Page 101 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

Not if you’re in my bed.

But I have to go slow. “She’d love that.”

In the hallway, I watch Sandrine glide in the opposite direction to her bedroom. Does she want to share my bed again like she never left? Not just as a mother to our child, but my wife?

Nothing about this feels survivable.

Drago waits in the kitchen, cars outside idling. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I didn’t expect to find her in your private office.”

“Neither did I.”

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep my hands off my wife.

Chapter 32

Kirill

It’s been five days since Papa died. And Iron Keep isn’t any quieter. It just feels different since his death.

My father’s internment had been exactly what a Bratva Pakhan’s funeral was supposed to be. Excessive. Dark. And guards with long guns positioned nearby the entire time. I notified other family heads of his death and that they were not invited.

But Yuri Volkov was a powerful Chicago businessman. Politicians and union bosses showed up, their cars stretched for blocks outside the Russian Orthodox church. The city’s power players showed up too, eager to be seen revering my father. And finally, the scourge showed up out of fear, not loyalty.

No one cried. Not really.

Sandrine and Violet stood at my side as they lowered Papa into the ground beneath a custom marble monument with gold lettering large enough to rival the others in the cemetery’s old-money section. Men will visit that grave for years, paying respects to another dead Chicago gangster who in time will be romanticized as some sort of hero for the city.

To me, he will always be a monster.

I didn’t bury him next to my mother, who is in a different cemetery with her family. She hated him long before Ksenia, and I knew better.

After three days of that mess, the last three days that Yuri Volkov mattered, I walked away from his grave with no intention of ever going back. From now on, he is what the rest of the world will remember him as.

A dead king.

The estate lawyers spent the next two days sorting out Papa’s holdings. Billions are tied up not only in Mid-West Iron, but also in other buildings in the city, land in Russia, stocks, bonds, shell companies, and offshore accounts. As executor, everything came through me first.

Ksenia will receive half, whether my father wanted her to have that much or not. My father believed daughters were property, not heirs. But she is a Volkov.

I may have split the money evenly, but the power belongs entirely to me. I am Pakhan now. But Ksenia will always have a place in my leadership.

After meeting with those lawyers all day, I step into what is now my home, my power center. I don’t bellow my presence like Yuri. Men do not erupt around me with questions or boisterous reports of street fights, as they did when my father returned home.

All suck ups.

I’m already a different pakhan.

In the kitchen, the last of the day’s sunlight spills in through the tall windows. Violet kneels on a wooden chair, hovering over the island, tiny fingers dipped in purple and white paint.

Sandrine sits beside her with her head tipped slightly as she watches our daughter with a sense of familiarity that rocks me, given it’s only been a couple of weeks.

For a moment, I simply watch.

Violet’s laughter spills away from her and finds my heart. “Look, Mommy, I made a flower. Just like yours.”

Sandrine lifts the picture with paint-smudged fingers. “You did it!”

There is something so tender and soft about the scene. Men like me don’t deserve to witness the beautiful side of life. Yet nothing has ever fit so easily into this house. Nothing has ever been as beautiful in that messy, sunlit moment.