Savage Heir by Jagger Cole

12

Depeche Mode’sPersonal Jesus pounds out of the speakers, echoing in the steel-reinforced concrete of the garage. I lay back on the hood of Misha’s matte-black 1968 Shelby Mustang—a UK steering conversion, too—with my feet on the fender and bring the spliff to my lips.

The lighter flicks, the cherry glows orange and red, and I exhale slowly as the music washes over me. Depeche Mode is old school, but I grew up on this stuff. Yuri used to tell me stories about when he was a kid in the 80s and 90s back in Soviet Russia, when they had to actually smuggle in shit like Depeche Mode and Nirvana.

I think about that as I puff on the spliff. I turn my head and watch Misha across the garage, pounding on the practice bag like it just fucked his girlfriend—that is, if Misha did the whole girlfriend thing.

My head turns, and my eyes swivel to Lukas. He’s kneeling in a corner next to the 1933 Indian motorcycle he’s been fucking around with since last term. I’ve never asked how he picked it up, but he’s a natural with engines and taking shit apart to put them back together.

I shake my head, letting Personal Jesus hum over me. It’s funny to think that we three here will be the future of the bratva. Three hard-partying private school kids. It’ll be us who take the word “bratva” from being in the same line of thinking as “mob” or “mafia,” and bring in line with “Silicon Valley,” “OPEC,” and “Wall Street”.

The Bratva has always been about the same things it is now: brotherhood, wealth generation, and thumbing your nose at the authorities. But back then, it was more like Robin Hood’s merry band of cutthroats and thieves.

Yuri was a turning point for the Volkov organization, though. He’s the one that took it from fearsome criminal organization into a thriving multinational corporation—albeit, still fearsome and still absolutely not to be fucked with.

I glance at Misha again. The tattoo ink covering the vast majority of his exposed skin glistens with sweat as he hammers the practice bag with punch after punch. Yeah, Misha might be a rich kid who was born a rich kid. But there’s a hunger and an anger there behind those eyes that’s different than the rest of the rich shits who go to Oxford Hills.

Misha’s dad, Boris Tsavakov, is old school. And old. Misha’s mom was eighteen to Boris’s mid-fifties when they had Misha. She was pretty much gone the second Boris got ahold of his “heir.” He’s not a bad guy, Boris. But he’s tough—really, really tough. And he went out of his way to make sure his son, though beyond wealthy, grew up seeped in the same Bratva traditions that he had.

Someday, my friend is going to inherit an empire and a fortune that makes companies like Apple, Amazon, and Tesla look like chump change.

And then, there’s Lukas. No one had to “toughen” Lukas up in the Bratva ways. That’s just how he came. In fact, unless you knew him as well as Misha and I do, you’d guess there wasn’t a single soft part about him.

His future is the interesting one. Bratva tradition would have the Kashenko empire go to Lukas’s toddler little brother, Sasha. But those are traditions from the nineteenth fucking century, and don’t even cover stuff like adoption.

I know Viktor and Fiona, Lukas’s adoptive parents. To them, he’s their son, end of story. The keys to the Kashenko Bratva are his for the taking. But then, he might make his own path, so who knows.

All I know is, the future will come later. Later, we will be Bratva Kings and Lords of Empires. For now, this is a place where I can lay back, get high, and just be.

Personal Jesus ends. But before Halo can come on next, Misha hits the pause button on the stereo.

“Fuck, Ilya,” he frowns. “You got this thing cranked up loud enough? I don’t think they can quite hear it in fucking London, man.”

I shrug.

“Let him play it,” Lukas grunts from his bike. “Not like anyone is going to hear this through these walls.”

Misha rolls his eyes. “Fine, what do I need eardrums for anyway,” he grunts. His eyes swivel to me, like he’s just realized where I am. “And get your fucking feet off my car, asshole!”

I grin as I slide off and saunter over to the couches over in the pseudo living area we’ve got set up down here.

Here, by the way, is almost the entire reason why certain… strings were pulled, and pockets lined, in order to get us Lordship Manor as our on-campus residence. Yes, the manor itself is beautiful. The pool is great.

But it’s the subterranean World War 2 command barracks turned Cold War nuclear fallout shelter that’s the real selling point. Better still, no one knows about it.

Back in World War 2, Oxford Hill was a garrison and training camp for soldiers heading off the front. Lordship Manor was turned into the officer’s quarters. But, out of fear of German bombing runs, they expanded the old root cellar way deeper, reinforced it with concrete, and made it an emergency command center.

Later, during the Cold War, they expanded it even more, reinforced the fuck out of it with rebar and steel, and even dug a one mile, car-width escape tunnel that exits in a barn sitting just outside what is now the property line of Oxford Hills.

In a totally random series of events, when we took over Lordship Manor as second years, a shell company of a shell company of a shell company run by Volkov Enterprises bought that barn.

Oxford Hills, for security reasons given the kids who go here, is very much a closed campus.

That is, except for us.

This place, our bomb shelter, should be the ideal party space. It’s hidden, it’s soundproof, it’s got running water and electricity, and it looks like it was designed and decorated by whoever did the set for Mad Men. Part concrete car garage, part Playboy Mansion lounge.

And yet, no one comes down here. Not a single person but us. The whole world is our party space. This is our escape.

And yet…

I frown, staring at the framed pictures of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher hanging on the wall above the minibar. And yet, the issues from up above don’t always leave when you come down here. It may be an escape, but there’s no escape from some things.

And for me, there’s no escape from Tenley Chambers.

My jaw grits. I had a plan for my triumphant final year at Oxford: to conquer this place and leave a swath of chaos and destruction in my wake like a ravaging Crusader King.

Tenley was not part of that plan.

The defiant little redhead is a thorn in my side and a pothole in my road to victory. And yet, it’s more than just her not bending the knee. I’m not actually that much of an egotistical maniac to be this hung up on one fucking girl who won’t drop to her knees and say please.

It’s the way she looks at me. It’s not only defiance. It’s a sort of bored, unamused, pity. And that is what rankles me. That’s what has me stewing and even more brooding and ill-tempered than usual.

Not so coincidentally, that’s also what has me wanting her.

It’s the disdainful way she seems to roll her eyes at me. It’s not in that “playing coy or hard to get” way, either.

And it only makes me want her even more. It makes me want to wrap the red hair in my fist, bend her to my will, and taste those insubordinate lips until they’re bruised with the memory of me.

I blink when I realize Lukas is sitting on couch across the small coffee table from me, looking amused.

“What,” I grunt.

He smirks, leaning back against the sofa with his hands laced behind his head. For a second, my eyes drop to his arms—his sleeves are still rolled up from working on the bike. Lukas catches my look and frowns as he deftly pulls them back down.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

He shrugs it off wordlessly.

“What’s got you even more cheery than usual today?”

I roll my eyes. “Funny.”

Lukas grins. Or, his version of a grin, which is more of a thin line across his lips. But I like seeing him smile, even if it’s his way of doing it.

When we first met, when he’d just come to live with Viktor and Fiona, Lukas was a shell of a human—gaunt, like he was hollow inside, with a dark rage in his eyes like he’d seen hell itself with them. Knowing even the small slivers of his background that I do, he has.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

I glare at him. “I’m not interested in therapy.”

“You’re sitting on a couch, we’re halfway there.”

I smirk. “Well, look who’s got jokes all of a sudden.”

He grins with a shrug.

“You know you might feel better if you let yourself have some fucking fun for once this term,” Misha grunts, panting as he strolls over from his shadow boxing.

“Meaning?” I grunt.

He smirks at me with that cocky grin of his. “Meaning I didn’t realize you were going to be taking a vow of celibacy for your final year.”

My eyes narrow as my jaw grinds.

“Do I need to call a dick doctor?”

“I’m fine,” I growl.

“You sure?”

I glare up at him. “Want to check?”

Misha grins. “That it, Volkov? You switching teams on us?”

Before I can roll my eyes, Lukas cuts through the bullshitting.

“No, it’s a girl.”

I turn to glare at him.

“Excuse me?”

He shrugs. “It’s a girl, no?”

Misha snorts. “There hasn’t been a single girl since term started. Believe me, I’m the one that has to deal with them when they come pouting to my room after Brother Volkov here sends them away.”

“There is.” Lukas sits back on the sofa again.

“There’s not,” I grunt. There isn’t. I am not “hung up on” Tenley. I’m not “fawning” over her. I simply want her—and I want her so that I can move on from this fucking annoying feeling she leaves in me, like a splinter under my thumbnail.

I want her so that I can go on with my perfectly fine life no longer wanting her.

“Who?”

“The tutor. The red-haired girl who threw that drink in your face.”

Misha starts to laugh. “Hold up, what?” His brow shoots up. “Wait, the chick who was looking for you at the house the other day that I sent upstairs.”

“Yes.”

“No,” I snap, glaring at Lukas. I take a breath and grit my teeth. “Her name is Tenley Chambers.”

Misha’s mouth curls into a grin. “Ahhh, so the truth comes—”

“She’s a target, not a conquest,” I growl.

The both of them give me confused looks. Fuck it. Both of my friends are schooled in the Bratva, anyway.

“My uncle wants me to keep close to her. Her father is going to be the US Vice President.”

Lukas nods slowly. “And her boyfriend’s father—”

“He’s not her boyfriend.”

Misha and Lukas glance at each other. I scowl.

“It’s a media thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

I ignore Misha’s smirk.

“Well, and Patrick North’s father is going to be President,” Lukas finishes.

“Exactly.”

“That’s why you were at her cottage last night?”

My eyes snap back to Lukas, narrowing as my jaw clenches. Misha laughs.

“Just playing James Bond, huh?”

I ignore Misha. “Where did you hear that?” I growl at Lukas.

He shrugs. “The girls at this school gossip like…” he frowns, searching for the phrase.

“Like schoolgirls?” I growl.

He shrugs. “Yes. Three of them were talking about it in my morning bio lecture today. They’d seen you leaving her cottage last night.”

“Leave it,” I grunt.

Misha eyes me. “Interesting play.”

“What play?” I snap.

“Playing the nice guy card so that the nice girl lets you into her panties.”

My eyes narrow at him. “I’m not trying to get into her panties.”

“Cool. Then you won’t mind if I do.”

I’m on my feet before I can stop myself, my teeth bared as I snarl right into Misha’s face.

“You’ll stay the fuck away from her.”

His lips curl. “What’s the matter, Volkov? Got a little crush?”

“You’re out of line.”

“And I don’t take orders from you, your majesty,” he hisses back, jabbing a finger hard into my chest. I shove his hand away and step closer to him. But then Lukas is there, grabbing me by the back of my shirt and shoving Misha away.

“Enough!” He barks with fury that actually seems to startle both Misha and I from our little alpha-on-alpha showdown.

Misha blinks and looks away. He runs his hand through his hair before he glances back at me.

“I was just being a dick,” he grunts.

“You’re always being a dick.”

He grins. So do I. We’re good; Misha and I, that is.

But inside, I’m not good at all. Lukas pours us a round of drinks and we crank the music back on, loud. But even with Enjoy the Silence blaring over me, a drink in my hand, and my two friends bantering around me, I can’t seem to focus.

Or, I can, but it’s entirely on visions of red hair, defiant blue eyes, and temptingly brash lips.

Misha lights a joint and passes it my way while he and Lukas talk motorcycles. But I tune them out as I draw in the smoke. I exhale slowly, letting it curl around my eyes like blinders as I stare at the wall.

I’m playing with fire, allowing myself to be tempted by Tenley. My uncle’s favor is clear: get close to her in order to gain information that may help later.

But as his words replay in my ears, my lips curl into a hungry grin.

“Keep an eye on Tenley, Ilya. Get close to her if you can. However you can.”

I’ve been caught between the desire to have her, and the desire to fulfill the obligations to my family.

But now, the way is clear: why not both?

The wolf leads. The wolf hunts and takes. The wolf doesn’t play games or hesitate. And I am done hesitating.