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PROLOGUE

STAS

5 YEARS AGO

Aloud cry ripped through the warehouse, raw and loud, echoing against the corrugated metal walls. The sound was sharp, so ripe with pain it almost rattled my teeth. Immune to the suffering, Nico drove his fist once more into the boy’s gut with the kind of practiced precision meant to fold men in half.

The young man sagged, choking on spit and blood, arms strained behind his back, wrists bound in coarse rope, but still he didn’t cry out. If he were anyone else, I would have cut him loose and offered him a position in the family. With grit of steel like his, it wouldn’t take long for him to work his way up.

Too bad he’d slept with my daughter.

Too bad his surname was Orlov.

Too fucking bad his brother was Yuriy Orlov, a rival pakhan who had more lives than a cat. The bastard had to be carrying some witch’s charm, a wolf’s tooth, or a red thread sewn into every damn suit because there was no other reason he’d survived every time I’d tried to put him in the ground.

Yuriy’s younger brother, Zasha, grunted at Nico’s fist ramming into his gut. His face turned pale, and he spat blood on the concrete. Silent tears ran down his face, and his bottom lip was bloody from where he’d bitten it to stop himself from crying out.

A noose circled his throat, thick and waiting. The only thing keeping him alive was the flimsy wooden chair beneath his feet. It wobbled each time he shifted, and it took him considerable discipline not to upset the chair and wind up being strangled.

At least my printsessa hadn’t fallen for a slabyy—a pathetic, weak excuse of a man.

The place stank of oil and rust, and dust hung in the air. A single bulb overhead threw shadows across Zasha’s battered face. His labored breaths came wet, rattling, and each sound reminded me how easily a life could be snuffed out in my world.

I lifted a hand. “Enough.”

Nico froze midswing, knuckles still curled, and stepped back. His chest heaved, and sweat dripped from his temple. He was my most trusted boyevik—enforcer—who meted out punishment without conscience, without caring for right or wrong. Justice was irrelevant where my word was law.

I took my time crossing the concrete floor, each step deliberate, echoing. Boots against stone. The sound of authority. The sound of inevitability.

When I stopped in front of Zasha, he snapped his head up. His dark eyes burned through swollen lids, the kind of defiance that disgusted me. I let my gaze travel over him slowly from the bruises flowering on his ribs to the tension in his legs as he balanced on that chair like a fool who refused to acknowledge he’d already lost.

“My daughter,” I said, voice low, each word sharp, “is not for the likes of you.”

I leaned in, close enough to smell the sour tang of blood on his breath, and spat the words at him. “You stay away from her, boy. If you want to keep breathing, you leave her alone.”

For a moment, I thought he’d stay quiet, that pain would silence him. “I love her.” He coughed, a line of spit and blood trailing down his chin. “Yelena loves me too. Nothing you do will change that. Your fight with my brother has nothing to do with us.”

My jaw locked. The boy had gall, I’d give him that. Even half-dead, rope at his neck, he dared to speak to me as though he had a choice.

A black coil of heat tightened in my chest. He thought he understood what this world was, that love had a place in it. He thought his brother’s sins could be divorced from his own.

I snapped my foot forward, and wood cracked beneath it. The chair screeched and toppled over.

Zasha’s cry strangled into a wet gurgle as the noose bit deep. His body thrashed, heels kicking against the air. His neck stretched, his face turned purple, and the sound of him choking filled the warehouse.

A high-pitched scream cut straight through me. “Papa! Papa! Please stop!”

I looked up so fast it wrenched my neck, and my stomach felt sick. My twenty-year-old daughter, Yelena, pale and trembling, stumbled into the room, a gun pressed hard against her temple. Her braid was mussed, her face was dirty, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Behind her, the bastard I loathed most in this world kept her propped up against him with a hand.

Yuriy Orlov.

His eyes were wild, and his mouth was twisted into a snarl. About half a dozen of my men had swarmed into the warehouse behind him, their guns drawn, but none would press the trigger with my daughter in the position she was in. They all knew Yelena was the most precious person to me.

“Cut him down!” Yuriy’s voice thundered, echoing off the rafters. He jammed the muzzle tighter against Yelena’s head, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Do it now, Zhukovsky, or I’ll paint this floor with your little girl’s brains.”

My heart stuttered, a cold punch inside my chest.

“Yelena…” My throat scraped with her name. Her eyes found mine, red and pleading, her lips trembling around sobs.