“For you, my daughter, only that you make a proper wife for a man worthy of siring the heir to the Kozlov organization.”
“I should be the heir!”
“Your brother was the heir, God rest his soul,” my father says and crosses himself piously.
“Ivan is gone. I miss him, too,” I say, my voice cracking. “You’re right, he should be here, but he died in that car accident. I’m here, alive and more than capable of running the business. I’ve proven again and again that I understand the inner workings. Why won’t you?—”
I break off when he starts to cough in earnest. My heart sinks.
He isn’t well. Upsetting him won’t get me what I want.
He needs to step back from a leadership role and concentrate on his health and move somewhere warm by the sea.
My shoulders sag. I go around his desk and rub his back, taking the pills out of his drawer and offering them to him.
He waves them away stubbornly. “I’m fine,” he chokes out, “don’t fuss over me. ”
I keep offering him the pills until he takes one and throws it back with some water just to get me to stop.
Relieved that he took it, I kiss the top of his head and gather my tablet and binder and slip out.
That was a waste of time and effort, I think to myself.
He’s so old fashioned he really thinks I’d be better off getting a fresh balayage at the salon and shopping for more shoes or jewelry.
I was never the one he could fob off with expensive things.
Ironically, that was my brother Ivan who always wanted a new watch, a new gun or car or boat.
His love of fancy things killed him, after taking a curve too fast in his new Ferrari at eighteen.
I was a child half his age then, but I remember it, how my father transformed overnight from a vital and commanding crime lord to something ossified, rigid and cautious.
Like the loss of his son aged him decades all at once.
He will never let a woman lead his organization.
He would accept a son-in-law to act as a sort of underworld regent to the throne until a grandson comes of age.
But that’s my only access to power in the bratva.
That is, as a bride, and a breeder for the next generation of Russian crime bosses.
I log back in to my work portal and get the interpreter on board for a call with a potential client.
When the screen bursts to life with the view from the man’s villa, he’s outdoors, overlooking the sea, lemon groves on a hill in the background, I wonder why I don’t conduct meetings like this in person.
That place is gorgeous and my city view is decidedly chilly and gray by comparison.
If I were willing to dump my company and play mob wife, I could wake up to a view like that tomorrow.
But I’m not sacrificing the firm I built or the innovations I’ve shepherded into the world.
If Papa won’t let me inherit the bratva, I’ll build my own legacy and let his rivals pay me for the privilege.
The thought tastes sour, but it’s all I have.