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I look out at the beehive of activity taking place below my feet. I’m on the upper catwalk of one of our warehouses along the river. On the ground floor, dozens of my men zip back and forth like ants, hauling pallets of weapons out of storage and into the bellies of the waiting trucks, to be dispersed to our other secret properties around the city. Every time one of the soldiers catches my eye, they nod respectfully. They know who wears the crown.
Milana sighs melodramatically and leans against the railing. “So you’re staking all your hopes on the child in June’s belly.”
“That child is Adrian’s,” I remind her. “Bratva blood. Uvarov blood.”
“And what if the child is a girl?” she presses. “You think the men down there will accept a queen for a don? Come on, Kolya. You know better.”
“We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Her eyes go wide. I can’t exactly blame her. I’m not a cross-the-bridge-when-we-come-to-it kind of man. I move with plans, not predictions. Hope is not a strategy. Nor has it ever been.
My father made sure of that.
“You like her, don’t you?”
“I’m honor-bound to protect her,” I reply carefully. “For Adrian’s sake.”
“That’s not how you look at her.” I narrow my eyes viciously, and Milana holds up her hands in surrender. “Fine, fine, fine. It’s brotherly obligation and nothing else. Case closed. Then I have another suggestion—and before you say anything, just hear me out, okay?”
“Fine.”
She takes a deep breath before she charges ahead. “Bring back the red trade.”
I draw myself up to my full height and look down on her. “That’s going too far, Milana. Way too fucking far.”
To her credit, she doesn’t back down. Not many people still alive can say that. “You said you’d hear me out. Look—we lost a lot of good men to Ravil’s cause. Asking them to support a female don or an heir with questionable parentage is just icing on the cake. But if we did it right this time, if we made sure the women were protected, consenting, safe—”
“And after we sell them off to the highest bidder?” I slice in. “What then, Milana? Do we make regular house calls to make sure they’re being treated well? Do we set up a hotline? I shut down the red trade because we can’t control what happens after the girls are sold off. You think those men buy whores on the black market so they can treat them well? Don’t be a fucking fool.”
She looks down for a moment, but I can see the resignation in her shoulders. “But—”
Before she can finish her sentence however, I hear a flurry of activity from the south entrance of the warehouse. The stampeding of boots, the crackle of walkie-talkies. A second after that, a barrage of gunfire joins the cacophony.
Milana and I both draw our weapons simultaneously. We don’t have to speak or even make eye contact to know what’s happening or how we’ll respond.
Ravil is here to take what’s mine.
We’re on our way to make sure that never fucking happens.
* * *
An hour later, it’s starting to itch where the blood has dried on my skin. Very little of it is mine, though Oleg doesn’t know that when I enter the house and he comes running up to take my coat.
“Sir—!”
“I’m fine,” I say, holding up a hand. “Have a hot bath prepared in my room. I’m going to make a pitstop before I get up there.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Anything happen while I was away?”
“Nothing, sir. It’s been quiet here all morning.”
Of course, I already knew that. The first thing I’d done once the fighting at the warehouse had subsided was call the compound to make sure that no attacks were launched elsewhere while I was busy defending my weapons cache.
My staff had confirmed that June remained in her room all morning. My security had confirmed that no attempts had been made to breach the walls of the compound.
We didn’t suffer any casualties on-site. The hit was limited to damaged inventory and minor injuries—for us, at least. Ravil, on the other hand, ended the day with eight fewer men than he began it with.
