The Bratva's Bride Read online

  The Bratva’s Bride

  A Dark Mafia Romance

  Jane Henry

  THE BRATVA’S BRIDE: A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE (WICKED DOMS)

  * * *

  By: Jane Henry

  * * *

  Copyright 2019 by Jane Henry

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar

  Cover design by PopKitty Designs

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Preview

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Demyan

  * * *

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  I slam my fist against the thick punching bag, dust sparkling in the single stream of sunlight like diamonds. My vision blurs, sweat dripping in my eyes from the exertion. I take a second to wipe my arm across my brow, before I’m back at it again.

  Pain wraps across my back with every swivel and spin of my torso. Perspiration drips down my body in rivulets, my breathing fast and ragged in the humid room, and yet I’m nowhere near satisfied. I won’t stop until I’ve exhausted myself. Until the storm within me calms. Until I’ve exorcised my demons.

  For now.

  I pound the bag, the only sound in the room my grunts and the soft thumps when my fists connect. Sometimes, I imagine the bag holds the face of my enemies. Sometimes, my father. But in those moments, I don’t come away sated with revenge but thirsty for more. I’m left dissatisfied and empty, because you cannot beat a man who lies in a grave. When I pummel the bag, it leaves me unfulfilled and restless, but mercifully fatigued. It’s a weariness I welcome, as if somehow, I can beat the anger away with my fists if I try hard enough.

  So when Maksym pushes the door to the basement open, he does so tentatively, my only indication he’s arrived the creak of the door between swings of my fist. He doesn’t interrupt me at first, out of respect. The man is like a brother to me.

  “What is it?” I snap. I lift the bottle of water on the floor, tip my head back, and douse my mouth with the cool liquid before drenching my face with it.

  “Filip found more details, Dem.”

  That gets my attention. I grab the towel beside my water bottle and swipe it across my face to clear my vision before I look at him. His ankles are crossed, one shoulder leaning against the door frame. Large and broad, with a thick beard and black eyes that shine, he easily looks the most formidable of our lot, though he has a soft spot, and she lives in a remote cabin in Istra.

  “Tell me.”

  In the past two weeks, large sums of money have disappeared. Filip, our bookkeeper, is brilliant and impeccable, and until now, we’ve seen no loss in revenue since I’ve been head of our brotherhood. In fact, quite the opposite. Our income has soared, padding our pockets and investments, and Filip’s masterful manipulation of our funds makes illicit transactions fly under the radar. His careful calculations and technological finesse make it possible to have funds allocated in multiple countries that no one can touch. Theft is not uncommon in our line of business, but the severe penalty for stealing from us has kept us safe from extortion since I’ve run this brotherhood. Until now.

  Maksym clears his throat. “It’s a woman, for one.”

  I curse and kick the concrete wall. I have no qualms about exacting retribution and meting out punishment, but typically the thieves we’ve dealt with were men. Men, I can handle with fists, a knife, or worse. Women, though…

  Damn. I can be vicious and cruel, but prefer the more fragile creatures punished in other ways.

  I turn to face him.

  “What else?”

  “She’s left her location wide open as of last weekend.”

  “What do you mean?” I frown at him and cross my arms over my chest.

  “It seems almost intentional, Dem. She’s as easy to track as a performer in the public square.”

  I shake my head. Why would someone willingly steal money from us and then not bother to cover her tracks?

  “Where is she?”

  “Kazak.”

  An hour from here, near one of our brother groups. I feel my brows rise in surprise. So bold.

  He leans against the wall and steps into the room. “If you want, I’ll go.”

  I can see it in his eyes, though. He doesn’t want to go. Maksym is no wilting violet, but he has a code he lives by, and as he’s the most faithful to our brotherhood, I want to honor that code. He will take down our most violent opposition, and in recent months has risen to the top as our most accurate assassin, but when it comes to women…

  When our brother Kazimir abducted a woman named Sadie last year, Maksym cursed out Dimitri and almost resigned. There is typically no real resignation from the Bratva but death. To Maksym, retribution was one thing but abducting innocents was another. He insisted she did nothing to earn how we treated her. And now that Kazimir and Sadie have settled back in the U.S., he keeps regular contact with them like a sort of doting uncle.

  But this woman… what she’s done… she’s earned whatever happens and he knows it.

  Hell, if this were a year ago and Dimitri still ran our organization, he’d murder her with one rapid command, not even bothering to punish her before death. And for a moment I fear being in this position of power has weakened me.

  “Show me her picture.” I drain the bottle of water and drag the towel over my face again. He takes a picture out of a slim folder, and holds it up to me.

  I swear under my breath, shaking my head.

  It’s a grainy picture, but I can tell she’s fucking beautiful. Black hair. High cheekbones, pointed chin, thick, dark eyebrows and lashes over light brown eyes. With her softly rounded, oval face, full lips, and pale complexion, she looks like a little pixie. She could be a model for a high-end fashion company, instead of the ruthless hacker who’s undermined our efforts and taken what doesn’t belong to her.

  “Is she as small as she looks?”

  “As tiny as a child,” he says, frowning. “Just under five feet tall, one hundred pounds.”

  I stare at her picture in silence.

  “Do we know why she’s done what she has? Are there any ties in any way?”

  He shrugs. “Her father and sister were killed in a car accident three years ago, but the papers report it purely accidental.” That means nothing.

  I curse again and throw the empty water bottle toward the trash barrel. It nicks the edge and falls to the ground, bouncing along the floor.

  “And still, she needs to be stopped.” I’m thinking out loud. I could sit back and let others enact our revenge, or I could use this to my advantage. If I take her myself…

  Suddenly, the right course of action seems vividly clear.

  I nod, making up my mind. “I’ll go,” I tell him. “I want to extract her myself, and it’s time I paid our brothers in Kazak a visit.” I haven’t seen them since I’ve taken this position of power. I was only a brother in a line of many before. Now, I’m the pakhan, voted in by my brothers.

  I snort. “Hell, it’s a write-off.”

  He huffs out a laugh in reply.

  “Show me her most recent infractions.”

  Maksym
nods, and takes out several printouts. “Her recent history,” he tells me. “There’s been half a million dollars in blocked transfers in the past month but done from multiple accounts and in small batches. Normally, it would be hard to track someone like her, but as I said she left it wide open this time. It would seem either she wants us to come for her, or it’s a fatal mistake.”

  I curse looking over the evidence. If we hadn’t caught on, she could have destroyed one of the most lucrative transactions in decades.

  “And that mistake was?”

  “She made every transaction from the same location. The same room. The same computer.”

  “Someone so brilliant yet so stupid?”

  He shakes his head. “At first we even thought it was a trap. But after further investigation, we found out more about her… It has to be intentional, and there’s no indication she’s affiliated with any of our rivals.”

  I shake my head. “She’ll pay for this, Maksym. Her name?”

  “Calina,” he says. “Calina Brague. And of course she will pay,” he says, but then he looks away, as if he wants to hide what he has to say next. “But there’s something else you need to know.”

  I look at him questioningly. I’ve already decided to go to Kazak and abduct her myself. What else could there be?

  “Tell me,” I order, taking the papers from his hand and reading them over again.

  “Her location, Dem…”

  I’m losing my patience. I raise a brow at him and nod, waiting for him to continue.

  “She’s a resident at Saint Andrews Hospital,” he says. “It’s a… mental institution.”

  I swear under my breath and mask the cold sweep of anger that sweeps over me.

  “Does she work there?” I ask, already knowing the answer to my question.

  “No, Dem.” He shakes his head and doesn’t meet my eyes. “She’s a patient.”

  Christ.

  Chapter 1

  I step into the entryway of Saint Andrews and school my features. For months, I would wrinkle my nose at the smell and let it affect me, but visceral responses to places like this make it more difficult to return, and I have to come here. I inhale deeply, and slip a strong white peppermint candy into my mouth. The abrasive mint overpowers my senses. I always come here with a full supply.

  There’s a new uniformed greeter at the desk who gives me a quizzical look. I stifle a sigh. At first, it was amusing how doctors, nurses, and even patients would do a double take when they saw me on this floor. It’s getting old, though, and quickly became so when one overzealous guard put his hands on me two weeks ago, thinking I needed to be brought back to “safety.” I disarmed him and had him in a choke hold before he realized what I was doing, and smiled big when the others came running.

  “Self-defense,” I said, flashing them a grin.

  He keeps his distance now.

  My identical twin sister is in a solitary room in a wing on the third floor, and never allowed in the main entryway.

  “Hi,” I say in Russian to the man at the desk, flashing him my most winsome smile. “I’m here to see Calina Brague.” I live in solitude and speak to hardly anyone, so my Russian is shit.

  He blinks, then looks at the computer screen in front of him. With a nod, he looks a second time at my I.D. A corner of his lip tips up and he mutters, “Amerikanskiy?”

  “Konechno,” I reply. It helps to know the casual phrases indicating nonchalance when trying to avoid notice.

  Of course.

  Naturally.

  I see.

  Excellent.

  A confident word and a ready smile go a long way sometimes in throwing people off course, and if I speak the language badly enough, they typically don’t want to engage in small talk, which is a decent plan.

  Glen wanted to accompany me today, but I want a little time alone with Calina. I come here several times a week, and he usually comes with me, but today is a special day.

  It marks the fifth anniversary of our father’s death.

  Calina won’t remember, but it’s a date I’ll never forget.

  The man at the desk nods in surprise at the screen. I know what he’s seeing: the green notice at the top of the page that grants me visiting rights, thanks to Glen. I get my visitor’s pass from him and head to the elevator. My peppermint’s nearly gone, so I take another one from the tin in my pocket and slip it into my mouth. Steeling my nerves. I adjust the bag by my side, hoping not to arouse suspicion. The third floor is highly restricted, and the only way I was even able to attain access was by having Glen hack into their computer system and adjust records.

  I smile at the friendly blonde nurse who knows me by now. She’s filling little paper cups with pills, and looks tired. There aren’t enough nurses for the patients, and it shows. Someone moans down the hall, a large stack of dirty food trays sits precariously on a cart near the elevator, and the phone at the main desk rings and rings. I wonder if this particular unit is understaffed, or is it that the people who work here don’t wish to come on this floor?

  The third floor is where the most volatile patients reside. I don’t believe Calina really belongs here, but when a doctor tried to examine her last month, she broke his nose and nearly strangled him with his stethoscope.

  She’s a little feisty. But we never were the most complacent creatures.

  On record, they put her on this floor for her own safety and the wellbeing of others.

  We were never even supposed to stay in this country. My father, American-born and raised, brought us here when we were just children. Barely out of junior high, we didn’t know a lick of Russian. He’d been “commissioned” he told us, to work for a government associate. At first, it was exciting. Whoever my father worked for paid him amply, and it was nice living in comparatively luxurious conditions. For a few years, we lived like normal people. After our mother’s death in America, we were all ready for something new. A new place, a new home. We were so much happier here that we never had plans to even go back to America for a visit.

  That was before my father’s plans took a decided turn. Before the men he worked for discovered he was swindling them out of their money. Before they came for him.

  They made it look like an accident. Dimly lit road. Late winter. Snowstorm.

  They didn’t care if we lived or died, as long as my father met his demise.

  The accident was horrific and tragic and my father died on impact. My sister suffered head trauma and significant brain damage as a result. I walked away relatively unscathed… physically.

  The papers reported it wrong, though. They declared Calina was the only survivor.

  So I used that to my advantage.

  Calina was deemed mentally unfit and institutionalized. I lived on my own and kept my head down, visiting Calina and researching what it was that brought about my father’s death, but the research I do brings up dead end after dead end.

  I’ve spent the past five years wondering what if?

  What if I’d been the one brain damaged like Calina?

  What if she’d died in the accident?

  What if I had?

  I gently push open her door, and I know what I’ll see before I walk in the room.

  Calina’s dressed in a white hospital gown, sitting on the bed with her knees tucked up to her chest. Her once glossy black hair is dull, stringy, and unkempt. She rocks gently back and forth, and eighties rock plays in the background.

  “Hey, honey,” I whisper, shutting the door. “You can’t play the music out loud. They’ll know you have something.”

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “I forgot.”

  Reaching under her mattress, she takes out the computer I’ve snuck in to her. She’s not allowed any electronics on this wing, but I managed to not only get this computer in, but hack into this floor’s WiFi so she can get online. She’s isolated enough. Isolating her from the online world too seemed harsh.

  “Let me see your computer. I need to clean it up a bit,” I tell he
r, looking over my shoulder. The door is shut but unlocked, so I have to be discreet. I pull out the package of cookies I brought her and hand them over, smiling when she stifles a squeal, opens the package, and crams two in her mouth.

  “Easy, there,” I tell her. “You’ll have to hide them so you can have them later.”

  I run a virus scan and change the log-on every few weeks so she can continue to get online. We instant message each other often. Though her social skills are significantly impaired, and she remains childlike in many ways, intellectually she’s still on point. Brilliant even.

  I open the laptop, then freeze when the computer screen opens. It takes a few seconds for what I’m seeing to register. I blink, scanning down the list of transactions, panic sweeping through me.

  “Calina…” my voice trails off and I cover my mouth with my hand.

  Oh, God. I read the transactions, and shake my head.

  It was a mistake giving her this computer. A very grave mistake.

  “I got them back,” she says in a singsong voice, shoving more cookies in her mouth. Crumbs spray on the sheets and she wipes her hand across the back of her mouth. “The people that killed dad.”

  “Calina,” I moan, pleading for something I can’t have—her innocence. “You didn’t. Oh, God, tell me you didn’t…”

  I scroll through the transactions on her screen. In a panic, I quickly click on the network settings and nearly cry when I see she’s disabled the VPN blocker.

  “Didn’t do what?” she says, her voice hardening and eyes flashing at me. “Didn’t bleed their accounts? I did, I did, I did!” Her voice rises in pitch like an angry toddler on the verge of an epic meltdown.