Page 57 of Monstrous Urges

Not because it’s cool in the plane and she’s only wearing a flimsy dress.

To stop the hungry part of me from looking at her that way. Because I refuse to.

I’ve just turned to the window again when I sense movement. Turning back, I frown quizzically as Milos comes down the aisle from where he’s been sitting toward the front with two of my men. His brow furrows as he indicates his phone.

“I’ve just had an interesting conversation.”

“With?”

“Yelizaveta Solovyova.”

Interesting.

Yelizaveta is the sole woman sitting at the Iron Table. In fact, she’s the lone woman ever to have sat at that table of powerful, brutal men. Some might make the mistake of thinking that as a woman she’s automatically weak.

They’d be dead wrong.

The very fact that Yelizaveta has commanded that seat for almost thirty years is testament to the fact that she’s even more brutal and ruthless than any of the men she sits with.

She’s also been one of the strongest opponents to my attempts to ascend to the Iron Table.

Technically, there are two unofficial “governing bodies” of the Bratva world. One is the Iron Table, which wields absolute and exclusive power in Russia. The other is the High Council, which holds sway pretty much everywhere else.

The latter was an easy wall for me to breach. In that case, all it took were threats, proof of treasonous intentions within their ranks, and small Machiavellian “nudges” here and there to assert my place at the table alongside the Reznikov, Kashenko, Volkov, Javanovic, and Kalishnik Bratva families.

The Iron Table has proven a harder nut to crack.

The High Council, relatively speaking, is a newer institution. A bit more eager to keep the peace in the name of business.

The Iron Table, however, is a machine of war, belching black smoke and stopping for nothing on its relentless march forward. That collective is beyond “old-school”, descended from pirates and smugglers from the times of kings, long before the concept of a Bratva brotherhood even existed. They’re tightly knit, they absolutely do not have infighting, and they’re seemingly impervious to threats.

And yet…and yet…

I want my seat at that table. It will expand my empire in ways almost too massive to comprehend.

But more importantly, I need to rule it. Because for all my crusades against those who wronged me, there’s one man who remains utterly untouchable:

Vadik Belov, head of the Belov Bratva.

It’s taken me years to map the web of lies and treachery that destroyed my life. Sure, the others I’ve put into graves, whose empires I’ve razed to the smoldering ground all played their roles. Even the woman sitting slumped across from me had a hand in it.

But every web has a big, fat, juicy spider, and Vadik Belov is mine.

That, above all else, is why I seek a seat at the Iron Table. From the outside, not even I can touch him. Not when he sits united with four other insanely powerful old-school Bratva families. But if I were at that table, in their midst…or even better, leading that table…I could bend them to my will.

I could, and I will, turn them against Vadik. And then, I will sit back and drink his fucking blood from a golden chalice as I watch the rest of them tear him apart at my bidding.

I shake my head and refocus on Milos. “And what does the White Queen say?”

Yelizaveta Solovyova has albinism, giving her a ghostly white appearance. “White Queen” isn’t a slight, either. She came up with the name herself.

“She wants to speak with you,” Milos growls. “In person.”

I raise a brow. “When?”

“She’s enroute now. I believe she’ll be meeting us on the tarmac when we land.”

Well, now.

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