Now, when we fought, it got intense. Vik knew this. He played on it. And, dear Lord, sometimes I played right back.
My eldest brother, Sasha, decided to host a business meeting under the guise of dinner at his house—if you could call the three-story monstrosity a house—to talk about upcoming events and new ideas for the club. Attendance was not optional. When Sasha requested you, you came. That was just how things were.
Was it all a little kingpin of him?
Yeah.
Did he secretly love to wield that kind of power?
Have you met the guy? Of course, he did.
Business was booming. Bleeding Hearts—once a sleazy strip club, now a classy burlesque joint—had one hell of a transformation in the past year. And although it was Sasha’s baby, we were involved in one way or another. After all, we all worked there, and like a well-oiled machine, each of us were a cog in the engine, making it run.
To see the business fail was not an option. Our family prided itself on going legit. And unless we wanted to take a step back into a seedy underworld where people did nothing more than sell weapons, violence, drugs, and women, we had no backup.
It had to work.
My front door opened, then shut. “Oh my God,” I heard a feminine voice mutter, and when fast footsteps came rushing up the steps, my brow furrowed. Even more so when she panted out, “It’s okay. It’s fine. We’re okay.”
The hell?
Stepping back from the vanity in my bathroom, I heard the footsteps get closer and closer, and when she stepped into view, wide-eyed and looking terrified, I moved toward my sister-in-law, Mina, with a feeling of deep panic sitting heavy in my gut.
Shit. Something was wrong.
I didn’t even notice the white bag she was holding until she freaking threw it at me. I caught it clumsily, making the contents jostle, and when I all but blustered, “What’s wrong?” she stood there, chewing on her thumbnail, murmuring under her breath.
Her long brown hair was tied in a low ponytail, and I looked over her yoga pants, black tee, wearing one sock, and slides. She looked a mess.
Then, suddenly, she regained focus and said, “Out.” When her brown doe eyes landed on mine, she put her hands to my arms and gently pushed me backward until I was just outside the open door. “Out!”
For a tiny thing, she was remarkably strong. The door slammed in my face, and I just stood there, confused as hell, mouth agape.
Firstly, excuse the shit out of me. This was my house, dammit. She had some nerve pushing me around in my own home. But when I heard her whine through the door, my anger left as quickly as it came.
I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and slowly tried to open it. “Mina? Are you okay?” I jiggled it. “Shorty?”
There were three of us in the family. Sasha, the eldest, who took over the role of patriarch when our father died. Lev, the middle sibling, whose quirks made him both infuriating and endearing as hell. Lastly came me, the youngest. The girl who grew up with mobsters and criminals and thought nothing of it, because although it wasn’t normal, it was normal for me.
When you’re a teenager and your brothers are members of a subsidiary of the Russian Bratva… well, you could imagine how colorful life must’ve been.
On the day our father died, Sasha had been expected to take over control of Chaos. It seemed like the natural course of events, and Sasha never did things half-assed. He was in, which meant we were in.
I’d seen shit, heard shit, and taken part in shit that no teenager should have ever been part of. And it didn’t take long for Sasha to come to the same conclusion.
It took some convincing, but Sasha talked himself out of the role, and soon enough, without a proper leader, Chaos was falling apart. Bratva soon heard of the mismanagement and bickering between its firms, and the motherland came calling. And when Bratva tells you to stand down and disband, that’s what you do.
Now, any Russian firms out there were acting on their own. They no longer had the backing of the big guns. And although I had a feeling Sasha sometimes missed that life, I knew he did what he did for me.
Because family was everything.
The door to the bathroom shot open, and Mina, anxious as a gazelle drinking from the waterhole, stood there holding a plastic cup filled with a light-yellow liquid. I spotted the rectangular box in her other hand, and my brows bunched.
Her voice shook as she begged quietly, “Help.”
It took me about ten seconds for it all to click.
My brows rose, and I let out a humble, “Mina.”
“I know.” She nodded with tears in her eyes.