Dark Mafia Kings by Penelope Wylde
Chapter One
Four days later
Sevastyan took a noticeable pause before he stepped over the threshold of his childhood home. Fifteen years didn’t seem hardly long enough between visits. Standing there, his hand on the door’s lever, he broke a promise he made himself to never return. Muscles clenched with banked fury. The people gathered to mourn his brother’s passing didn’t deserve his deep, primal rage so he bottled that shit up tight and kept moving.
With a flick of his hand, Sevastyan waved off his father’s guards dressed in thousand-dollar suits and looking every bit as dangerous as the tattoos on their hands and throats suggested.
A hard hand on his shoulder brought him to a quick stop. He flashed the offender a lethal glare.
“Get your digits off me or lose them. That simple.”
“Sorry, Mr. Volkov.” Bushy black brows pinched together over the guard’s brow and reminded Sevastyan that by this time tomorrow this man’s life would be solely in his hands.
“You’d do well to remember who you’ll be serving.” He shook the hand on his shoulder off and straightened his jacket.
Black eyes meet his. “Orders are orders until they are not.”
Sevastyan could appreciate the man’s loyalty as fucked up as it was.
He canted his head, giving the man permission to do his job.
A quick pat-down lifted him of two guns. “He’s waiting for you.”
He brushed past the hired muscle and zeroed in on the massive mahogany door at the far end of the hallway.
Hand on the handles he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
Like any monster, Sevastyan could sense another dark soul nearby. Only this one shared blood with him. Without seeing he knew where he would find the older Volkov. He was there. Always there. Tucked away behind his closed door reeking of impatience and smugness that clogged Sevastyan’s senses with every inhalation.
Sevastyan pushed through the doors and didn’t bother closing them. They swung open smashing into the back walls.
“Get the fuck out,” he snarled at two guards grabbing for their concealed weapons. They’d be the first to take an early grave once he took control. His men would have dropped an intruder before he could get a toe in the door. These fuckers were jokes.
He turned his attention to the far end of the home office. A room where blood ran as freely as vodka.
“I’m here. Say your piece and be fast. After my brother is put into the ground, I no longer care what you say or think. You can go back to pretending I’m dead.” The sharp edge of his words sliced through the shadowed room. “But know this, old man, the Volkov family will be free of your reign.”
Nikolas Volkov didn’t peel his eyes away from the dancing flames in the fireplace. He sat hunched, a shell of the man Sevastyan remembered. His father remained glued to his seat, swirling remnants of a tumbler full of vodka in one hand, a cigar in the other.
But Sevastyan didn’t let the aging bastard’s appearance fool him. Remorse for what happened between them or his brother’s death didn’t fit his old man’s character. The head of the Volkov empire didn’t know what love meant, which negated the emotions needed to feel the loss of family. All he cared about was power. The control he once had, now slipping with age. Control his brother shouldered. All for the approval of some who despised him for what he wasn’t—him.
Now his brother was dead and their father appeared weakened to any Volkov enemy. Which meant he needed his youngest son’s help.
It was the only reason he could think of as to why his father issued a summons.
His attention finally roamed to where Sevastyan stood in the middle of the office and Sevastyan rubbed his stubbled jaw, meeting his father’s worn gaze.
“I found Mikhail’s burned body on my doorstep with a nice little note.” Sevastyan tore the piece of singed paper from his coat pocket and threw it on the desk between them. “Seems you both got in over your head with someone and he is out for blood. He already killed one son. Tell me what you two were into so I can take care of the problem.”
He pointed at the paper. “Is that dollars or Euros you owe? Twelve point eight million dollars is a nice price tag, but even bigger if it’s European money we’re talking about. Says he’ll be by to collect. If not, he’s left a nice little promise to come for more blood.”
His father lifted a heavy shoulder. “Does not matter. There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your problem. It’s not why I called you here.”
Sevastyan slammed a fist onto the polished wood sending papers and a lamp clattering to the floor. “Fuck you. This man has pledged to kill every last Volkov. Last I checked, that is me and you, Father. Since I don’t want to live looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, you need to tell me what asshole you two screwed over.”
Sevastyan should have been prepared for the stone-cold expression of the man staring back at him, but his old man didn’t even flinch at Sevastyan’s cold, callous tone.
Ire tasked the little restraint he had to keep from lunging across the furniture and ripping the other man’s throat out. Up until now, he’d done a good job at keeping himself in check but seeing his father’s face forced his rage to the surface.
He took a slow steadying breath that filled his gut and let it out.
He spread his arms out, palms up. “Why did you summon me?” he asked coldly, feeling slightly less murderous. “My brother meant less to you than garbage. Never smart enough, brave enough.” He was only stating the facts they both knew.
“He wasn’t you.”
“And you hated him for that. Did he die because of it too? Did you let him make deals that would get him killed?” Sevastyan growled. “Did your greed push him into an early grave? Answer me, God damn you!”
Sevastyan’s scowl of anger clung to him like a three-day-old stench. His chest tightened just being in the same room as the man he despised for far too damn long.
“My greed? Shut up, boy. I won’t have my blood talk to me like I’m some underling soldier. I control you. Not the other way around.” His father’s voice grew heavy and slurred with time. ‘R’s rolled and ‘e’s softened with a rich Russian accent decades of living in the United States couldn’t take away.
He threw his hands up and stormed across the office. He poured a few fingers worth of vodka and downed it, chasing it with a second. He cursed his bloodline. His family name. It meant something growing up, but now it only stood for blood and death.
In a family like theirs, the older brother was supposed to step into the father’s shoes. Take over for the family when the father grew too old to carry the burden of heading an underworld empire.
It’s the way it worked. He understood that. Accepted it. But as a young boy, his father saw it differently, demanding he be the one to take over the Volkov family when the time came. As a child, he didn’t understand what his father saw in him, but as a full-grown man, Sevastyan understood. A darkness in him spoke to the darkness in the man who fathered him. And his father planned on capitalizing on it.
Only he never got a chance.
When his mother died everything changed.
The day she went into the ground he swore off any allegiance to his bloodline and willingly turned into the black sheep of the family.
His father had Mikhail after all. The oldest.
And look how that ended. Sevastyan poured another drink and hammered it back in the same fashion hoping it helped dull the edges of anger slicing into him.
Being on the outside cost him though. Sevastyan couldn’t protect the one person who needed him the most. His worst nightmare had come to life and he’d failed to prevent it. That made him as guilty as their father and he would make damn sure he didn’t shoulder this burden alone.
They’d all failed his older brother. Some more than others.
A cry of horror rang out across Chicago when the Volkov family showed up, fought for territory, and won. He’d been young then. Eight years old. Impressionable. A goddamn fool boy who thought considered his father a hero.
Then he grew up and understood the blood shed to obtain the power his father craved stained anyone it touched and blackened a man’s soul.
His soul. His name.
And he wanted nothing to do with it then, but time had a way of taking everything you loved about life and burying it.
To do what was needed, he couldn’t stand on the outside any longer. He needed to be on the inside. Only from there could he hunt for a killer.
“I’m not your puppet to control. I never was. I’m not Mikhail. Say what you want because this is the last you’ll see of me. The Volkov empire is under my rule now. And there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ll slaughter any man you send my way and I’ll kill you too if you so much as lift a finger against me.”
From this distance, he could see the man’s thin lips turn white as he clamped his mouth shut. Holding back.
Murder-for-power spilled rivers of blood in the streets of every corner in the city before any semblance of peace came about. Years of war and death smeared the Volkov name to some and others it represented power and respect.
It made him sick.
His father’s steel gaze tracked him silently as he moved across the room in deliberate strides, the scent of old smoke and vodka hitting his nostrils. For the last four days he’d lived with the smell of burned flesh that leeched the life from his body and clung to his dreaming and waking hours like a nightmare that thrived from his misery, so the stale scents were eerily welcomed.
Images of what they’d left of his brother on his doorstep haunted him every time he closed his eyes. Not since his young adult years had he felt such desolation and hopeless despair.
Left to yet again pick up the pieces alone. His father was too self-absorbed to see the pain others suffered while he clawed out more territory, more power. More money.
His brother was the fool always trying to please their father. Looking for the man’s approval. Which pushed the idiot into doing anything their father wanted.
Fuck. Maybe he should have never left and instead assumed the burden that accompanied the Volkov name.
He understood his mistakes now.
The older man lifted his heavy frame from the comfort of his leather chair and slammed a meaty fist against the solid oak of his desk, sending another stack of papers to the floor, his eyes flashing bright with warning.
“I didn’t ask you here for fight. Your fool brother got in over his head. What happened to him is on him. He was a traitor in the end. Traitors die.” A gnarled finger came up to point at Sevastyan. “You can blame yourself for that if you need pair of shoulders to place it on,” he told him grimly, his words thick and rolling. “The Volkov family is strong because of me. And only me.”
Sevastyan let the silence stretch between them for long seconds from where he stood opposite the desk. Fury singed his veins, pulling his lips back in a deep primal growl.
“Listen to me very carefully. All the man ever wanted was your love, and you turned him into someone I haven’t recognized for years. You did that. Not me. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Death. It all oozed from his pores. Everywhere he went he stench of sin followed.”
Brows pinched low over a sharp gaze, his father’s scowl turning darker by the second as rage brightened his cold eyes with a warning.
Bring it. In the mood he was in, he’d let fate determine whatever outcome she saw fit.
Despite what he said, guilt stalked the corridors of his mind. Coming here was a mistake.
Memories of all the times he tried to heal the gaping wound between him and his father tumbled through his mind and led him down a dead-end road. Foolish on his part to entertain the idea of death bringing them closer.
Sevastyan turned on his heels and edged around double oxblood chairs positioned between him and the exit. He paused, hand on the knob. “I’m done wasting my time on a dead man. Live your days knowing your family is gone.”
Sleep-deprived and filled with festering thoughts, he scrubbed a hand over his face before he turned his attention over his shoulder. “Whatever it is you wanted to say to me, you can die with it.” He deadpanned his tone, suddenly tired.
Neatly combed silver-striped hair never slipped a single strand out of place as he whipped his head up and pinned him with a lethal glare. The formidable man from decades ago making a brief appearance.
His father pointed at the empty chair across from his desk, his charcoal dress shirt stretched tight as his muscles flexed. “Take seat, boy.” Dark eyes flared with anger. The tangy spice of it left a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.
The barked command skated up his spine and set his teeth on edge.
“I stopped being a boy the day you threw our mother out of the house because you tired of her, preferring something young, busty, and blonde. You left our mother broken. I was left to pick up the pieces of her wounded heart and care for her when it was your job.” His tone dipped murderously low. “You left her like trash in a back alley. If anyone has shamed our family name, sullied it, it has been you. Not me. Not Mikhail.”
He took a calming breath past the clawing agony that wanted to shred the last remaining pieces of his heart. His words fell between them, meaningless to such a cold-hearted bastard, he knew, but he’d said them and meant every single word. “There’s a house full of guests here to mourn the death of your son. You might want to consider coming out of your office long enough to acknowledge them.”
The head of the Volkov family swayed back on his heels with a glare as if he’d delivered a punch to the face. “Your mother was weak. Weaker than most. But what happened between your mother and me is none of your damn business. But your brother? He was weak, too. Disgusting. I should have killed him the day she pushed him out. And you should have stepped into my place like I wanted.”
Light from a nearby lamp caught in the man’s silver hair as he shook his head. Age weighed on him, his broad, ample shoulders rounded forward, and the fine lines of decades gone by were now deep-rooted ruts of worry against weathered cheeks.
“You made it my business when I was left to care for her after cancer left her so damn frail she couldn’t make it to the bathroom alone. Couldn’t feed herself. She needed her husband and you abandoned her for a young piece of pussy.” Sevastyan strode deeper into the room so furious he nearly foamed at the mouth at the rage pouring out of him. “Let that be the last time we speak of my mother or I won’t be held responsible for what I do next.”
Neither man spoke for a long moment as tensions grew so thick Sevastyan could rake his fingers through it and leave gashes.
Shame, or what passed for it in his father, crossed over the man’s face, making him appear vulnerable for a fleeting moment.
Emotion wasn’t exactly the older man’s strong suit, but buried beneath the egotistical dribble were the notes of what sounded like remorse. His father trailed off as though there was something more he wanted to say. Several seconds ticked by before he reanimated. He waved a hand as if batting away pesky memories.
“You can wallow in pity and useless grief.”
Sevastyan’s face went hard. “Any responsibilities Mikhail had now fall on me. His assets are mine. This house. The Volkov men, businesses, and money. Everything. My men have already made the transfers. Anything needs doing, it goes through me.”
“Your men.” The older Volkov spat on the floor. “Greedy bastards. They only want money and power. Everything you say you hate.”
“They never wanted anything from you. Just like me. Lucian, Roman, Matteo. They are my family now.” Sevastyan’s eyes narrowed. “And they’ll be the ones to help me find what I’m looking for. And when I do, there will be blood spilled. Take my words to heart, old man. I will catch Mikhail’s killer and everyone involved. That’s a promise. And Father,” he made sure the older man looked into his eyes, “…you’ll find I keep my promises.”
This was the only way he would find the answers he needed. Complete and utter control. To do that he had to step into the devil’s domain.
“Why the sad face, Father? You’re finally getting what you wanted. Me as king.”
