Page 15 of Hateful Vows
“What?” she snaps and I turn back to the London streets as they pass by.
“I need you to follow my lead.”
“I’ll never bow to you,Lyosha.”
“I don’t care, Irina. I’m gonna talk to my men about the plan and I need you to fucking stay quiet for once.”
She snorts. “You think you get to give me orders,Pakhan?” her voice is mocking and I pinch the bridge of my nose. This fucking brat. Sometimes I think she just wants to make my life harder.
“We’re staging a coup, Irina. I need to know who stands with me and who I need to eliminate,” I tell her. “This isn’t the time to defy me.” She’s about to retort but I cut her off. “I know you can hold your own in combat and politics,solnychko. I don’t doubt your capabilities but unfortunately for you, not all men are progressive and will see you as an equal. And, you’re gonnamarry into the Italian mafia. I don’t know how well it will be received.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s fucking bullshit.”
I know it is but I remain silent. I resist telling her how much I think she should be the one to kill the Pakhan considering he wants to sell her but I’ve been dreaming about killing my father for years for what I endured. I would give her a lot of things, but the head of my father on a silver platter isn’t one of them.
Jivko drives us to the underground parking of the modern complex I live in, before we exit the vehicle and take the elevator reserved for my penthouse. Irina follows, brooding and haughty. We agreed she would stay at my flat until she moves in with Dante after the wedding. I already dread having her with me 24/7 but I can’t let go either. She tried to fight it, but even she can sense the danger she’s in with my father’s plans in motion.
One by one, Ilia, Mikhail, Boris and Dan filter through the entrance door, unbothered by the late hour, and take a seat around the large marble-topped living room table.
Mikhail is my head of security and has been working alongside me for years. I’ve tortured him during our sessions and he tortured me. We still bear the marks of each other, but through pain, we understood who our common enemy was, early on.
Boris has been working with my father on weapons runs for a decade, but his family has suffered at his hands. Any mistakes he made were taken out on family members. A few of them died and weren’t even offered proper burial. When I offered to have his family live in the building I built for my own safety years ago, he didn’t hesitate and I knew he’d become loyal if I protected them. And I did.
Dan was a wild card. He’s one of the only British men in our organisation, often hired for information extraction and stealth operations due to his MI-6 past. My father made the mistake ofraping his wife as punishment for a mission gone wrong. She never leaves her flat anymore. I throw a short glance at Irina; I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself if anything had happened to her. I know Dan is just biding his time.
“Gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight,” I greet them and they nod, wary yet curious. Not a shred of fatigue mars their faces, the perfect soldiers ready for battle. That’s how my father treated them. They’re about to become so much more.
“Finally letting your best weapon in on business, Aleksei?” Dan asks caustically, looking between Irina and I.
“It was about time,” she retorts, chin high.
“Damn right,” Dan says like a proud papa bear. I hired him myself to train Irina as soon as she turned eighteen, but it still rubs me the wrong way to see them so friendly. I glare at him, but his warm brown eyes still glint like he’s found my weakness. I move on to avoid further inspection on his part. He sees too much.
“You’re here tonight to usher in a new era for the London Bratva.” A weighted silence descends upon us, the faint buzz of the fridge in the kitchen the only sound in the room, ominous and anxiety-inducing. “Everyone around this table has suffered at the hands of my father. And in three days, we’ll all get our revenge. Ivan Dobrev’s days are numbered and I want you to count them with me.”
The meeting is lengthy and animated as we prepare for the hostile takeover, and what their new roles will entail. I wasn’t expecting so much talking and an almost-friendly atmosphere, but their support sends something warm and unrecognisable inside my chest.
My father is paranoid and well-protected. Yet, nothing will beat our relentless thirst for revenge.
Three days later, as planned, my heart beats steadily in my chest when my car pulls outside of my father’s house. For the first time in years, there’s no racing or cold sweat, no external signs of distress I couldn’t control and always hated.
The mission is simple but requires so many moving parts. Everyone in the house needs to die. Today is not about finesse or redemption. It’s about our future.
Pebbles crunches under our feet as Irina and I make our way to the front door.
I turn to look at her. Her dark hair is up in a tight bun—better in case someone tries to grab her by the hair, she said—and she wears a tailored white suit.
“Ready?” I ask.
Again, that devious smirk.
She adjusts her earpiece. “Let’s kill some bastards.”
We pause at the door, waiting for Mikhail to give us the signal that he switched the camera feed with static images. It comes seconds later. “Security feed has been replaced, go.”
When we enter, my father’s butler looks disgruntled to see Irina. No one is expecting her, and that works to our advantage. She doesn’t waste time and slashes his throat open. Blood sprays across her face.
I close my eyes and sigh. Messy kills mean more clean up. “Really?”
