CONTENTS
Bratva Boss
NEWSLETTER
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
NEWSLETTER
A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS
BRATVA BEAR SHIFTERS
LAIRDS & LADIES
RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD
IRISH WOLF SHIFTERS
About the Author
BRATVA BOSS
AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE
_______________________
RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD, 5
FLORA FERRARI
Copyright © 2020 by Flora Ferrari
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.
BRATVA BOSS
Mia
All I ever wanted was to dance on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and when I get my chance to join their ranks there's nothing that can stop me from leaving the States to pursue my dreams. Thoughts of relationships and a future family of my own just aren't something I've allowed to get in the way of my dancing career, but all that changes when I meet sinfully attractive Valentin. First we share a workout space early in the morning, and then he's everywhere I need him to be, stepping in to keep me from harm and suddenly ballet isn't the only thing with a place in my heart. When I find out he's part of the Bratva, will I listen to the people warning me to stay away from this dangerous older man, or will this virgin succumb to his advances in all the worst possible ways, hoping he's the fairy tale prince I've been longing for?
Valentin
Only one thing lies between me and taking over as the head of the Bratva in Moscow and the world: I have to kill my father. The last thing I need is a distraction, but when I meet Mia, the young American dancer who's the newest addition to my building, the younger woman becomes the only thing I care about. It's love at first sight, and I will do everything to claim her as my own, but how can I stop her from becoming a weakness to be exploited, and how can I convince her that deep down I'm a good guy at heart? Keeping the blood off my hands seems impossible. Does a Bratva Boss ever get to have a happy ending of his own, or does grabbing power mean I’m destined to be a lone wolf forever?
*Bratva Boss is part of the Russian Underworld series, but can be enjoyed as a standalone. It ends with an HEA and contains no cheating and no cliffhanger.
NEWSLETTER
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CHAPTER ONE
Mia
Mia Peterson, you listen to me. Moscow isn't like New York."
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I watched Mom try to squeeze in yet another pair of socks into my already crammed suitcase and I let out a sigh, forcing myself not to roll my eyes.
"Mom, I've been there before. And anyway, what are you saying, that I'm less likely to get shot if I go down the wrong street? I have enough socks already."
"I don't want you to catch a cold." She straightens up, waving the guilty pair that wouldn't cram into my bag at me. "And that's not what I meant. Don't you put words into my mouth young lady."
"It's spring, Mom. The weather's warming up, just like over here. It was really warm when I went in the summer, remember? It's not the North Pole."
Dad caught my eye from the doorway of the hall where he was leaning, trying not to look amused. He was a contractor by trade and stepping back from the day to day, into project management had left him with a thickened middle and more grey hairs. I loved him for it though. Everything he'd ever done he did for me and my ballet obsession, even if he didn't understand it.
"Don't sass your mother, Mia. We're just concerned about you."
As a kid, I begged Dad, over and over, to let me go to the summer intensives in New York where the great Russian ballet company itself would take on students like me for a month at a time. I'd thought it was the closest I was ever going to come to getting to Russia myself.
I knew Dad never really understood, but when it came to my dancing he and Mom did everything they could to support me, and I couldn't have been more grateful. Without them, I wouldn't even have this chance.
When I was fourteen, they'd scrimped and saved and found a way to send me.
Those classes weren't the start of my obsession with Russian ballet by any means, but it was where it really started to get off the ground. I spent the whole of the next year trying to figure out how I could make enough money to go back to the intensives every year. I begged and begged them to let me apply for the summer exchange program every year. And I could hardly believe my luck when I was accepted at seventeen for a six week stay in Moscow to learn the language and train at the ballet school of my dreams.
Mom was acting like it was going to be my first time away from home, though and I was losing patience with having to reassure her when she should have been excited for the next step in my career.
"What if something goes wrong? What if you need a doctor?"
"They're going to take great care of me out there. Just like they did when I was on exchange. And, I have my phone. And, they even have doctors out there. I remember, from last time I went."
Mom threw her hands up into the air, giving up on that final pair of socks. "Well that's that then, isn't it? Nineteen years and suddenly it's I'm alright without you. Never mind fourteen hours of labor. Never mind me staying up all through the night to nurse you through the chicken pox."
"Mom…" I pulled her into a hug, but she was too set on hiding her tears to let me. "Come on Mom. I love you. You know that. But this is my dream."
She covered her eyes with her hands and let out a short breath, pushing her tears away.
"And we're so proud of you. I just don't see why it has to be Russia. It's such a long way away, Mia. Aren't you going to miss us? What about Thanksgiving and Christmas, and your birthday?"
"Mom, of course I'm going to miss you. All of you. But it's the Bolshoi Ballet! You know how long I've wanted this. It's not going to be forever. I'll go there and learn everything I can and then I can come home and dance for whatever company I want to. And I'm going to get time off. I can come visit. You can come visit."
The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow was the best in the world, at least as far as I was concerned and I'd dreamed of dancing with them since I first laced up my pointe shoes. Their dancers were athletic and strong, passionate and convincing, rather th
an wispy and ethereal and always close to passing out. Every time I watched a performance, it was theirs I wanted to emulate. Those were the type of dancer I wanted to become and I finally had the chance to try.
I remembered my time there on the exchange program every waking moment since I got back. And two years on, at nineteen, my dreams really started coming true. I'd sent a video audition for an opening in their Cour de Ballet and forced myself to forget about it, because it was never going to happen. The Bolshoi dancers were trained in a very particular way so that on stage they could continue to produce the vibrant, full bodied athleticism that was expected from dancers trained so thoroughly in the Vaganova Method. They had very little need to pull in dancers from overseas when they had an academy of their own, set up to produce the very best dancers in the world.
But I'd been accepted on the strength of my work with them on the summer programs I'd taken, and I could hardly believe it was really happening.
It was going to be grueling and relentless, and I couldn't wait. Nineteen and raring to go, being even a small part of the company of dancers who'd inspired me for so long was everything I ever could have wanted from a first real job. I just wished that Mom could understand that, instead of seeing all the negatives.
All I wanted was to prove to them that they hadn't made a mistake in taking me on, that I had just as much passion and skill as any one of the women who could have taken my place. And I really didn't have time for my family's reservations about my decision to relocate half a world away right when I could have done with their support.
The fact of the matter was, it didn't matter what either of them thought about it. I was nineteen, and I'd accepted the offer in a heartbeat. The offer I thought never in a million years I'd get, because they hardly ever let non-Russians in the door. No one in the world was going to stop me, no matter how much I loved them. I'd be going out there on my own, and I'd have to stand on my own two feet for the first time in my life, so maybe it was all for the best anyway.
"She's going to be just fine out there, Honey," Dad put in, coming into the room to wrap his arms around Mom and pull her away from me. "Come on, much more of your fuss and she's gonna miss her flight."
I smiled gratefully at Dad, mouthing a silent thank you. He might not have understood, but he'd always been my champion.
Zipping my suitcase closed, I picked it up off the bed and took a deep breath. This was it. I was heading to Moscow to take up my place on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre and nothing was going to get in my way.
Valentin
Officially, I never knew my father, but I always thought that Yakov Timoshenko, the reigning boss of the Russian Bratva in Moscow took more interest in me and my path than made sense without some kind of deeper connection. Before she died, my mother confirmed it. But he would never show disloyalty to his legitimate family, even after they were taken out and killed in front of him. I was always going to be the unacknowledged son. That was my burden to carry, and some might have said the chip on my shoulder that I could never let drop, but never within my hearing.
My mother had deserved better than to be anybody's mistress; Timoshenko should never have married his wife if he did not intend to be faithful to her. Those were two things I firmly believed.
I had to concede that if he had been able to keep his dick in his pants, I would not exist, and he definitely would not have allowed me as close to the business of the Bratva as he had. His downfall, when I brought it to him, was going to be of his own making. And that felt poetic enough to be some kind of justice.
It had taken a bold move on my part for the old man to start to wake up to the fact that I had more loyalty among the ranks than he'd been aware of, and that I had been running the Bratva myself for years, right under his nose. He was a figurehead, and while he'd been great in his day, his day was over. It was my turn at the helm, steering us into the new world of opportunities and leaving the old, outdated ways where bloodshed and violence ruled supreme far, far behind us. But he was only just starting to open his eyes.
Since he had found out that I had brought our supposedly retired fixer and his wife to St Petersburg to make a claim on the city, things had been frosty between us to say the least.
Mostly, that frostiness was because I had succeeded, despite his last ditch attempt to side with the city's own criminals and regain control, and his pride was bruised beyond recognition. But he wasn't taking me seriously and I had to remedy that.
Brunch at Cafe Pushkin was supposed to be a way to move past what had happened in St Petersburg to give me the controlling share of the city in the Bratva's name, and to decide on a course for the future that would suit the both of us. Sooner or later, he was going to have to accept that I held the power, but I knew before he arrived that today was not going to be that day.
He still thought he was the one calling the shots, that he could cut me out if he chose to. Quite simply, the man wasn't worried enough for his position. But he should have been.
Since my return to Moscow, there had been meetings I hadn't been invited to, although I was always briefed afterwards by everyone else attending because they knew better than Timoshenko that I was not the man to leave out of the loop. There had been a party he'd forgotten to mention, a conference call that I had no dial in details for. Petty things that I didn't grudge the man.
I knew that when the time came, I was going to be just as reluctant as he was to let go of the power I'd worked so hard to get for myself. But at thirty two, that was still a long way ahead in my future, and this petty behavior couldn't go on. It was starting to become ridiculous. The Bratva still had to do business, and he was far too out of his depth to manage what needed to be done when the simple act of encoding an email was far beyond him.
The beautiful old interior of the cafe restaurant I sat in had been repurposed to great effect as a decadent restaurant with the feeling of an exclusive gentlemen's club from another era. It seemed fitting to meet in a place where the legacy of the past had been incorporated into a fresh future. I hoped he wasn't too pig-headed to take my subliminal hint.
Timoshenko's brow arched up in an almost comic look of irritation as he strolled into the library room without so much as a glance at the deep wooden bookcases adorning every wall as he approached the table I had settled in.
"Who is this?" he demanded, quite predictably.
I had a new head for my branch of the security operations that the Bratva ran. Viktor Kaverin, our newest initiate, was shaping up to be a very useful man to have around. And I was becoming mindful that after my takeover of St Petersburg, and the direct clash with Timoshenko, I needed personal protection of my own. Viktor, brand new and only loyal to me, was the perfect choice.
I glanced over my shoulder, away from the screen of my laptop where all the latest figures were spooling, to the comfortable armchair discretely back from the table, in an alcove by the large window where he sat like any other customer who might have wanted to read a newspaper. Except that he had no such distraction and for anyone who knew to look, the outline of his gun beneath the man's black suit was obvious.
"Viktor Kaverin. My friend from St Petersburg. Would you like tea, coffee?"
I indicated both of the pots set out on the restaurant's signature deep green tablecloth.
Timoshenko scowled and pulled the teapot towards him across the breakfast table so that he could serve himself, just the way he always preferred. "What is he doing here?"
I knew as well as he did that it was Yakov who was supposed to have the last word when it came to who to accept into the Bratva fold. But that hadn't happened here.
Ordinarily, the move I had pulled in St Petersburg, taking advantage of the situation there and my loyal friends willingness to help out, would have been strictly out of bounds. It was no more and no less than a power play and Timoshenko knew it as well as I did. Viktor Kaverin should never have been welcomed into our Bratva without his say so, but the deed was already done, and his presence here
was only a symptom of the larger issue he'd been refusing to face.
"We are setting up a new branch of the security firm. I am making sure Viktor is up to speed before he takes over."
Timoshenko's eyes hardened on mine. We both knew that what had happened in St Petersburg came perilously close to the kind of insult he couldn't ignore. But he wasn't quite the intimidating figure he had once cut any longer. Time had taken its toll in more ways than one, and I was the fitter, stronger male, ready to push him aside.
We both knew he had made an unsuccessful attempt to shut me down by siding with the disparate and disloyal criminals native to the city. But the old man had been ignoring all of it since my return.
I knew why, he relied on me too heavily; I was irreplaceable, while he was the redundant figurehead who could be done without.
"We did not discuss this Valentin."
I knew that he knew that, otherwise he would have cut me out the way any old fashioned mafia man would have dealt with insurgence amongst his ranks. But he was wise enough to see that it wasn't as simple as that.
For a start, he needed me. The business had become too big and too reliant on modern ways - paper trails and company assets and brokering deals that all looked and felt legitimate so that the rest could be bundled up along with the wash. And I knew how to deploy all of our people, all of our brothers across the network we controlled. When Timoshenko had started out, everything had been about Moscow. Now, it was simply the hub of a worldwide enterprise, and he didn't have the first clue how to keep all the plates spinning.
That was my full time job, and it had been for years.
I poured myself more coffee from the pot. "There is a great deal that we have not discussed Yakov. Perhaps we should begin to address that."
The writing had been on the wall for a couple of years now. Since even before our trouble with the Ukrainians in Brooklyn I had been lining up allegiances and making sure the Bratva men were on my side, eager for the new direction I planned to take us all in. Yakov had to know by now that all it would take was one word from me to depose him. There were no more reasons for him to cling to power.
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