Page 117 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

Here we are after spilled blood, broken bones, and betrayal. Every step in my journey led to this moment.

I meet my enforcer’s gaze in the mirror, adjusting cufflinks with the cool metal against my skin.

“We’re not done, you know,” I say, holding his stare. “There are still traitors who’ve not pledged their support.”

“Some have gone into hiding.” Drago’s mouth curves into a wider smile, already tasting the blood he can spill. “But we will find them all and make them pay.”

The door bursts open before I can answer with the same brutality on my tongue, but I hold it back as my daughter barrels into the room.

“Daddy!” Violet rushes at me in a blur of white tulle with glittering gold.

I scoop her up. “Aren’t you pretty?” I nuzzle her.

“I’m a princess,” she declares with pride, twisting in my arms to get down. When her feet hit the carpet, she twirls. “Look, Daddy.”

“You’re the most beautiful Volkov princess,” I tell her, my fingers wrapping around a glossy dark curl.

She beams at me like my praise is candy. Staring at my daughter, I hear the noise in my head go quiet. I can forget about the weight of what’s coming, of what this night demands of me.

Who I am now, officially, and the permission it will give me to go on a warpath to secure myself as head of the American Bratva.

The air in the room suddenly shifts, and I feel Sandrine’s warmth before I see her. She’s perfumed in the sweet but musky scent I bought her years ago. I kept the bottle with her things. It’s the scent I’d spray on her dresses and sit in her closet. Cry and pretend she was still there.

Those were the difficult nights when I’d yell at clothes on a hanger: “Where are you? Why did you do this?”

But that horror fades quickly in my mind. She will never disappear from me again.

Turning around to glance at my wife, I feel my axis tilt.

Sandrine stands in the doorway of the office, framed by the amber light from the hallway sconces.

I did that. I made this happen. I gave my daughter her mother back. I gave Sandrine the daughter she lost.

God, that dress. It’s as thick and formal as a ceremonial gown should be, but it hugs her body in a way that makes a king want to ravage his queen.

My chest tightens, and different versions of her flash in my memory. The woman in the park who said yes and promised me forever. The woman in a hospital who birthed my daughter. The woman who, three weeks later, handed me our daughter and promised to return. But never did.

Only for a second do I see the ghost who haunted me.

“You’re staring at Mommy, Daddy,” Violet whispers, pulling my hand. “Tell her she looks pretty!”

I exhale slowly, forcing myself back into my body, into this office, into the man who will take an oath for a position I will own until my dying breath.

Pakhan.

“You look beautiful,” I tell Sandrine.

My praise comes out matter-of-fact, but the look I give her, which my daughter can’t see, carries enough weight for her to know the depth of my stare.

And what I want. Her. In my bed. Tied up. Me taking her however the fuck I want.

Her gaze meets mine, pride flickering there. “You look good too, Pakhan.”

I get chills when she calls me that.

I take Violet’s hand and walk toward the door, holding my wife by the waist as well. Drago follows and captures his wife’s hand as we make our way to the stairs.

With my father’s death, the entire north wing has been gutted and repurposed. I requested a ceremony room be built in my father’s old bedchamber. It will also double as a meeting space for senior leadership, trials, and punishments. My new office suite sits one floor below the new chamber.