The Bratva’s Innocent Forbidden Bride (Fokin Bratva #14)

Chapter 1 - Konstantin

“Promise me,” Sofiya said, for the third time. We had just arrived at the private airfield, and the jet wasn’t quite ready to depart, much to my chagrin. “Promise you’ll lay low and not do anything crazy.”

I smiled at my only daughter and youngest child. She didn’t smile back, and her blue eyes bored into mine, waiting impatiently for a promise she had to know I wouldn’t keep, but still she’d hope.

“Nothing bad will happen to me,” I said.

She huffed. “Classic dodge. That’s not the promise I was asking for.”

“But it’s what you want,” I answered, and she had to agree, though she did so silently and with a soft scowl.

My smile grew more sincere. Sofiya was the apple of my eye, caring, beautiful, and sharp enough to cut through steel, with a backbone even stronger than that. Despite that, I was glad to see her off, and I tried to change the subject to her.

‘When was the last time you were in Milan? I bet you can’t wait to have some fun.”

She certainly didn’t have any when she showed up in Tokyo to cajole me to come home.

She had teamed up with my nephew Rurik, and while she would have preferred to have me back in Moscow, LA was a compromise that would keep her from having an aneurysm and simultaneously get her off my back so I could work.

Her eyes goggled up at me. “Fun?” she asked incredulously. “I don’t think so. Not with what the twins are up to. I’ll be lucky if I’m not the one on a hit list in a few weeks.”

I snorted, ignoring the slight jibe about the hit list. Yes, the Yakuza wanted me dead, hence my family’s intense rush to get me out of Japan.

“You worry far too much, my dear.” My twin sons, her older brothers by less than two years, could get into trouble for sure, but whatever they were cooking up in Italy surely wasn’t the catastrophe waiting to happen that Sofiya made it out to be.

She huffed again, harder this time. “And you don’t worry nearly enough. It’s like I’m the parent and you’re the child half the time.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said mildly, tapping her under the chin, which was beginning to lower in defeat.

She stiffened her tungsten spine, as she always did, having to live in the shadow of four older brothers, one who was an overachiever, one who was always chasing the next big thing but never quite finding it, and two wild twins whom she both idolized and wanted to shake most of the time.

And then there was me, her Papa. She couldn’t help but smile at me, and all the love I had for her, as well as the exasperation, was reflected back at me in her eyes.

Her mother’s eyes, though the two women couldn’t have been more different.

Sofiya was an angel. A worrywart, but a well-meaning one.

And as much as I adored her, I was glad when the pilot waved that he was ready to get the wheels up.

“Of course I don’t mean it,” she said, hugging me tightly. “But I seriously need you to promise that you’re going to lay low until everything’s sorted out and nobody wants to kill you anymore.” She swallowed hard as she looked up at me. “You forget how important you are to all of us.”

I laughed, though the sound got stuck in my throat.

There was no brushing off her very real concern, even though she’d seen me live through much more serious situations in the past. Which was probably part of the problem.

It wasn’t exactly an easy or traditional upbringing, being a girl born into the Bratva, but it was the one she got. And she was doing great.

I’d never outright lied to her, and I wouldn’t start now, so I only repeated my prior promise. “Nothing bad’s going to happen to me. Now you promise me you’ll have some fun and not drive your brothers crazy with your nagging.”

That outraged her enough to make her momentarily forget I was wanted dead by the most powerful criminal gang in Tokyo, and she got onto the plane.

As eager as I was to get started on not laying low, I stayed and watched my nephew’s private jet take off, and followed its path in the sky until it was out of sight.

My daughter, like the rest of my children, was strong and competent.

Of course, I would have liked to see her safely settled down in Moscow with a man she loved and who I trusted, but I also definitely hoped she’d be able to relax and have some fun while she was on her self-imposed and unnecessary rescue mission in Milan.

Just not too much fun. She was still my baby girl, after all.

As I got into my car, my phone rang. It was my nephew Mat, who’d come down from where he was currently living in Silicon Valley to visit.

At least that was what his brother Rurik and Sofiya assured me was the reason.

Not to keep an eye on me or anything. All my other nephews and nieces would have been plenty for that job, and certainly already recruited, but Mat and I were as close as brothers, being nearly the same age and growing up together on the mean streets of Moscow.

Sure, our family ran the city, but that didn’t mean things didn’t frequently get ugly. We’d been through a lot, and I supposed if I truly believed his life was in danger, I would have been on high alert, too. Same for any of my family.

“Did Sof make it out all right?” he asked.

“Yes, now that she’s assured I’m safe from the Yakuza, she can go torment her brothers in peace.”

“I’m glad you’re finally taking it seriously,” Mat said, only half sarcastically.

I ignored it, not wanting to get into it again. They were happy I was out of Tokyo, so that was fine, but I never believed I was in any real danger there. What was a death threat or two? Or five. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a hit out on me, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Any updates?” I asked, referring to the latest attack the LA Fokins had received.

“None,” he said with an impatient edge to his voice. “Meet later for a drink? If I can tear Rurik away from Clem, he might join us, too.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, smiling at the thought that someone in this mess was blissfully happy and in love.

And I liked Clementine, his assistant/wife/ fiancée.

It was kind of confusing, but it worked for them.

“I’m probably going to make it an early night anyway,” I said.

“Just head back to the apartment and crash.”

I ended the call on that little lie and headed out to my real destination.

My family thought they’d convinced me to come to LA to both lay low and also help them with their current problem with some street gangs who were obviously the puppets of someone much higher up the food chain. Mostly true.

Helping crush a new enemy was something I was happy to do, but I wasn’t just in LA right now to hide out from the Yakuza.

Hell, they were rife in this massive city, just currently keeping a low profile.

I had a good thing going in Tokyo, and I would still have been ignoring threats and gaining ground there, except that at the same time, my overly concerned daughter and nephew showed up to rescue me, and I woke up to find a joint bank account completely drained.

A little over a cool million gone without a trace. And only one other person had access to that account, so I knew who took it. The problem was, my longtime best friend and business partner was also gone without a trace.

What little I could find out led me to believe that Grigor Kanatova, a man I thought I could trust with my life, and certainly my money, was working with the Yakuza.

Which meant he also wanted me dead. Not an easy pill to swallow.

Once I learned that Grigor might have headed to LA, the fury had me on the next flight out with Rurik, Clem, and Sofiya, all of them believing I was doing what they wanted.

There was no reason to worry Sofiya further, or break her heart that someone she viewed as an uncle had completely screwed me over. Let them believe I was heading to safety instead of more problems, because this one couldn’t be ignored.

It wasn’t the money. If I had lost a mill to Grigor in an honest bet, I would have been laughing my ass off, biding my time to win it back.

We went all the way back to the nursery together and had fought side by side.

Money was important, yes. But not as important as loyalty and honor.

In the Bratva, betrayal was worse than a bullet.

By stealing from me and joining forces with the Yakuza, Grigor had done worse than merely putting a slug of lead through my skull. And why? What for? I had come to LA to try to find out, and if there was no good answer, I was going to do what everyone in my family did when someone betrayed them.

It wasn’t easy nosing around with Sofiya hovering the last week, and I was heading to being pretty severely sleep deprived, but the lack of sleep and skulking around the city had paid off.

Now I was certain the Yakuza was indeed involved with the war against my American nephews, and I suspected they were the ones actually pulling the strings.

Which meant if Grigor was helping them, he wasn’t just stealing from me; he was putting my family in danger.

Not good. Not good at all.

With Sofiya insisting on being with me every waking moment while she stayed, I didn’t have much time, and I kept running into dead ends.

Frustration and anger had led me to finally enlist a few of my nephews—Aleks was the head of the organization over here and had a right to know who he was fighting—and thanks to their intel, I finally had a location to stake out.

I arrived at the innocuous building, set at the end of a street on the outskirts of the busy downtown area.

Nobody would look twice at the place, as anyone who had any reason to be in the area was trying to get into their own buildings as quickly as they could.

The neighborhood wasn’t exactly what any real estate agent would call inviting.