The Masked Mafioso's Purchased Bride

Prologue 1

Maksim

The warehouse reeks of old oil, iron, and the sweat of someone who realized, too late, that the son had come back to collect.

Boris Nikiforov is tied to a wooden chair in the center of the room. Wrists bound behind the backrest. Ankles lashed to the chair legs. The shirt he wore to meet the Moscow men—white when he left home—is now covered in dark stains. Not his blood.

Not yet.

I’m sitting across from him in an identical chair, about ten feet away, in no rush. I’ve waited a long time for this moment.

Five years counting the days while I climbed the ranks, kept my mouth shut, and kissed rings—fighting the urge to rip them off with my teeth.

Five years swallowing every “boy” that slithered out of that worm’s mouth, every patronizing pat on the back he gave the brigadiers[1] and boyeviks[2] who served this regime.

Every one of them who glanced at the scar on my face and looked away with pity was marked to suffer later.

Pity for the Pakhan’s[3] son. Pity for the marked boy.

But I was never a boy. Not since I was fourteen.

I was fourteen when I first understood what my father was capable of.

We were at a hunting cabin, three days deep in the forest in rural Russia, just over an hour and a half from St. Petersburg.

It was my training, and I was eager for it.

After much protest from my mother, Boris had sworn he would wait until I was fourteen to start training me properly.

She died of cancer when I was eight, and for six years, I waited for him to consider me old enough to begin.

I grew up in this world. I finally wanted to be the son the Pakhan could be proud of.

On the second day, we found the bear.

She was enormous, standing in a clearing, eating berries from a low bush. Her brown fur gleamed under the weak late-afternoon sun. Behind her, hidden between her paws, was a cub. It seemed too small to be out there, exposed, so far from the den.

My heart raced when Boris placed the hunting rifle in my hand and said it was my turn, that I should shoot.

I looked at her, at peace, feeding, unaware of the danger lurking nearby. Then I looked at the cub, cautiously peering out at the world from between its mother’s legs.

“No,” I said to my father.

It was the first time in my life I’d disobeyed him. I had never said no to him before, but this time, it came out without thinking. I couldn’t do it.

My father didn’t respond. He just took the rifle back with a coldness that sent a chill down my spine. He raised the weapon, aimed, and fired. The bear squealed, roared, and collapsed, the cub unable to comprehend what was happening.

“Finish it,” he ordered, extending the handle of a long hunting knife toward me.

The cub trembled beside its mother’s body. I wasn’t going to do it.

“No.”

Like the cub, I didn’t realize what was happening until I felt the impact of my father’s heavy hand against my face.

Boris slapped me, and when I looked at him, stunned, thinking it was over, he lunged at me with the knife, slashing my face from temple to the corner of my mouth in a single stroke.

I fell to the ground, hot blood streaming down my skin before I even felt the pain of the open wound.

“When you learn that kindness kills, maybe you’ll stop being useless.”

He spat on the ground beside me and walked away without another word.

My father left me in the middle of the forest, bleeding and alone, with the bear’s body a few feet away and a terrified cub, still alive, staring at me. We both survived that day.

I tore a piece of my shirt and pressed it against the cut on my face, which was bleeding so badly I couldn’t see out of my left eye.

With my jacket, I wrapped the cub and held it against my chest as I made my way toward the cabin, thinking of nothing but survival.

When Boris saw me arrive with the small bear in my arms, he laughed.

“You’re weak,” he said with a laugh, taking a sip of his vodka. “Kill it or I’ll kill it tomorrow.”

I hid the cub, whom I started calling Ivan. That night, I watched over him as he slept, afraid my father would burst in and kill him too.

That was the last time I called him father.

I blink and I’m back in the present.

Boris finally stops staring at the floor. His blue eyes, so similar to mine, fix on my face, taking in every detail before lingering on the scar. He’s putting the pieces together. He’s realizing that the boy he called useless now carries his sentence.

“Maksim.” His voice is hoarse from all the screaming on the way here.

Igor handled the noisy part outside. Boris walked right into my trap, believing it was a kidnapping by the Moscow Bratva. It took him a while to realize that Moscow has nothing to do with what’s about to happen here.

“Pakhan.”

The word comes out without weight, without hatred, without affection, without anything.

“You won't do this.”

“Won't I?” I tilt my head, studying him more closely.

“I'm the Pakhan of this city, boy. You think you can come here, tie me up, and still walk out unscathed? Alive?” He spits the blood pooling in his mouth onto the floor. “The men who serve me will skin you alive before dawn.”

“Your men are on board with what's happening here. All of them seemed quite comfortable with my proposal. It was surprisingly civilized, considering I'm practically usurping your position.”

“Vladimir?”

“He was the first to vote for your downfall.”

I watch confusion spread across his face. Boris Nikiforov spent thirty-five years in power, envied, feared, and served. The idea that his own counselor and most trusted generals plotted his downfall in the dead of night is killing him inside.

“You bought them all.”

“I didn't need to. They came to me, one by one with their complaints. I was just there, listening like a priest. You know what impressed me most?” I cross my arms and stare at him.

“How much each one of them hates you. I really thought I'd have to work to convince them, but no. Your men practically begged for me. For new leadership.”

“Trash,” he spits again, saliva red and metallic. “You've always been trash.”

“Maybe so,” I tilt my head and let a small smile curve my lips, “but the trash is sitting here, not tied up, defenseless, in a chair in a filthy execution warehouse.”

“Your mat'[4] would be ashamed of you! She always feared you'd inherit her weakness, and she was right.” Boris tries to wound me with his venomous words, but they have no effect.

Not anymore. “I should have finished what I started in that forest. Pulled the knife a little lower, down to your neck. No one would have missed you.”

I stand and walk over to him, closing the distance between us.

A roar echoes through the warehouse, putting Boris on alert. What I see in his eyes looks like fear. He tries to turn, searching for the threat, but only because he still hasn't understood that it's standing right in front of him.

“Remember the bear you killed that day, when you gave me this?” I turn my face, exposing the scar. “Her son came to greet you.”

His eyes widen in terror as the sound of enormous paws striking the floor draws closer.

I take the lighter from his pocket, light a cigarette, and wait while the enormous brown bear approaches the defenseless man I once called father. Ivan's roar echoes through the warehouse again, and Boris's whispered plea for mercy disgusts me.

I turn my back the moment I see an enormous paw descend on Boris Nikiforov's chest. I don't need to see the rest. I already know what will happen next. I toss the half-finished cigarette on the floor and leave, at peace knowing that my father is finally dead.