Taken By the Bratva Boss by Sarina Hart
Chapter One
Leon
What strikes me, after being locked in a dank jail cell for two weeks as a guest of the Chicago PD is the brightness of midday, the smell of the hotdogs from the cart on the courthouse lawn across the street, and the freedom to walk over while Detective Tunney watches.
I order a German dog with extra peppers and kraut. I have a thousand things more important to do than rubbing Tunney’s nose in his failure, but none as satisfying as the salute I send him while I wait for the dog or the smug smile when I take my first bite.
By the time Adrian steps out of the car, I’ve finished the hotdog and wiped my hands. Sometime after my second bite, Tunney lost interest and went back inside. I can leave now.
Adrian nods to me. He’s my younger brother, my underboss. Tall and blond while I’m taller and slightly darker. He is a result of our father’s dalliance, and I am our father’s pride.
The differences are striking, but he is my brother and my most trusted man. There’s nothing I can’t ask of him and nothing he won’t do for me.
“We’ve secured the package.” When I don’t respond, he adds, “The woman.” His voice is low and deep, almost a whisper, as if he’s afraid of someone overhearing. He worries like a woman which makes it easier for me not to worry at all about the little things.
I don’t ask who because I know exactly what Adrian’s talking about. The woman. Veronica. She’s the reason for my fourteen-day hiatus from life. She’s the one-night-stand turned nightmare.
Leggy and blonde, a modern-day Marilyn, with a rack created by some visionary in Chicago plastic surgery and made for men to devour. Veronica is a problem I’m still dealing with weeks after the night we spent together.
She’s a liar, working for God only knows who, to take me out of the game.
“Is she safe?” Not really a code, but he knows what safe means.
He nods. “With Alexei. He’ll call soon.”
Alexei handles situations. But I need information out of Veronica. Not her fingers in a jar. I sigh at Adrian. “I told you to handle it.” Sometimes, he oversteps, and sometimes I let him. But with this, we have to be careful, keep this particular bending of the law on the down low.
He puts a hand on my shoulder and gives a squeeze. “I wanted to be here to bring you home. Anna is waiting.” I can’t think about her now. She’s my weakness, and now I need my strength. Adrian grins because there isn’t much in the world that doesn’t make him grin. “Don’t worry about Alexei. He won’t put his hands on her unless it’s absolutely necessary. He knows your rules.”
My rules. I shake my head. Not hurting a woman isn’t a rule. It’s a way of life, an honor code to live by. And it’s the way I run the business. Also, why I couldn’t be guilty of the crime to which Veronica has accused.
For her, I’d broken my own code. She wanted spanked. Smacked around. Even begged me to punch her. I drew the line at that. I don't hurt women.
And the smacking around? I know how to hurt with my hands, I know how to bring pleasure with a slap, a smack, one that borders on pain. Controlled. I don’t enjoy it, but she fucking loved it.
She kept begging me to punish her harder, but I didn't cross the line. I never lose control. Never let myself go weak, and I don't do blood and pain in sex.
But she’d caught all the things I had done—every slap and smack, every grunt and squeal—on video. Where it looked like I beat the shit out of her. Then she took it to the police. Claimed I forced her. Raped her. Bitch.
Adrian nods to the car. It’s big and black, one of the company SUVs. “I have Marcus staking out O’Shane, and Nickolai is sitting at the pub.”
O’Shane was another of Connor McGrath’s men, one who wanted me out of the way and let everyone know it. The pub was where the Irish met for their afternoon whiskeys and card games.
Since my brother’s death, we’ve been deep at war with the Irish families in Chicago. A ridiculous war getting more dangerous and closer to home every day.
But the Irish hadn’t staged this bit with Veronica. O’Shane is smarter, less into drama than to hire some random bitch to take me out.
Whoever is trying to ruin my reputation and my life is someone with less of an analytical mind. Someone without good sense. Someone playing a game with people they don’t understand.
I climb into the passenger seat and wait while Adrian walks around the car. He isn’t in the business of hurrying—says it looks unpolished, and no way in fucking hell can anyone call Adrian Krilov unpolished. He would kill them if they did. His temper is a bit shorter, less controlled than mine and every snub or insult is punished. The pain of a punch. The humiliation of a slap. The finality of death. Adrian’s choice.
On the other side of his coin, he’s discovered the joy in a head massage during his three-hundred-dollar haircuts. The pleasing cut to a tailor-made pair of pants. The joy of an AmEx black. Adrian is a rich man’s bastard son, and he’s enjoying the trappings of wealth like he can’t get enough. Unfortunately for anyone who crosses him, he’s also discovered the power in the Krilov name.
“Where is she?” I ask because I don’t like surprises. And I need to plan how this is going to go. Psych myself. Create the personae I’ll need to look this woman in the face and not inflict pain on her. To make her suffer in a way that lets her know she can’t fuck with the life of Leon Krilov and get away with it.
While I don’t abuse or kill or injure women, I also don’t advertise it. And I need this one to believe I will. I need her to fear me. Because I am going to find out who’s responsible for this bullshit, trumped up charge.
And that person is going to pay. Dearly.
“She’s at the muny.” Ah, Adrian. Clever. He’s talking about where we make our own artillery. Our munitions. It’s a little old factory on the south side. A basement really. Actually, a bunker. Some old guy’s safe room from a war that never happened.
It’s dank and dark, scary when we aren’t using it. Scarier when we are. Can’t just hire Betty Crocker to make armor piercing bullets.
He drives like we’re on a leisurely trip when I can’t wait. If there ever was a woman I would hurt, it would be Veronica.
My family is in the middle of a war with the other Chicago crime families, although the only one active is with the Irish. So even though the Italians don’t have the same strategic capacity as the Irish or as we do, they would kill me, if they were so inclined, not play games with my freedom.
This is an outsider. Maybe someone I’ve wronged not relative to the business, probably someone I should apologize to but never will. I can’t be seen apologizing. It’s not who the world thinks I am. Just like I can’t forgive. Can’t let bygones be bygones. Can’t trust anyone outside my circle.
He pulls the car in front of the bunker, hidden so well if I didn’t know it was there, I wouldn’t find it.
Adrian takes the stairs down and walks in while I steel myself behind him. My angry face isn’t hard to summon. It’s always right at the surface, and I’m angry.
She’s as nice to look at as I remember through my alcohol fogged memories. She was probably pretty in her younger days. Probably wholesome and all American. Now she’s got more plastic than Rubbermaid.
The ropes around her waist and her arms tying her to the chair look painful, and I glance at Adrian. She’s not bruised or bloodied, but she’s been threatened, and she flinches as I walk around her chair.
She’s terrified, and it’s about to get worse. I pull a chair in front of her and sit. Staring for a minute.
There’s something terrifying about my eyes when I’m angry. Everyone I’ve ever met and been pissed in front of who’s had the balls to say it has told me so.
I don’t generally carry a mirror with me, nor can I remember being angry in front of one so I could see my own face, so I have to take their word, but Veronica shifts, or tries to, and she’s just further proof of my scariness.
When I tip my head to the side—a clear invitation to speak—and she chews her bottom lip, my rage level shoots up. She wants to play on my sympathy, use our past encounter against me.
Before I give myself a second to consider the action, I take the .44 Taurus revolver from my waistband, slowly pull back the hammer, and press the long, cold barrel to her forehead.
“I need a name.” I’m calm, voice quieter than its usual deep rumble. It’s a plan. A way of dealing with adversaries. It lulls them for the moment, and then I go in for the kill.
Her eyes are wide with fear. “I don’t know…”
But she does. Beyond the flicker of fear in the depths of her big baby blues, there is clarity. She knows what I want to know, and we aren’t—well, she isn’t leaving this room until I hear the name.
“Don’t lie to me.” My voice is steel now, and my hands are rock steady. “Do you know what a .44 does to a body. To a brain?” I push the gun into her forehead harder and her head jerks back an inch or so. She whimpers on the tail end of a sob.
When she shakes her head, she shudders, and another sob escapes. “No.”
I shrug, like I don’t give a shit. “It won’t really blow your head off. Dirty Harry lied about that.” Because I am a bastard and I need her fear, I smile. “But what’s left won’t be pretty. And it’ll leave little bits of you all over this room. Which means your momma isn’t going to recognize the pieces I send home to her.”
Another whimper. “Please, I don’t know who hired me.”
“Let me make this clear, Veronica Hazel Blair of Moberly, Missouri. Daughter of Luke and Cheryl Blair, doctor and homemaker, respectively.” I had two weeks to memorize all the details Adrian dug up. “Dad died three years ago. And now, Mom’s all alone.”
“I don’t know anything.” Whimper. Whimper. Sob. All very real. All very pathetic. None compelling enough to stop me.
“You’re a fucking liar and I’m going to count the number of fucking lies you tell me and that’s how many pieces of you I’m sending home to your momma and how many men I send to take care of her.” I am vile. Vicious. Determined.
There is menace, and then there’s what I say and how I say it. Deeper. Darker. Angrier than any sound she’s ever heard. I guarantee it.
She blinks up at me, her eyes full of unshed tears I’m going to make fall one way or the other. It’s the least I can do to repay her for the unkindness of her lies.
The soft side of me, the one that barely exists anymore, feels guilt, or would, was I not still walking around with bruised ribs from a jail fight. A fight I wouldn’t have been in had it not been for her.
“Please don’t. My Mom has nothing to do with this.” Mascara runs down her cheeks leaving black marks, and one of her fake eyelashes sags to the top of her cheek.
I pull the gun back, reset the hammer, and set in it my lap, finger still near the trigger, but I’m relaxed. She’s going to talk. “She gave birth to a liar.”
“She doesn’t know anything.” Her voice and her eyes each drip with desperation.
“You transferred two hundred thousand dollars into her account. Payment for lies rendered, I assume, so she’s benefitting from your bullshit.” I have her now, and fear flares like fire in her eyes.
“Please, please. She doesn’t have anything to do with this. She just needed money, so she didn’t lose the house.” Her pleas are punctuated by sobs, by the line of snot leaking from her nose.
“You have one last chance to save yourself and her.” She’s on the verge of wailing like a child, and I’m tired of playing games. “Give me a fucking name.” I roar the words like a lion being teased by the hyenas at the zoo. “Now!”
She flinches and huffs out a breath. “I needed money. And that woman paid me to find you and fuck you.” Yeah, no shit. But I wait for her to continue. “Then she doctored the video and gave me another ten grand to take it to the cops.”
A woman. A fucking woman? An ex-girlfriend, maybe? There hasn’t been anyone serious since…a very long time. But I don’t need the mechanics of the situation. They don’t matter. I need an identity. Someone to punish.
“Who? I want a fucking name.” I lean forward until I can smell the fear rolling off her in waves.
“I don’t have her name. I only have a phone number.” When I shift, she flinches and whimpers again.
I’m not sure I believe all she has is a fucking phone number. But the number will get me to the person who’d used it. Now I just need a few more details, then the boys can drop Veronica off. Where they drop her off is up to them. It won’t be in the lap of luxury or even a safe neighborhood knowing Alexei.
But first. “Why me?”
“I don’t know.” But I don’t believe her until she cries out when I press the barrel against her forehead again. “I don’t know!”
“Tell me!” I shove the chair back and stand, make a show of pulling back the hammer again in a room so silent every click of the metal is like a firework in the small space. “Fucking tell me now!”
She’s crying, begging in short silent gasps of words that echo off the concrete walls. “I don’t know.” This time her voice is resigned as her shoulders shake and her eyelids squeeze shut. “I promise I don’t know.”
I believe her. It’s not so easy to lie with a gun against one’s forehead.
“If you weren’t a woman, I would kill you.” There might come a day when I have to break my own rule, when my own conduct is out of my control. Today isn’t that day.