The King: Bratva Blood: (A dark mafia romance)

by SR Jones

  He pauses, turns to look at me, and smirks again. I shouldn’t find that arrogant expression so very sexy.

  “You are a contradiction. You used to look like a wholesome young woman; now, like this, with the smudged makeup, you appear oddly older and yet younger … like, I don’t know, like a schoolgirl dressing up as a stripper. It’s kind of hot, in a slutty way.”

  He grabs his keys from a hook by the back door, but then walks out of the kitchen, flicking his fingers at me indicating for me to follow; like I’m his damn dog. I do, though, not sure what my other options are. We go into the large hallway, and he enters a code on a complex looking alarm by the door, then uses the keys to open it.

  Slutty? Slutty? Oh my God, he might be delicious, but the man is rude. How come I didn’t see this side of him when he used to come into the coffee shop? I suppose he at least has good enough manners to be polite to his barista.

  I want to tell him he’s one to talk; walking about with all that fineness highlighted by his no doubt extortionate suit. The shirt he’s wearing is white, and the collar is open, showing the strong base of his neck and tan skin. A chunky steel watch sits on his wrist, and his trousers fit his powerful thighs like a glove.

  The man is a walking, talking tease, and he calls me slutty. The hypocrite.

  I daren’t say any of this, though. There’s a simmering anger in him that I can sense and don’t quite understand. Why would he be angry at me? Oh, yeah, he thinks I shagged his son who’s getting married. I sigh as my stomach drops. From now on, the crush of my life will hate me. Instead of speaking, I step in front of him and walk toward the car parked haphazardly out front, with an extra sway in my hips.

  Let him get a good look. I don’t usually wear clothes like this, so why not show off the goods when it’s the only chance I’ll probably get to do so.

  I know he’s a million miles up the dating rung from me. So high up he’d never have noticed me on an ordinary night out in a bar, but I still try to impress.

  He follows close, the door slamming shut as his shoes crunch on the gravel behind me. I carry on with the strutting, hip-swinging thing until one of my ridiculous heels gets stuck in the gravel. The world tilts, and I cry out as I go down.

  I wait for the pain to hit, but instead big, warm arms catch me in their grasp.

  “Fucking stupid shoes. I don’t know why you women wear such impractical things,” my savior grouses as he rights me.

  Oh God help me, but I don’t want him to let go. I want him to keep holding me longer in his strong arms, the warmth and scent of him surrounding me. I could stay here all day, letting him shield me from the world.

  Is this my daddy issues surfacing? The ones my therapist told me I must have, but I always denied.

  Not having a daddy will do that to you, she’d told me. She said it was why I got engaged so quickly and so relatively young. She believes I look to men to protect me, shelter me, be my comfort in the storm of life because I never got it from my father.

  Not financially. Oh, no. I’m financially self-sufficient; thank you very much. Despite my job not being the best paying in the world, it isn’t the worst. No, I don’t need a man to support me in that way, but I suppose if I were truly, brutally honest with myself, I do hold a deep yearning for some big, strong man to come along and just be there for me.

  I’d disagreed with my therapist at the time because I’d never viewed my fiancé in that way, as my protector, but she insisted I had. She was wrong. But I had fantasized about Konstantin in such a way, hadn’t I? And now here he is, holding me, and I don’t want him to let go.

  “We wear silly shoes like this because men supposedly love them,” I inform Mr. Grumpy-but-oh-so-hot, as he lets go.

  “I don’t,” he says.

  “Really? You honestly don’t find high heels sexy?”

  He shoots me a one-sided smile as we reach the big Mercedes with tinted windows.

  “They work in the right context.”

  “What’s the right context?” I ask.

  “In the bedroom,” he shoots back.

  Oh my. Him saying those words has me imagining him watching as I parade around his bedroom in my stripper shoes. Nothing else but panties on. Him watching me, fully dressed and ravenous. God, I’d love that.

  Why is it this man who brings that side of me out so much?

  In the past, I tried to let Tim, my ex, know that I might like to be bossed around a bit in the bedroom, and he tried, but he sucked at it. It was clearly play-acting, and weirdly as such it didn’t turn me on. I need the real deal, and Konstantin is it. For those reasons, he’s bad for me. I don’t need a therapist to tell me as such. I’d lose myself to a man like him.

  “Oh, well, yes.” My cheeks are burning up as a million thoughts fly around my brain. I’m a total mess this morning.

  He gives a dark, almost bitter laugh and holds the passenger door open for me, shutting it with a heavy thunk once I settle into the deep leather seat.

  He climbs into his own side and glances at my legs, my short skirt riding high on my thighs.

  “You want the heater on?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I might not be wearing many clothes, but the combination of mortification and arousal has me all hot and bothered.

  He nods, puts the car into gear, and pulls onto the long driveway. We drive slowly to the set of iron gates at the end, which open smoothly when we reach them.

  Glancing left and right, he turns onto the road.

  For a while, a tense silence fills the car. I used to be able to chat to Konstantin, despite my crush on him, but this version of him? Nope. He’s so sullen, angry at something, and I don’t know what.

  “Don’t call him again,” he says after a while.

  I know exactly who he means, and I bristle. He think, I slept with his son. “I have no intentions of doing so; don’t worry.”

  I stare out the window for a moment before turning back to look at him.

  “You know, you don’t look old enough to be his father.” I glance at him, and then away as our gazes collide.

  “I’m not his biological father,” he says. “But I am old enough.”

  Well, that explains the startling difference in coloring and build.

  “Thank God your wife didn’t wake up,” I say, hating the words in my mouth, hating that he has a wife, despite not having any right to do so. “I’d have been mortified to upset the mother of the groom so near the wedding.”

  He shoots me another glance, before seeming to consider whether to speak or not, but then he does. “We’re not together anymore, his mother and me. She got pregnant very young; we were friends. The father didn’t want to know, and she had nowhere to turn. Years later, when I realized how alone they were, after I came back from the war, I helped her, stuck by her. In the end, I asked her to marry me.” He pauses and raises one hand from the wheel to rub over his jaw. “It wasn’t anything more than a marriage of convenience between good friends. I screwed who I liked; she had her own romantic affairs. Then … then she passed away. He has no one now but me.”

  I don’t know what to say. Wow.

  “It’s pretty great that you married her and then continued to be there for your son. I wish I’d had someone like you growing up,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “What do you mean? Didn’t your father care?”

  I swallow down the bitterness that always comes. “My father walked away when I was tiny. Went out the door to get milk and never came back. I think Mum had some sort of breakdown, because everyone says she was a totally different person before. The only mum I can remember, though, is the one who worried and stressed about every little thing. Who had so many rituals she had to perform it took us an hour to get out the door sometimes. I was always late for school because of it. By the time I turned nine social services got involved, and eventually I had to go live with my grandparents.”

  “Christ, I’m sorry.” He looks at me, and I push down the stupidest urge to tell
him to stop the car and just hold me.

  I need to sort my head out. I tell myself I’m vulnerable because my fiancé has left me, and the whole office knows, and for once in my life, I got drunk, and my first one-night stand had been terrible. The truth is much starker. I’m vulnerable to him … to Konstantin.

  I was weirdly obsessed with him when he was a regular at the coffee shop. I lived for his regular coffee runs, and I thought about him all the time. I thought about him way more than I thought about my fiancé, which is all kinds of effed up.

  “It’s okay. I love my grandparents, and I loved my mum and saw her loads. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “Loved?” he asks.

  I’m about to tell him that his stepson isn’t the only one to lose his mother, but his phone rings.

  Konstantin moves around in his seat, pulling the cell out of his pocket and placing it on the holder attached to the dashboard.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “There’s a girl…” Michael says, sounding worried.

  “I know. Your mistake is in the car with me right now. I’m dropping her off at home. We will talk later.” He hangs up the phone.

  Oh. He’s such a dick! He hasn’t let his son tell him we didn’t have sex; instead, he hung up on him before he could explain. And now he’s calling me a mistake! Cheeky bastard. I was about to put him out of his misery and tell him I didn’t have sex with his stepson, but he can go screw himself.

  All the warm, glowy feelings our little chat had engendered puff out of existence to be replaced by a simmering anger.

  “Your mistake?” I tried to keep my mouth shut, I truly did, but come on. “The mistake is in the car? She can hear you. You’re an arsehole.”

  He turns to me and lazily raises one shoulder. “Probably, I’ve been called a lot worse. You’re … disappointing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  He turns to me and reaches out to grab a lock of my hair before shaking his head. “You used to be golden, like sunshine, now you’re … dulled.”

  Oh my god, he’s such a bastard. His words hurt. Burn.

  “Oh, so because my hair is a bit darker, because I’m stuck inside so much, you think I’m all dull now?”

  He huffs out a breath and let’s go of the lock. “It’s not merely your hair, it’s you. There’s no light in your eyes anymore. And you were … different. There was something inside you, Cassie, when you worked at the coffee shop. You had a light, and more. Something untamed. I saw it, but it’s gone. Now, you’re like all the others.”

  All what others?

  Thankfully, we’ve finally reached the city, and I sink into silence. It doesn’t take long before I spy the familiar sign of the coffee shop where I used to work. “You can drop me here.”

  “You don’t work here anymore.”

  “I know,” I snap. “But I only live around the corner, and I want a drink.” I need an iced tea to quench my raging thirst.

  I’d rather do the walk of shame home from the coffee shop than spend another minute in the car with this man. He makes me feel too much when I’m already rubbed raw emotionally.

  “Okay, if you insist.”

  He pulls the car onto the side of the road.

  Stupidly, I can feel tears threatening, and all I want to do is get an iced peach tea and go curl up on my sofa and cry.

  “You know, Cassie…” Konstantin turns off the engine and leans right over me. I hold my breath, but he simply pops the seatbelt for me. “You were going to be lucky. The one who got away. But then you came back on my radar, unexpectedly, and now this.” He spits out the word this with barely controlled rage.

  He raises his hand and tips my chin. “You’ll be seeing me again.”

  Will I?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to, jailbait. All will become clear. I’m disappointed you saw fit to jump into bed with my stepson when he’s about to be married, and now I must go and clean that mess up.”

  He brushes his thumb over my lower lip. “It fucking cuts me up you slept with him,” he says.

  It hits me then. Is his anger, his hostility, his general arseholeness, because he’s jealous?

  Can I even hope for that?

  I open my mouth, about to tell him he’s got it all wrong, but then he carries on speaking.

  “It cuts me up you give yourself away so cheaply.”

  Okay, I might want him more than the iced tea I’ve been craving, but I cannot stand double standards. Who does he think he is? If I had slept with his son, which I did not, his son would be the one in the wrong, not me. He’s the one getting married.

  I wrench my chin out of his grasp and clamber out of the car with as much grace as I can muster. I bend down as I shut the door, for some reason wanting the last word, angry and hurt with the way he’s spoken to me. There’s nothing like finding the man you’ve dreamed about for months is an utter arsehole to put you in a vile mood. I lean into the car, not caring that my top falls forward, probably exposing an acre of cleavage.

  “I feel sorry for your son’s wife-to-be,” I say.

  “They’ll be fine; he’s not about to admit he fucked up with you, jailbait. She won’t know a thing about this.”

  This man lives in the middle ages. I decide there and then that I might find Konstantin insanely hot, but I also hate him in this moment and despite his strange words, I don’t have to see him again.

  “No, not because of that,” I answer, then with a smirk of my own, I add, “Because of the fact that your son is really shit in bed. And you know what they say … like father like son.”

  With those words I kick the car door and stalk away from him.

  Fuck him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Konstantin

  I watch Cassie wobble away from me on her ridiculous heels and clench my hands around the steering wheel to stop from going after her and throwing her in the trunk of my car.

  I can’t do those things now, I remind myself. I’m a respectable businessman, a pillar of the establishment. I’m not someone who runs the seamy underworld of Moscow, or at least, not openly.

  Biting down the urge to go get her, throw her over my knee, and turn her ass red for what she’s done, I simply watch her go.

  Cassie, the barista I spent months wanting to fuck. Cassie, little, cute, Cassie, the woman I obsessed over while I had movie stars and supermodels in my bed. Cassie, the girl who worked at a coffee shop and now works for a company I’ve only gone and purchased. Cassie, the girl who has skills you would never imagine looking at her.

  She’d been off my radar for months, and then my assistant gave me the staff roster for the company we’re buying… And there she was. My honey-drenched, sunshiny, golden girl. When I pored over her file, I found out she wasn’t only a shit-hot IT guru, but that she’d been involved in a hacking project at university. One that the lecturers had to put a stop to.

  Cassie. The girl I plan on taking and making work for me … and more, whether she wants it or not. Little miss butter wouldn’t melt barista, who is actually a hacker.

  That Cassie…

  She slept with my stepson.

  The thought has acid bile churning in my stomach. I’m livid at Michael because he’s not supposed to be fucking up this way. Ever since his mother died, I’ve cut that kid so much slack. In my world, the Bratva world, you don’t fuck up repeatedly—it’s a death sentence—and Michael still hasn’t learned this.

  I didn’t want Michael in this world, but when he got Lucia Bianchi pregnant, daughter of one of the most feared Don’s in the UK, he sealed his own fate to a degree. Fate must be shitting with me, surely. How did my son end up mixing with her in the first place? The whole reason I moved to the UK, and kept my business here legit, was to protect him from my world, and he goes and meets a Mafia heiress at some stupid nightclub. Fucking fate!

  He loves the girl, or so he says, although I’m not sure because for days now
he’s been moping.

  With this latest act, he’s behaving in a way that could bring about a lot of trouble. He needs to be faithful to the Italian girl, at least for a couple of years. Her family will expect as much. After they’ve popped out a few kids, and she’s grown fat, he can indulge himself discreetly. As do all the men in that family, but for now he must play by the rules.

  My mind drifts back to the girl currently standing in line in the coffee shop. I gun the engine and sigh. I’m disappointed in Cassie that she went out clubbing and fucked a random man. My fucking stepson.

  The only man she should be fucking is me.

  I shouldn’t have told her I’d be seeing her again. That was a moment of weakness. I should have kept my mouth shut and relished the surprise and shock, and probably fear, on her face come Monday morning.

  Little miss sunshine will be so shocked when she realizes I’ve purchased the tech startup where she works. Come Monday morning, I’m her new boss.

  Shit, the girl makes me lose control, and that’s not a good thing in my world. I might want her, but I need her too. Cassie could hold the key to getting me much needed information on a rival Bratva Pakhan; Boris ‘Popeye’ Popov. For those reasons, I need to keep my head clear and not do anything crazy. Or not too crazy. Not something the old Konstantin, the one who had his own father tortured and killed, would have done. No, I must remember to think and act like New Konstantin. Except deep down, at my core, the old me is all there is.

  The outer surface has been polished like a pebble on the beach, my rough edges smoothed over by my years living in London disguised as nothing more than a wealthy businessman. I’ve even lost some of my accent and picked up British idioms and sayings.

  My new, smoother outside might lead some of my opponents to underestimate me. They really shouldn’t. There’s a big difference between being smoothed out and being softened. At my core, I’m still cold and hard, just like that pebble.

  Now, I’m about to show my real self to London. The less … legal side. I’m about to unleash holy war on these streets.