Page 1 of Bratva Queen

Prologue

ISABEL

“Mom, why did you leave them?”

Maxim watched me carefully, still dressed in his wedding suit, though with the collar completely loosened. It was only myself and my four sons sitting at the kitchen table of Dmitry’s house, long after the wedding guests had left and my daughters-in-law had gone upstairs to bed.

My youngest son was asking me why I had left my first three sons behind in Moscow to start a new life in Saint Petersburg—when they thought I’d died. He was born thereafter; he’d never even known about them until he sought them out in the past year. I looked down at my hands, wringing them together in nervous thought.

How much should I tell them?

They’d resented me for years. With the intel I had, I knew that they thought I was dead—of course, so did Stepan—but once he was gone and the Koslov boys grew up, they heard of my presence. They knew I was alive, and they knew that I was doing everything I could to not be found by them. Of course they would resent me for that.

It was high time they found out why I had to do what I did.

It was a long story. One that had many twists and turns, elations and heartbreaks. Though, more of the latter, if I had to be honest. To really help them understand the perils I’d been through in my life, I would need to start at the beginning.

With a final sigh, I looked up at him, then met the eyes of Misha, Dmitry, and Ivan, as well. “It’s quite the story. Boys, listen up, and I’ll tell you everything.”

Chapter1

Isabel

Ilet my fingers travel down my thighs as I dropped down low with my back against the pole. My feet ached in my incessantly high heels and my ribs pained from the tight corset bra that squeezed the life out of me but made my breasts pop just the way the guys liked it. None of that, however, plagued my mind when he was staring at me like that.

His dark eyes held this intensity, this raw passion and fire that felt so dangerous. Yet, my gaze locked onto his every time, seeking out that exhilaration. I couldn’t look away. I danced for him. I longed for him.

I craved him.

* * *

When I was a child,my mother told me I would one day meet a man I’d fall in love with. We’d get married, have children, and live a life of happiness. She told me I’d find someone who would treat me like a princess.

What she didn’t tell me was that a princess is trapped—bound by duty to remain in the castle, waiting for the handsome prince to come and save her. So, I decided long ago that I didn’t want to be a princess…

I wanted to be a queen.

The joke was on me, though. Even a queen is trapped when there’s a king with his greedy fingers around her neck.

For the longest time, I stopped believing in the fairy-tale ending my mother had promised me years before. There was only one thing—one person—that kept that magic alive, even when it was at its dimmest.

He made me believe.

When you’re poor in Belarus, everything is hard. You wake up knowing you’re broke. Your stomach aches for a decent steak, but you’re left with cheap canned meat on stale bread. But worse is the smell…

The smell of poverty is enough to make anyone strive for wealth; the smell of sweat pouring down the faces of the hardworking laborers, alcohol washing down the sorrows and regret from having to live in the repetitive cycle of being trapped in poverty. And believe me, those smells were abundant in the building I grew up in.

My papa was a cruel drunk. A real son of a bitch. My mama worked her ass off to provide what she could, both in and out of the home. But no matter how many hours she worked, her job couldn’t pay the bills. Still, she would drag her tired limbs through the front door after work to cook whatever measly meal she could whip up in our tiny kitchen for Papa, my young brother Oleg, and me.

Meanwhile, my father would empty bottle after bottle of vodka, demanding that he worked harder because he made more money in the factories. And because he “worked harder,” he deserved to walk into a clean home and have dinner waiting on the table, hot and ready for him to eat before he got wasted. “Never drink on an empty stomach,” he’d tell me. The only decent piece of fatherly advice I ever got from him.

For years, I’d dreamed of going to college after graduation so I could get away from that hellhole and make a living for myself. No way would I follow the same path as my mother. I refused to spend all day exhausting myself at work, only to come home to an abusive asshole and have to work even more.

Did my mothereverrelax? Or was she always trapped in that relentless cycle of work and poverty?

Unfortunately, when I graduated high school, I couldn’t afford to go to college. I got a part-time job as a waitress, but it didn’t bring in much money. And what money I did bring in went to my parents, to help pay for the bills.

So, a year after graduation, I found myself stuck in the same pattern as my mother. I was in the same apartment, living the same life I’d be doomed to live forever. Or so it felt.

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