Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King

Chapter 7

Nikolai

My fucking head hurts. The longer I spend waiting out my parents, the worse the need gets. I crave another drink and perhaps that lovely woman Annika bouncing on my cock. It would certainly make this whole ordeal a lot more bearable.

This isn’t the life I wished for when I moved back to be part of the family again.

The whole affair is so embarrassing. Everybody’s worst traits are brought out by arrangements like this, especially crooked Russian socialites like my mother, and hers too, apparently. It’s like they’re all consumed with blind panic at the mere thought of something being not quite right and just ruining everything.

I reach for a pack of cigarettes; only three left now. I light one and take a long drag. The smoke is poison, but it’s slow agony, not anything like the poisons that the mafia often use on each other. Those kill a lot quicker.

My brother is such a suck-up to our father, always jumping at opportunities to lead the way and risk get himself killed in a business where people routinely have their lives ruined and get themselves killed.

He’s doing it again with Annika.

We have no idea who this family is or what their intentions are. It’s all about securing some false sense of safety, and it’s stupid. I don’t see the point in forcing two unwitting people to get married as a business transaction when she clearly wants nothing to do with him.

Maybe I’m just jealous. I don’t care.

Annika seems alright, though. Maybe she’s a bit too straight-laced on first impression, but there’s a mystery about her that just makes me so curious. It’s just the rest of her family that concerns me. I don’t trust them.

I thought I had outgrown the need to tear people up to find what’s inside, but the urge boils inside of me, burning to get out and cause trouble for everyone who steps close enough to get burnt by it.

So many years of shoving it all down, so many years of trying to forget what I really desire, and I still feel like I need to tear into pretty things and expose the darkness inside them.

If Annika has that darkness inside her, Michail would never know what to do with her. For someone who has grown up around such tragedy and danger, he has only ever been able to put forth a kind of manufactured bravado, just barely masking his inexperience and immaturity.

I would handle Annika with ease.

I’ve always been good with women. I like them, but bad habits have led to a series of terrible decisions I’ve made that have made me unfavorable in the eyes of those who know me. I’m part of the mafia, for god’s sake, and that rules me out of a normal relationship.

If I ever do get married, it’ll be arranged, just like Michail.

While I smoke this cigarette, I sit back to listen to the sounds of the turbulent atmosphere around me. I can hear both Michail and Annika talking with low voices. They’re back inside the house.

I can hear our parents down the hallway discussing the expanding operational territories while occasionally getting off-topic, my father commanding the conversation with some story about his childhood in Vladivostok. I hate the way he monopolizes every space he’s in at all times. That should be me.

My attention shifts back toward Michail and Annika. Michail leads the conversation, talking about his brief time in military school when he was eighteen.

Military school was always the defining difference between him and me when we were younger. Where he pursued it tooth and nail to prove his worth as a US citizen, I was kicked out upon entry for smuggling ammunition out and selling it in the streets. Michail graduated with honors while I narrowly avoided prison.

I listen in to the conversation, leaning into Annika’s soft words so that I can hear them better. Annika’s voice, where she is allowed a word or two, is velvety and dark, a chocolate depth where I so often hear a shrill, demanding tone of other women.

The longer I listen to her, the more I want to hear her speak. I want to scream whenever Michail interrupts her the way he does, jumping in to over-explain something she is talking about in order to appear knowledgeable. It is by far one of his worst traits.

“Do you have any siblings, Annika?”

“No, it’s just me.”

“Damn, you’re lucky.”

My face burns hot, and part of me knows it’s time to stop listening and move on before I end up hearing something and getting upset. But the curiosity in me refuses to let go.

“Why do you say that?” Annika asks.

“Sometimes I feel like Nikolai just tries to make everything harder on purpose, like he doesn’t know how to live without chaos in his life. He just needs it. His addiction to chaos is worse than any other I’ve ever seen. I suspect he’s after power and nothing else.”

“I guess I just don’t know him well enough to say. He seems alright,” Annika replies politely.

She’s defending me, and she doesn’t even know me. I’m more interested in that little tidbit than the fact that Michail knows I’m up to no good. Everyone knows, but they think I’m incapable of doing something horrible. They think I’m going to stay in the shadows forever.

I won’t.

I finish my cigarette and put it out. Part of me wants another already, whether from boredom or irritation from my stupid brother and his posturing. Using me to make himself look better in front of a woman who is already going to marry him is low, even for Michail.

Before I reach for one of the two cigarettes I have left, I can hear Annika speak up.

“Will Nikolai be at the wedding?” she asks sweetly.

I chuckle to myself. She favors me. I can hear it in her voice. I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m certain of it, and it’s going to make Michail seethe with anger when he realizes it.

“He might be,” Michail answers vaguely, doing little to cloak his annoyance.