Chapter 40: Bratva Prince: Chapter 40

I stood in the entryway to Father’s office, staring out over the sea of destruction that lay before me, trying to process everything that happened.

We’d managed to win the battle but it had come at a heavy, heavy price. Twenty-one of our soldiers had been killed, along with two maids who weren’t able to take refuge in the safe rooms before the attack started.

And Dayton. Poor, poor Dayton. I’d failed him, and the guilt from that was eating me up inside.

Every room in the house had been torn apart. Completely destroyed. TVs and mirrors were smashed. Furniture broken. Cupboards and drawers had been raided, all our possessions thrown across the room and trampled on. They’d even gone so far as to piss on the beds and couches.

This wasn’t a simple act of vandalism. No. This was about humiliation. Whoever was responsible, the mysterious ‘he’ Scraggly Hair referred to, didn’t just want to hurt us. He wanted to humiliate us too.

Turned out though, we weren’t the ones to be humiliated.

They were.

We’d faced a small army, been taken completely by surprise and yet, despite all odds, we’d managed to prevail.

Lukyan was still in the middle of counting their dead, but last time I’d checked he was up to twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven.

Our soldiers were good. One of ours would equate to roughly three of theirs. The rigorous training we put them through every day ensured that. But that didn’t matter if you were overrun with much higher numbers. If it wasn’t for the reinforcements that had arrived, this might have been one battle we couldn’t win.

I stared at Father’s tracking chip sitting in my open palm. The tiny little thing weighed virtually nothing, and yet it felt incredibly heavy in my hands. The enormous responsibility that now fell on my shoulders didn’t scare me. It was hard to be scared of something you’d been preparing for your whole life.

What scared me was the fate of my father.

The fact that they’d cut out his tracking device and kidnapped him was technically good news. If they wanted to kill him, I would have found his body instead. But this begged the question of what they wanted with him.

Most people would think having the leader of the Bratva was a great bargaining chip, that it gave them the power to ask for anything they wanted. Money. Guns. Drugs.

Except that anyone who actually knew my father would know he wasn’t the type to bargain for his life. His children’s lives, yes. But his own? No.

And he’d kill me if I tried to do it instead.

I hoped Nikolai was having some luck with the prisoners. There were only a few left still alive, however I doubted it would be for very long. Their injuries were life-threatening, and I wasn’t going to waste the time or resources trying to save their lives.

“Oh, Aleksandr,” a soft, feminine voice squeaked. “I didn’t realise you were in here.”

I turned to see Flora standing behind me, a mop and bucket in her hands. She was one of the maids that permanently lived at the house. I’d known her for over twenty years. She’d come here with us from Russia. I was glad to see she wasn’t hurt.

“I’m just here to clean your father’s office,” she said, glancing over my shoulder at the bloody mess that waited in the room behind me.

I tucked Father’s tracking chip into my pocket and held out my hand. “I’ll do it.”

She frowned slightly but didn’t argue, handing over the cleaning supplies.

“Take the rest of the night off. I’ll call The Cleaners in to take care of everything.” There was far too much damage for one person to clean up on their own.

“I don’t mind.” No, she never did. She never complained or argued about any of the work she had to do.

“I know. It’s been a traumatic day. Just go take it easy.”

She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything, just stood with me for a moment in silence before she turned and walked away.

I faced the room, taking a deep breath. I’d never seen my father’s office in a state like this. It was always neat and tidy. Never a thing out of place. Father was a man of order and efficiency. He didn’t like messes, let alone in his private spaces. I swear, he spent more time in this office than he did anywhere else in the house.

I started cleaning. I cleared out all the rubbish and damaged furniture. I picked up all the books and put them on the shelves on the back wall, making sure each of them went back exactly where they belonged. Father had them organised alphabetically.

I righted his desk and moved it to its spot, which was hard because the thing was fucking heavy. A wheel on his leather chair was broken, which was an easy fix, so I just popped it in the hallway for now. I’d deal with it later.

Something crunched underneath my foot and I paused in reorganising his desk, looking down. Pain squeezed my heart when I realised what I’d stood on, and I had to take a moment to breathe through it. I bent down slowly and picked it up with as much care as I could.

It was an antique photo frame, and inside it was a picture of our family. The glass was smashed, blood staining the tiny little cracks that spread out across the broken surface like a spider’s web.

My fingers hovered over the picture, sadness clutching my chest, threatening to overcome me. It was an old photo, back from when my mother was still alive. Lukyan and Illayana were just kids. We were all smiling, even Father, which was a rarity in itself. We looked so…happy.

Life was good then. We were all together. Happy. Healthy. Alive.

And now?

I exhaled heavily as I sat the frame back on Father’s desk where it belonged, thinking about how much things had changed. How much I wished I’d done things differently.

If I had come downstairs sooner, maybe I could have saved him. Like I could have saved my mother. Like I could have saved Dayton.

Guilt exploded inside me, so crippling I struggled to breathe.

Nik walked into the room and I quickly turned my head away, wiping the tear that had managed to escape. I cleared my throat, mentally berating myself before I turned back to face him.

He’d paused in the doorway, a wet cloth in his blood-stained hands as he studied me with worried eyes.

“What did you find out?” I asked, going back to the task of setting up Father’s desk, pretending like he hadn’t just walked in on me in a moment of weakness.

Nik played along, but the look he gave me made it clear he wasn’t going to let it go completely. “A few things,” he said, stepping further into the room. “There were six still alive. Two died before I got the chance to interrogate them. Their wounds were too severe. Out of the four, two of them were Dirty Vultures.”

“Just two? What about the others?”

“They were part of another MC, The Chaos Lords.”

I frowned as I put a stack of papers away into the desk drawer. “Never heard of them.”

“Me either. But it turns out it wasn’t just those two. They said there were four different MC Gangs that were a part of this raid.”

That explained where the numbers came from then.

“Apparently, they’d all been brought together by one man. None of them knew his name but they described him all the same. Big. Dark hair. Blue eyes.” He levelled his gaze at me. “Russian.”

I clenched my fists, a vortex of anger swirling inside me. “Dominik,” I growled.

Nik nodded. “These MCs are all small-time, not even a blip on the radar. Dominik has somehow convinced them all to work for him. Maybe he’s paying them. Maybe he’s giving them something in return. I don’t know. But he’s behind this whole thing.”

I cracked my neck, battling the rage that threatened to take me over. I needed a calm, level head if I was going to figure out the next course of action. “Rayna’s death pushed him to attack.”

“Yes,” Nik agreed, his face tense. “It’s something we should have anticipated.”

“How could we have? Rayna was his daughter, but he never gave a shit about her. Not really. We all knew that. Fuck, even she knew that. No. He was using her death as an excuse to attack. A justification should Sergei question him about it.” My mind ran a mile a minute trying to piece everything together. “What I still can’t figure out is why he kidnapped Father. That’s what I can’t make sense of. The whole MC thing is easy. If they’re small-time, he would have offered them something they’d be dying for. Money and status. The ability to move up and finally be known and feared in the organised crime world. He’s brought them all together under his leadership and convinced them to do his bidding. He’s built himself his own little army and came knocking on our door, trying to take us down. He took Father. He ordered his men to take me alive. Why? What was his real goal?”

Nik’s face was grim. “I have no idea, but we need to figure it out quickly before he strikes again. I think the only way we’ll ever know is if we catch Dominik himself.”

I nodded. God, I was tired. I just wanted to lie down and sleep for a week. My whole body was aching and sore. I had cuts and bruises all over me, and the stab wound on my shoulder was throbbing like mad, shooting pain all across my back.

“About Drea—”

I groaned, running a hand down my face. “Not now, Nik.”

“Yes, now,” he demanded harshly, giving me a hard stare. “You’re too close to this, so you can’t see it, but you need to let her go.”

“Nikolai,” I growled, clenching my jaw. I wasn’t in the fucking mood to hear this. I had a million other things flying through my head. A million other things to sort out and deal with. I didn’t want this to be one of them.

Drea was so much more than what I thought. She was beautiful, kind, fierce, loyal, and a million other things that made her up to be the amazing woman she was. She could have run when the attack started. Just focused on herself and what was best for her and left.

But she didn’t. She stayed by my side. She fought next to me and saved my life.

“Word of this attack has already hit the streets. Her brother is mounting a force and it doesn’t take a genius to guess what he plans to do with it. If he attacks us now before we’ve had the chance to recuperate, we’re done for. Keeping her does nothing but hurt us. I understand—”

“You don’t understand a thing,” I hissed, stepping up and going nose to nose with him.

“Then explain it to me,” he said back, glaring at me. He didn’t move an inch, not the least bit intimidated by me. Nik never was.

“If I let her go, she won’t come back.”

He frowned.

I growled, frustration twisting inside me, and I began to pace up and down the room. “I understand what I need to do. I know I have to marry Anya. But I don’t want to let Drea go because if I do, she will never come back. She won’t sit idly by while I marry another woman.”

“So you plan to force her to do it anyway? Force her to stay locked up in that room forever?”

“Yes. If it means I get to keep her in my life, then yes.”

“Even at the risk of her hating you?”

“Even then.” At least she would still be in my life. At least I would still get to see her every day. That was better than nothing at all.

Nik shook his head. “Aleksandr, I say this with all the love in the world, but you need to stop being such a fucking idiot.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. I didn’t fucking stutter. There’s a simple solution to all this and that’s not going through with marriage. No, don’t say a word. Shut up and listen to me. I don’t know when you decided your happiness wasn’t as important as ours. It is, and you deserve to have what you want. You think Lukyan and I haven’t noticed all the sacrifices you’ve made for us? For our family? Fuck this arranged marriage. Do something for yourself for once. Tell Drea you’re not going through with it and then let her go. You can’t force a relationship, that’s something I’ve learnt the hard way. If she wants to be with you, she’ll come back. But at least she can convince her brother to stand the fuck down.”

“It’s easy to say that, but it’s not possible, Nik. If one of us doesn’t marry Anya Tarasov, Grandfather will kill Illayana.”

“I’ll do it.” Lukyan stepped into the room, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it before.

I exhaled, rubbing my temples. The stirrings of a headache were starting to form, and I could tell it was going to be a doozy. “Lukyan—”

“I heard what you said at Arturo’s party.”

I stiffened, guilt twisting my stomach.

“I’m not unreliable,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, and that guilt inside me exploded, consuming me entirely. “I know I joke around a lot. I know I say stupid shit sometimes. But I can be serious. I can. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”

Blowing out a breath, I looked at my brother closely. There was nothing but sincerity burning in his eyes, this need to prove himself radiating from him. But it wasn’t fair to force this on him either.

“Lukyan, I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean for you to hear it—”

“But you think it’s true, don’t you? That I’m just a fuck up?”

“You’re not a fuck up.” He waited for me to continue. “But you do have this tendency to screw things up sometimes. And this is a delicate situation. If something goes wrong, it could put Illayana in jeopardy.”

“I can do this, Aleksandr,” he said, standing tall. “Let me do this. Trust in me. Believe in me. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

I glanced at Nik. He nodded earnestly.

God, I hoped I wouldn’t regret this. “Okay.”

We went through the particulars, what was expected of him and the details of when he’d be heading over to Russia when the sound of a car door slamming shut made me pause, tilting my head in curiosity.

“Who’s that?”

A second later Illayana came bursting into the room, her eyes wild and frantic. She ran up to me, gripping my arms tightly. “Tell me it isn’t true,” she breathed out heavily, her nails digging into my skin.

I didn’t need to guess what she was talking about. Nik would have called her to tell her what happened.

“It’s true. Father’s been kidnapped.”

Her face crumpled, tears gathering in her eyes. “How? How can something like this happen?” Arturo and her guards walked in. Arturo went right to his wife, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her away lightly, trying his best to soothe her.

It was a good question. I looked to Nik. “Did you have a chance to look at the security footage?”

“Yes,” he replied, boiling with anger. “And you won’t believe what I found.”

Istood in the entryway to Father’s office, staring out over the sea of destruction that lay before me, trying to process everything that happened.

We’d managed to win the battle but it had come at a heavy, heavy price. Twenty-one of our soldiers had been killed, along with two maids who weren’t able to take refuge in the safe rooms before the attack started.

And Dayton. Poor, poor Dayton. I’d failed him, and the guilt from that was eating me up inside.

Every room in the house had been torn apart. Completely destroyed. TVs and mirrors were smashed. Furniture broken. Cupboards and drawers had been raided, all our possessions thrown across the room and trampled on. They’d even gone so far as to piss on the beds and couches.

This wasn’t a simple act of vandalism. No. This was about humiliation. Whoever was responsible, the mysterious ‘he’ Scraggly Hair referred to, didn’t just want to hurt us. He wanted to humiliate us too.

Turned out though, we weren’t the ones to be humiliated.

They were.

We’d faced a small army, been taken completely by surprise and yet, despite all odds, we’d managed to prevail.

Lukyan was still in the middle of counting their dead, but last time I’d checked he was up to twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven.

Our soldiers were good. One of ours would equate to roughly three of theirs. The rigorous training we put them through every day ensured that. But that didn’t matter if you were overrun with much higher numbers. If it wasn’t for the reinforcements that had arrived, this might have been one battle we couldn’t win.

I stared at Father’s tracking chip sitting in my open palm. The tiny little thing weighed virtually nothing, and yet it felt incredibly heavy in my hands. The enormous responsibility that now fell on my shoulders didn’t scare me. It was hard to be scared of something you’d been preparing for your whole life.

What scared me was the fate of my father.

The fact that they’d cut out his tracking device and kidnapped him was technically good news. If they wanted to kill him, I would have found his body instead. But this begged the question of what they wanted with him.

Most people would think having the leader of the Bratva was a great bargaining chip, that it gave them the power to ask for anything they wanted. Money. Guns. Drugs.

Except that anyone who actually knew my father would know he wasn’t the type to bargain for his life. His children’s lives, yes. But his own? No.

And he’d kill me if I tried to do it instead.

I hoped Nikolai was having some luck with the prisoners. There were only a few left still alive, however I doubted it would be for very long. Their injuries were life-threatening, and I wasn’t going to waste the time or resources trying to save their lives.

“Oh, Aleksandr,” a soft, feminine voice squeaked. “I didn’t realise you were in here.”

I turned to see Flora standing behind me, a mop and bucket in her hands. She was one of the maids that permanently lived at the house. I’d known her for over twenty years. She’d come here with us from Russia. I was glad to see she wasn’t hurt.

“I’m just here to clean your father’s office,” she said, glancing over my shoulder at the bloody mess that waited in the room behind me.

I tucked Father’s tracking chip into my pocket and held out my hand. “I’ll do it.”

She frowned slightly but didn’t argue, handing over the cleaning supplies.

“Take the rest of the night off. I’ll call The Cleaners in to take care of everything.” There was far too much damage for one person to clean up on their own.

“I don’t mind.” No, she never did. She never complained or argued about any of the work she had to do.

“I know. It’s been a traumatic day. Just go take it easy.”

She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything, just stood with me for a moment in silence before she turned and walked away.

I faced the room, taking a deep breath. I’d never seen my father’s office in a state like this. It was always neat and tidy. Never a thing out of place. Father was a man of order and efficiency. He didn’t like messes, let alone in his private spaces. I swear, he spent more time in this office than he did anywhere else in the house.

I started cleaning. I cleared out all the rubbish and damaged furniture. I picked up all the books and put them on the shelves on the back wall, making sure each of them went back exactly where they belonged. Father had them organised alphabetically.

I righted his desk and moved it to its spot, which was hard because the thing was fucking heavy. A wheel on his leather chair was broken, which was an easy fix, so I just popped it in the hallway for now. I’d deal with it later.

Something crunched underneath my foot and I paused in reorganising his desk, looking down. Pain squeezed my heart when I realised what I’d stood on, and I had to take a moment to breathe through it. I bent down slowly and picked it up with as much care as I could.

It was an antique photo frame, and inside it was a picture of our family. The glass was smashed, blood staining the tiny little cracks that spread out across the broken surface like a spider’s web.

My fingers hovered over the picture, sadness clutching my chest, threatening to overcome me. It was an old photo, back from when my mother was still alive. Lukyan and Illayana were just kids. We were all smiling, even Father, which was a rarity in itself. We looked so…happy.

Life was good then. We were all together. Happy. Healthy. Alive.

And now?

I exhaled heavily as I sat the frame back on Father’s desk where it belonged, thinking about how much things had changed. How much I wished I’d done things differently.

If I had come downstairs sooner, maybe I could have saved him. Like I could have saved my mother. Like I could have saved Dayton.

Guilt exploded inside me, so crippling I struggled to breathe.

Nik walked into the room and I quickly turned my head away, wiping the tear that had managed to escape. I cleared my throat, mentally berating myself before I turned back to face him.

He’d paused in the doorway, a wet cloth in his blood-stained hands as he studied me with worried eyes.

“What did you find out?” I asked, going back to the task of setting up Father’s desk, pretending like he hadn’t just walked in on me in a moment of weakness.

Nik played along, but the look he gave me made it clear he wasn’t going to let it go completely. “A few things,” he said, stepping further into the room. “There were six still alive. Two died before I got the chance to interrogate them. Their wounds were too severe. Out of the four, two of them were Dirty Vultures.”

“Just two? What about the others?”

“They were part of another MC, The Chaos Lords.”

I frowned as I put a stack of papers away into the desk drawer. “Never heard of them.”

“Me either. But it turns out it wasn’t just those two. They said there were four different MC Gangs that were a part of this raid.”

That explained where the numbers came from then.

“Apparently, they’d all been brought together by one man. None of them knew his name but they described him all the same. Big. Dark hair. Blue eyes.” He levelled his gaze at me. “Russian.”

I clenched my fists, a vortex of anger swirling inside me. “Dominik,” I growled.

Nik nodded. “These MCs are all small-time, not even a blip on the radar. Dominik has somehow convinced them all to work for him. Maybe he’s paying them. Maybe he’s giving them something in return. I don’t know. But he’s behind this whole thing.”

I cracked my neck, battling the rage that threatened to take me over. I needed a calm, level head if I was going to figure out the next course of action. “Rayna’s death pushed him to attack.”

“Yes,” Nik agreed, his face tense. “It’s something we should have anticipated.”

“How could we have? Rayna was his daughter, but he never gave a shit about her. Not really. We all knew that. Fuck, even she knew that. No. He was using her death as an excuse to attack. A justification should Sergei question him about it.” My mind ran a mile a minute trying to piece everything together. “What I still can’t figure out is why he kidnapped Father. That’s what I can’t make sense of. The whole MC thing is easy. If they’re small-time, he would have offered them something they’d be dying for. Money and status. The ability to move up and finally be known and feared in the organised crime world. He’s brought them all together under his leadership and convinced them to do his bidding. He’s built himself his own little army and came knocking on our door, trying to take us down. He took Father. He ordered his men to take me alive. Why? What was his real goal?”

Nik’s face was grim. “I have no idea, but we need to figure it out quickly before he strikes again. I think the only way we’ll ever know is if we catch Dominik himself.”

I nodded. God, I was tired. I just wanted to lie down and sleep for a week. My whole body was aching and sore. I had cuts and bruises all over me, and the stab wound on my shoulder was throbbing like mad, shooting pain all across my back.

“About Drea—”

I groaned, running a hand down my face. “Not now, Nik.”

“Yes, now,” he demanded harshly, giving me a hard stare. “You’re too close to this, so you can’t see it, but you need to let her go.”

“Nikolai,” I growled, clenching my jaw. I wasn’t in the fucking mood to hear this. I had a million other things flying through my head. A million other things to sort out and deal with. I didn’t want this to be one of them.

Drea was so much more than what I thought. She was beautiful, kind, fierce, loyal, and a million other things that made her up to be the amazing woman she was. She could have run when the attack started. Just focused on herself and what was best for her and left.

But she didn’t. She stayed by my side. She fought next to me and saved my life.

“Word of this attack has already hit the streets. Her brother is mounting a force and it doesn’t take a genius to guess what he plans to do with it. If he attacks us now before we’ve had the chance to recuperate, we’re done for. Keeping her does nothing but hurt us. I understand—”

“You don’t understand a thing,” I hissed, stepping up and going nose to nose with him.

“Then explain it to me,” he said back, glaring at me. He didn’t move an inch, not the least bit intimidated by me. Nik never was.

“If I let her go, she won’t come back.”

He frowned.

I growled, frustration twisting inside me, and I began to pace up and down the room. “I understand what I need to do. I know I have to marry Anya. But I don’t want to let Drea go because if I do, she will never come back. She won’t sit idly by while I marry another woman.”

“So you plan to force her to do it anyway? Force her to stay locked up in that room forever?”

“Yes. If it means I get to keep her in my life, then yes.”

“Even at the risk of her hating you?”

“Even then.” At least she would still be in my life. At least I would still get to see her every day. That was better than nothing at all.

Nik shook his head. “Aleksandr, I say this with all the love in the world, but you need to stop being such a fucking idiot.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. I didn’t fucking stutter. There’s a simple solution to all this and that’s not going through with marriage. No, don’t say a word. Shut up and listen to me. I don’t know when you decided your happiness wasn’t as important as ours. It is, and you deserve to have what you want. You think Lukyan and I haven’t noticed all the sacrifices you’ve made for us? For our family? Fuck this arranged marriage. Do something for yourself for once. Tell Drea you’re not going through with it and then let her go. You can’t force a relationship, that’s something I’ve learnt the hard way. If she wants to be with you, she’ll come back. But at least she can convince her brother to stand the fuck down.”

“It’s easy to say that, but it’s not possible, Nik. If one of us doesn’t marry Anya Tarasov, Grandfather will kill Illayana.”

“I’ll do it.” Lukyan stepped into the room, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it before.

I exhaled, rubbing my temples. The stirrings of a headache were starting to form, and I could tell it was going to be a doozy. “Lukyan—”

“I heard what you said at Arturo’s party.”

I stiffened, guilt twisting my stomach.

“I’m not unreliable,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, and that guilt inside me exploded, consuming me entirely. “I know I joke around a lot. I know I say stupid shit sometimes. But I can be serious. I can. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”

Blowing out a breath, I looked at my brother closely. There was nothing but sincerity burning in his eyes, this need to prove himself radiating from him. But it wasn’t fair to force this on him either.

“Lukyan, I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean for you to hear it—”

“But you think it’s true, don’t you? That I’m just a fuck up?”

“You’re not a fuck up.” He waited for me to continue. “But you do have this tendency to screw things up sometimes. And this is a delicate situation. If something goes wrong, it could put Illayana in jeopardy.”

“I can do this, Aleksandr,” he said, standing tall. “Let me do this. Trust in me. Believe in me. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

I glanced at Nik. He nodded earnestly.

God, I hoped I wouldn’t regret this. “Okay.”

We went through the particulars, what was expected of him and the details of when he’d be heading over to Russia when the sound of a car door slamming shut made me pause, tilting my head in curiosity.

“Who’s that?”

A second later Illayana came bursting into the room, her eyes wild and frantic. She ran up to me, gripping my arms tightly. “Tell me it isn’t true,” she breathed out heavily, her nails digging into my skin.

I didn’t need to guess what she was talking about. Nik would have called her to tell her what happened.

“It’s true. Father’s been kidnapped.”

Her face crumpled, tears gathering in her eyes. “How? How can something like this happen?” Arturo and her guards walked in. Arturo went right to his wife, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her away lightly, trying his best to soothe her.

It was a good question. I looked to Nik. “Did you have a chance to look at the security footage?”

“Yes,” he replied, boiling with anger. “And you won’t believe what I found.”