Page 72 of Bratva Queen

“Ah! I’m so proud!” I gushed. I pulled my neck scarf off, feeling free for the first time to show my scar and not be scared that Stepan would hear of it. “Do you think I could come there? Bring Maxim? Tell them the truth?”

“I don’t see why not.” Lev said. “I’ll keep it quiet, for now. You make your arrangements.”

“I will.”

When I got home, I found Gregori in his office.

“Gregori, Stepan is dead,” I said. His eyes grew in surprise. “I’m going to pack some things. It’s finally time to see my boys again,” I told him with a proud smile.

“Ah, yes!” He smiled. “What a surprise. Are you going to move back into the Koslov house?”

“I don’t know,” I said without a care. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I can finally come out of hiding.”

That evening, Maxim wasn’t home yet when I was waiting in my home office to tell him the full story in person, that he had brothers, and that I was finally free of their father’s wrath. That I wanted him to meet them. I didn’t know how he would take the news; probably not well since I’d been lying for so long, but it was time to come clean.

My cell phone rang and I answered.

“Isabel Koslov,” the person on the line said, taking me by surprise. I straightened up in my seat, no one had called me that in a long time, not even Gregori dared to use my legal last name. I was a Chernoff now. Married or not. The voice was distorted and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, I had a feeling this wasn’t a friendly call.

“Stepan Koslov is dead. The Koslov throne is up for grabs. I certainly hope you don’t think it’s yours to take.”

“It’s Misha’s,” I said sternly. “The throne is taken by the next in the bloodline.”

“Well, Misha is just a boy. He won’t get in my way. But you… You’ve finally survived Stepan, with an empire of your own to boot.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked. “How do you know I’m alive?”

“I am a man of power, Isabel. I know many things. If you so much as step foot into Moscow, not only will I kill you and your bastard son, but I will show your Koslov boys no mercy. The throne is mine to take and you won’t stand in my way. As long as you stay away, they might keep their lives.”

“No, I will not have you threatening my sons!” I raged, standing up, but the line went dead.

I stared at the screen of my cell phone in shock.No, no, no! Not after so long! Not when I was so close to being with them again! I dropped into my seat and tried to stop the burning tears from falling. I felt blindsided. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t know what to do.

“Mama, you wanted to talk?” Maxim came in.

I recovered quickly, blinking the tears away and shaking my head. “Ah, it’s okay, baby. You go to bed.”

He frowned; his typical teenage nonchalance clear in his cool demeanor. “You sure? You’ve been acting weird today.”

I gave him a smile as best as I could, “It’s been a weird day.”

Chapter29

Aleksei

“In line!” The prison guard shouted. My cellmate and I stepped out into the long hallway next to the rest of the prisoners, holding our hands out to be shackled.

“Any news?” I asked the guard quietly as he shackled my wrists. His eyes lifted and he gave me a slight shake of his head. I was asking about Gregori, my weak and treacherous brother. He visited every few months and paid the guards bribes to be able to visit me in a private room, since out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, it wasn’t a usual thing to get visitors.

I hated seeing his smug face but whenever he came, he brought news. About Isabel, about Maxim. Even about the Koslovs and how fat Stepan had become. He explained to me in detail how he’d already supplied Stepan with so much cargo that the greedy bastard couldn’t refuse and now owed him money. He had his foot in the door, and it was just a matter of time before he had enough of a hold on everyone, Isabel included, that he could just take the Koslov and Chernoff empires for himself, creating one big interconnected web of a bratva organization across the continent.

I knew what that meant. He would have to kill off all the Koslov sons, Isabel, and Maxim, so that no one else could lay claim to his throne. With every visit, I grew more impatient to escape from this fucking hell hole and strangle him to death, to watch his eyes pop out of their sockets as the life faded away.

But until then, it was his visits that were my window into the outside world, the shred of hope that kept me from allowing myself to die when Gregori left and paid the guards another wad of cash to beat me to a pulp because he liked to watch.

“So, how’s that plan going?” My cellmate, Randa, asked when we were in the yard. The walls were high and thick, and the ground was covered with a blanket of snow. I lifted myself repeatedly from a concrete beam that ran across the wall, doing pull-ups while we spoke. It was better to speak out here where our voices were lost to the wind instead of echoed in the concrete hallways of the cell block.

“Not well,” I said grumpily.

---