Page 141 of His to Own

He strolls into the barn, looking at his pocket watch, before turning to me and my father. His smile lights up his face. At least one of us is happy.

“Elena. Nice to see you again.”

“Aleksander,” I gasp.

“And your father is with you this time. I’ll admit: I didn’t have plans to kidnap him. Just you. But things turned out that way. And I must say that this deal is better. Taking one third of the Smirnoff/Karetov/Morozov alliance is a good way to break it down. Once I kill you, Gregory, everything will crumple. Nikolai and Maxim will scatter. They won’t know what to do with themselves.”

My father stares at Aleksander with a steady gaze. “You could kill me. That would be the easy solution.” I’m so used to seeing my father’s anger sizzle under the surface but right now, he looks the picture of calm. This is the mafia man I rarely get to see. The one who knows how to handle a problem.

“I’m glad we’re all in agreement,” Aleksander says. He pulls a knife from his pocket and it glints under the one light high above. “Now, do you want your cock cut off first or your fingers cut off one at a time? I know what I would choose.”

“I have a better idea,” Father continues. “Instead of killing me, we can make a deal. I have one more daughter. You can marry her. And we can finally take down Maxim Morozov and Nikolai Smirnoff once and for all.”

Chapter Nineteen

Elena

My father’s words take a moment for me to process but when they do, they feel like a punch right to my gut.

Aleksander looks taken aback, which I’m guessing for a man like him doesn’t happen often. “You would make a deal with me and throw your current alliance under the bus?”

There’s no shame in my father’s eyes. “I would. Nikolai and Maxim forced my hand when they wanted to marry my daughters. I was never in full agreement. But I’ll make a deal with you. You can marry my third daughter.”

“I’ve heard she’s only seventeen. I don’t want to marry a child.”

“Then we can wait until she’s eighteen. But you can have her. If you make a deal with me. We can be powerful. We can take Nikolai and Maxim down. It’s why you kidnapped Elena, isn’t it? You want to hurt her husband. Well, this way, we can hurt her husband together.”

I stare at my father with my mouth open but no words come out.

“Your daughter looks stunned,” Aleksander comments. “Why would I want to work with a man who so easily turns his back on his family and business partners?”

“Because I have inside knowledge. Killing me would hurt Nikolai and Maxim. They depend on a lot of my contacts. I bring in a lot of the money we make. But working with me would be even more of a sting to them. And you know it.”

Aleksander crosses his arms. “I think you’re just saying all of this to get out of dying.”

“Partially. But you know I’m right. This is a good opportunity and you know it. If I’m dead, you lose this chance. You’ll have to take on Maxim and Nikolai yourself. But together, we can take them down. You know it’s a good deal.”

“Say I do this. I marry your other daughter and make a deal with you. What happens then? You just met me. You don’t even know all of who I am. I almost killed the daughter right beside you. Why would you trust me?”

“Because I am a man who sees a good deal when it comes my way and this is a good deal. I get to live, make a new alliance, and take down two men who have made me into a fool time and time again.”

Aleksander turns his dark eyes onto me. “And what happens to Elena? I planned on killing her to hurt Maxim. I still want to do that. But if we make a deal, I’m not sure you would want me killing your daughter.”

My father looks into my eyes. Still, the words don’t leave me despite the urge to beg and plead for him to stop doing this.

“She’s not my daughter,” he finally says.

I gasp.

For a moment, he closes his eyes and when he opens them, there’s a resoluteness there that I know is here to stay. Once my father makes up his mind about something, it’s impossible to change it. It’s the reason he could never love me. He only ever saw me as my mother’s affair – the problem that needed to be hidden away.

Aleksander frowns. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

“Her mother had an affair. Elena is not my daughter. You can kill her. It will be a huge blow to Maxim. We can take him down, together. What do you say?”

“I say… I don’t trust you, Gregory Karetov. You’re too fast to give up the people you work with. But… you also make some good points. The problem is: your daughter isn’t eighteen yet. And I don’t want to be married to a child and we can’t really have a deal without that marriage alliance, can we?”

“Then you let me go and we wait,” Father responds. “We wait for Adriana to turn eighteen, you marry her, and then we take down Maxim and Nikolai.”