Page 17 of Bratva Bride
A guard brought forward a ceremonial knife. Damascus steel with a bone handle, the blade so sharp it could split a falling hair. The same knife that had sealed every blood contract for three generations. It carried the DNA of dozens of bratva members, their blood soaked into the bone handle, their promises etched in steel.
Viktor signed first. He took the knife without hesitation, pressed the blade to his thumb with practiced motion. Blood welled up, dark red, almost black in the basement's fluorescent light. He pressed his thumb to the paper beside his name. The blood sank into the fibers immediately, permanent, irreversible.
Then he handed the knife to me.
The handle was warm from his grip. The blade caught the light, showed my distorted reflection—a man about to bind himself to a woman he'd never properly met, whose freedom he was simultaneously granting and destroying.
I looked at Anya one more time. She was watching me with those dark, analytical eyes. Still calculating. Still trying to determine if I was salvation or just damnation with better marketing.
I pressed the blade to my thumb. Sharp enough that I barely felt it. Blood welled up immediately. I moved to the contract, found the space beside Viktor's signature. My blood dropped onto the paper, merged with the fibers, became permanent.
Ivan Aleksandrovich Volkov.
The name looked strange in my own blood. But stranger still was the name that would be added to the ledger within the week—Anya Morozova Volkova. My wife. My responsibility. My carefully calculated risk that had nothing to do with calculation and everything to do with the way she'd pressed her fingernails into her palms to keep from screaming.
"It's done," Besharov announced. "The blood contract is sealed. The marriage will occur within seven days. Both families will provide witnesses. The Council will oversee compliance."
He closed the Code with ceremonial finality. The sound echoed in the basement like a judge's gavel. Like a cell door closing. Like a heart stopping.
Anya Morozova would become Anya Volkova.
But what would become of me?
Chapter 4
Anya
Well.Thetimehadcome. The day my I went from belonging to my dad, to belonging to a monster. If only I could belong to myself.
The black Mercedes crawled through Red Hook like a hearse. Slow, ponderous, unstoppable. I sat in the back seat drowning in my father’s cigar smoke.
This morning, father had taken me to church. It was symbolic—my last time attending an orthodox service as his unmarried daughter. As I’d listened, smelled the incense, looked at the icons, I’d never felt further from the almighty. How would a kind, loving God deliver me from one prison to another?
In the car, the incense was replace with smoke from dad’s Cuban Cohiba. At least when I cried, I could blame it on the cigar, rather than the despair I felt deep inside.
Through the tinted window, I watched the landscape transform around us. Industrial bones showing through gentrified skin—art galleries squeezed between auto repairshops, organic coffee roasters next to old warehouses, riddled with rust. This was the kind of neighborhood where Tesla charging stations shared blocks with chop shops. Where million-dollar lofts looked out on loading docks that moved product no one asked questions about.
My mind cataloged details automatically, the way it always did when I was terrified. Count the exits. Note the cameras. Track the street names. Van Brunt Street. Number 89 coming up on the left. A converted warehouse, five stories of red brick and industrial windows, the kind that would have cost millions to renovate. Security cameras at every corner, subtle but there if you knew where to look. Private parking garage entrance with a steel gate that required a keycard.
The Volkov bratva had money. Real money. The kind that could buy respectability while keeping one foot in the criminal world.
I wasn’t married—not yet. Before the wedding, I would live in Ivan’s home for three days. In theory, it was to give me a chance to change my mind—the Krovniy brak was very specific about this ‘cooling off’ period. In practice, of course, I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t say no. I just had to live with Ivan until the wedding on Saturday, and then live with him forever afterwards.
Not happy ever after, obviously. More like miserable ever after.
And in just three days I’d lose my virginity. I was terrified.
The driver—one of my father's men—pulled into a loading zone directly in front of the main entrance. Through the glass doors, I could see a lobby that tried too hard to look legitimate. Exposed brick, Edison bulbs, a security desk where a man in a suit that couldn't quite hide his shoulder holster pretended to read a newspaper.
My father turned to me.
The movement was slow, deliberate, like a snake considering whether to strike. His pale blue eyes—the same ones I saw in my mirror every morning, the ones I'd inherited along with his genius for languages and his strategic mind—studied my face with total focus.
"Anya," he said, and my name in his mouth sounded like a curse. "Listen carefully because I will say this once."
I made myself meet his eyes. Made myself not flinch when he leaned closer, the smell of cigars and expensive cologne failing to mask the rot.
"If you try to escape," he said, his voice conversational, almost pleasant, like we were discussing dinner plans, "if you embarrass me, if you violate this treaty in any way—including lack of consummation—I will kill you myself."
