Chapter 9
GABE
Iwake early. My wife sleeps late. I can tell this is going to be a real pain in the ass, moving forward, but luckily I’m still on the couch.
For now, anyway, and only because of what happened in the car.
I dress quietly and slip out of the room. There’s a guard on the door and I make sure he knows to keep Nika inside no matter what. I’m distracted as I take the elevator down to the hotel’s restaurant and sit in a corner booth. I ask for coffee and scan a menu, barely seeing the words.
Virgin. She’s a fucking virgin.
My fingers curl tight, bending a spoon in half.
Why is this bothering me so much? It’s irrelevant. My wife’s sexual status doesn’t matter at all to my greater mission. So what if she’s untouched?
If she’s never felt a man between her legs? Never been taught how to take a thick cock, how to moan through an orgasm, how to arch her back and grind her hips?
I let out a soft snarl. The spoon clatters away and falls to the floor. The morning waitress frowns at me as she pours more coffee into my mug. I barely acknowledge her.
This is going to drive me mad.
Nika is a means to an end. She’s a fat bank account and nothing more. I married her for legitimacy and all the zeroes after her net worth.
What she looks like as she comes, her softness contrasting with moments of sharp fierceness, sunlight spilling through her hair, that addictive laugh—
None of it matters.
There’s only one goal.
Dragon.
I look up as Daniel slips into the booth across from me. He looks tired. Usually he’s put together, but he’s disheveled this morning as he passes a folder across the table to me and waves the waitress down for more coffee.
“What’s this?” I flip it open with a finger, glancing inside before fully opening it. There’s a photo on the first page. I frown in recognition. “Marat Lukin?”
“Among others.” The waitress pours Daniel’s coffee. He seems grateful as she walks off and takes a moment to admire her ass. “Good looking woman.”
“She’s in her sixties.”
“I like them ripe.”
“Not sure she’d like being called ripe.” I flip open the dossier. There are more photos. Gleb Karanov. Vadim Zabelin. There’s an image of the three of them meeting with a third man, just out of frame. I turn to the final page—
And physically recoil. My jaw works. Outrage floods me. I look up and Daniel’s quietly sipping his coffee, his usual confidence and bravado gone.
“It’s real,” he confirms without me having to ask. “I took those shots myself. Been up all night developing the film.”
I lean my head back and close my eyes.
Marat, Gleb, and Vadim are all important Brigadiers in my organization. They’ve been helping to run and maintain the Kiselyov Bratva as we’ve splintered away from the main former Medved group.
Until now, they’ve been useful.
“All three of them,” I murmur, flipping back through the folder, and stopping on the last image.
It shows my three powerful lieutenants speaking with Kaan Aslan.
“I honestly couldn’t believe it either. I expected some pathetic, dickhead foot soldier, but those three—“ Daniel shakes his head. For a man actively being blackmailed by me, he’s shockingly loyal.
I wonder if there’s a part of him that’s jealous of my three traitors.
Instead, he’s here, making sure they get caught. What a strange world.
“Thank you for bringing this.” I snap the folder shut again, feeling sick.
This is a bigger problem than I had anticipated.
My head’s spinning and there’s a part of me that’s still up in the hotel room with Nika, crawling into bed with her, listening to her sleep, touching her body, teaching her how to please me—
“What are you going to do about them?”
“All three have to die.” That’s obvious. In this world, if you’re a traitor, your life is over. Whatever I might’ve owed them for helping me get this far is now forfeit. “First, we need to find out why they were seeing Aslan in the first place.”
“Probably money.” He slurps coffee. “It’s always money.”
“Not with everyone.” I get out of the booth and tuck the folder under my arm. “But you’re probably right.”
My L.A. network is spread out across the city. They came here first, established themselves with local gangs and criminal leaders, and paved the way for my arrival. This marriage to Nika has been meticulously planned for months, even though it seemed like a spur of the moment thing.
That shit only happened because the Turks forced my hand.
I knew they were coming after her. I got word from my people that Aslan was in the area and sniffing around my future wife. But I hadn’t realized at the time how close of a call it was going to be.
We park out front of a quiet, dingy bungalow.
The front is mostly rocks and pavement. The neighborhood isn’t much better.
Most people have this image of a glamorous, hilly, rolling L.A.
populated by movie stars and models, but this is the real city.
Average city streets crammed with average homes.
All that nice shit needs a whole lot of people like these to keep it running: stage hands, cleaners, fixers, builders.
The oil in the machine. Dirty, but necessary.
I get out. Daniel follows close. It’s clear he doesn’t like this, but I’m impatient, and there’s still a lingering discomfort in the back of my mind. I need to do something to stop thinking about Nika. I have to keep moving or her words are going to drive me insane. Virgin. Fucking virgin.
I bang on the door. The metal part rattles against the frame.
Dogs bark nearby and someone curses inside in Russian.
It’s insistent and not nice. When all this started, back when Medved first reached out to me, I barely spoke the language.
I hardly understood the customs. I was dumb and foolish back then.
Now I’m fluent in all that, plus a lot more.
“Who the fuck is bothering me—“ The door swings open. Gleb’s wearing boxer shorts and a white tank top. His graying body hair covers his pale, flabby torso like fur. He’s balding on top, scraggly and rough-looking, with more than a few missing teeth.
He could afford to replace them, but Gleb likes it when he’s underestimated.
“Good morning, Krasny. You look surprised to see me.”
He stutters, glances at Daniel, and quickly opens the gate wide.
“I didn’t expect you, boss. But this is good, very good, I was making coffee and eggs.
Come, come, before the neighbor’s—“ He yells this next part. “The neighbor’s fucking beast of a dog gets shot in the fucking face you hear me Leeroy keep that stupid dog quiet!”
I glance at Daniel as we’re ushered inside.
Gleb’s sense of interior decoration matches his fashion.
It’s haphazard and rough. Cigarettes are piled in the ashtray on the coffee table and a massive flat screen is perched on a cheap pile of milk crates.
Everything looks as though it’s temporary and about to fall apart, which is probably accurate.
Gleb doesn’t plan on being here long. He’s got bigger designs.
It takes everything I have to keep myself under control.
Here I was, thinking we had a perfectly reasonable deal.
I don’t expect my people to risk their lives and to fight for me in exchange for nothing.
That is not how these things work. But to learn that our deal is forgotten, that the oaths we swore and the contracts we signed, that they’ve all been forsaken for no good fucking reason—
Well, it makes me mad.
“Quiet day today, boss, very quiet, no big plans, but from what I hear there is congratulations in order?” He leers at me as he scratches his ass and returns to the stove.
The kitchen is as dirty and disorganized as the living room.
Daniel remains near the door, smiling his usual smile, hiding the grimness of the situation.
“Thank you, Krasny.” He doesn’t mind the little nickname. It’s overly familiar, but it should signal we’re on good terms. Only now it sounds bitter in my mouth. “She’ll be very useful.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure, a good wife always is. I hope she cooks! And maybe, something else?” He grins at me, waggling his eyebrows. There’s an undercurrent in his voice, a tightness. “We should toast to you, boss, to your good health and long life.”
“No reason to break out the good stuff. I plan on introducing her to everyone tonight.”
“Yes! This is good! Parade the new pretty wife around.”
“Pretty and rich, most important of all.”
Gleb snorts, grinning. “Ah yes, Vadim her father always was a fucking miser and a squirrel. But come, we drink to your long life and to your future as a Dragon. Come, come—“ He rips open the freezer. “I have some vodka in here somewhere—“
I step forward and press a gun to the base of his neck.
“You disappoint me.”
He doesn’t move. His hand is wrapped around the butt of a pistol hidden behind a frozen pizza. Rage rolls down my spine and it takes a lot of effort to keep from pulling the trigger.
“It’s not like that,” he says quickly. “Boss, really, we can be reasonable men—“
“I already was reasonable once.” I grab him by the throat and jerk him away. He staggers when I kick him to the table and lands awkwardly in a chair, his belly spilling from the tank top.
“You have to understand, this sudden visit, and bringing that one—“ His eyes dart to Daniel. “We know what that one does for you. I thought you were here to—“
“I fucking am.” I grab the still-hot frying pan and smash it into his face.
He screams in agony as the metal sizzles the skin on his cheek.
I hit him again and again until he drops to the floor.
I press the pan against his gut, making him squirm and howl in pain even louder than that fucking dog was barking outside.
I toss the pan aside and watch it clatter into the corner, eggs everywhere, some stuck to his burned face, more stuck in his scorched guts.
I kneel on his chest and press the gun to his mouth.
“Why Aslan?”
Gleb moans, tears running down his cheeks. I bet they hurt, the bastard. I feel no remorse, no hesitation. This is what it takes to be a Dragon. If I hesitate on this journey, if I let weakness make me pause, I’m doomed and everyone I care about is finished.
“You can’t win,” Gleb says, biting back sobs. “Not with… not with Aslan… and Chesnokov…”
My eyes narrow at Nika’s cousin’s name. He’s my primary Russian nemesis and in control of the other half of Medved’s army.
“You know who my sister married. It’s my grandfather’s seat we’re fighting for. Nobody had better claim.”
“That’s not how it works. Dragons take. Nothing is inherited. Please, boss, please—“
I shove the gun harder against his face. “We had a fucking deal. You work for me, you get rich, we all win. It was simple. Except you betrayed me. Breaking your word, going back on your promises, that’s worse than putting a bullet in my head.”
“You can’t… live up… to your end. You’ll never… be a Dragon.”
I pull the trigger.
Gleb’s skull explodes in a spray of blood and yellow-green brain matter. His body jerks once as if electrocuted before slumping still. Red mist sprays back into my face as I step away from his corpse.
Daniel watches me from the corner. “We should go.”
I observe my dead lieutenant. Gleb was an efficient worker. He had connections all over the city. I could’ve used him, and in return, I would’ve paid him handsomely. That’s how relationships work. We give each other something worthwhile.
“He was wrong.” I look at Daniel, rage filling every inch of my body as I shove my gun away.
“About what?”
“I keep my promises. I live up to my bargains. And when I’m Dragon—“ I kick Gleb’s body aside as I stride past Daniel. “Everyone like that weak fuck back in there is going to burn.”