CHAPTER 2
Gavril
One Day Earlier
I braced my hands on my desk and listened to Sveta’s rants as she was escorted down the hall. I hadn’t expected her to react like that. I had expected tears, maybe even some begging. But she had reacted to my plan like a hellion, fighting my men and threatening to kill me.
Maybe she had more of Stanislav in her than I realized. I expected a woman who would be afraid of me, one that would be crying for her father, a father she never knew, to come save her.
Instead, I found a woman who had defiance in her eyes, and hell, it stirred my cock nearly immediately. Were it not for protocol, I might have stripped her then and there, bent her over and used her until she was a trembling mess.
A woman with fire was dangerous, but also a hell of a good time.
In that moment, I almost wished that she wasn’t to be my wife. I didn’t want excitement in my marriage. I didn’t even want to think about her other than to finish my plan and have her give me a child.
That was I planned for her.
Now that I had her in my home, I wanted to marry her immediately to ensure that my plan was going to stick.
Well, and to bury myself deep between her legs and make her scream until her throat bled.
Taking in a deep breath to calm myself, I walked away from the desk to the window that overlooked a small garden. The fountain shone in the evening light. This home wasn’t to be our final stop, but it had been my compound for the last few days as the time grew near to taking Sveta.
It was closer to the city than my mansion was and put me right where I needed to be.
I had Sveta in my grasp. It was hard to believe that my plan had gone off so flawlessly. Anatoly had done his job well. And now I was eager to move on to the next step.
More importantly, I wanted to squelch any notions that I couldn’t pull this shit off. I was always underestimated, and if Sveta thought that I was going to take any leniency on her because she showed some fight in her, then she was wrong.
They were all wrong.
Still, it didn’t matter what sort of person Stanislav’s daughter was. I wasn’t going to change the course of my plans. For months I had thought about this from every angle, trying to find some hole in it.
Even my brigadiers thought I was crazy for going this far. But it was a necessary step. Fortune favored the bold, and this would be the boldest thing any Bratva Pakhan did. With Stanislav and his son Dimitri’s deaths at the hands of the Marchetti twins, the pieces couldn’t have fallen in place better than they had. His Bratva—the Krasnaya Bratva—had no leader, and no one was going to point them in the direction of power.
No one until me.
I would marry Sveta and assume my rightful place on top of both the Krasnaya and Belaya Bratvas, so that I could assume the power I craved.
The power that I deserved.
A smirk crossed my face as I sat back in my chair, waiting for Anatoly to return. He had been the one to grab Sveta from LA, following her into an apartment that she’d been stashed in and bringing her to my home in the city.
I wondered if she’d made as many threats toward Anatoly as she had to me. The girl was a fighter, no doubt about that. From the moment she saw me, I knew that she’d never love me. That she’d never be devoted to me.
Which suited me just fine.
I didn’t need her love. I didn’t want her devotion.
The only thing I wanted was to pry her legs apart and plant my child in her womb. Once our bloodlines were mixed, then no one would be able to undo it.
No one would be able to disavow my claim on the Krasnaya Bratva.
It was an age-old remedy to protecting bloodlines and conquering claims to the dynasties of the past. Hell, families did it every day to ensure that they were part of the elite. They married off their children like cattle so that they could strengthen their empires.
What I would be doing was no different.
Whether my bride-to-be was willing mattered not. I’d have her dragged down the aisle if need be.
If she played her role correctly, she wouldn’t even need to be in the same bed as me. I didn’t need her to satisfy my lust. I had many others that would jump at the chance to share my bed, and there was no doubt in my mind that once I had Sveta a few times, I would grow bored of her.
No woman held my attention for long these days.
I certainly didn’t expect my wife to do so either.
Anatoly appeared a moment later, looking as if he had gone to war with a tiger and lost. “She’s in her room again.”
I chuckled as I saw the red marks on his face. “Are you all right?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders in indifference. I knew personally that he had suffered worse injuries before, from both men and women alike.
“She’s a fighter. That’s good. Maybe she will give you strong sons and daughters.”
It was. I could appreciate her willingness to fight. It would serve her well in her new life. “I want her transported to the mansion. She needs to prepare for the wedding.”
Anatoly arched a brow. “Are you certain you want to go through with this? Poroshenko, Puzanov, Kovyalyov, and the rest will not have kind words to say about it. Especially since they know exactly what you’d do to their Pakhan’s precious little daughter.”
I shrugged at the names of Stanislav’s brigadiers. “Leave that to me. Those men understand protocol.”
“Join or die,” Anatoly finished the thought.
“Da.”