The King: Bratva Blood: (A dark mafia romance)

by SR Jones

  “Because if Popov gets to me, I’ll talk?”

  There’s a moments silence, and then he replies, “Because if Popov gets to you, he’ll do terrible, painful, degrading things to you, and I can’t live with that.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. I feel the movement against my back. “I don’t really know. You wouldn’t be the first casualty of this war I’ve been fighting for a long time.”

  “Maybe because I’m a woman,” I say.

  He laughs humorlessly. “No, if you were Liza, I’d give you to Popov first thing in the morning. It’s not because you’re a woman.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because you’re … you.”

  I open my mouth to say something else, and Konstantin squeezes me. “Cassie, go to sleep,” he commands.

  “Okay,” I say.

  And I do. Miraculously, I close my eyes and damn well fall asleep.

  **

  Light is the first thing I’m aware of and then pain, not in my face, but in my breast. Damn Denis and his fat fingers. Someone moves behind me, and I freeze. What the hell? Then I remember, Konstantin. I came to his room last night, all please be my savior big bad wolf.

  Ugh.

  Sometimes, I hate myself and my weakness. I should have stayed in my own room and not given in to such a needy moment. He’ll probably weaponize this against me once this strange truce we seem to be having wears off.

  The effect he has on me, though, is profound. I’ve slept terribly for nights now, yet he commanded me to sleep, and I did. Soundly too. I’m refreshed for the first time in days.

  Warmth covers my back as his big body rolls into mine. He makes a sort of hhhmmmpf sound against my neck, and his warm breath tickles the fine hair at my nape.

  I turn slowly and smile as sleepy, early-morning Konstantin looks at me. His eyes are softer than usual, without that killer focus he nearly always has going on.

  “Morning,” he mumbles.

  “Morning,” I say back.

  He brushes his nose over my neck, ear, and cheek and inhales. “You even smell like sunshine, all coconut and citrus.”

  I giggle. “It’s just my shampoo.”

  “I like it.”

  He twists a lock of my hair in one of his fingers. “I like your hair,” he says as he smells it, like the weirdo he is.

  “Are you … smelling my hair?”

  He smiles, all lazy and relaxed. “Yep.”

  I decide there and then that early morning Konstantin is one of my favorite things.

  He rolls himself on top of me, looking down at me, and my heart stills.

  “No sex,” he says as if he’s telling himself, not me.

  “No sex,” I reply, second guessing myself, but knowing he’ll figure out what Denis did if we go there, and that will make him angry all over again.

  I look at him as he holds himself above me, his arms nothing but huge columns of power and muscle. He’s glorious, and I want to sink my teeth into a meaty bicep and lick his tan skin.

  He brushes his nose against mine in a surprisingly sweet gesture and smiles again. “I better get off you and make coffee, before I do something not allowed.”

  Allow him, allow him, my libido clamors, but then he brushes against my breast as he moves, and I wince.

  His eyes narrow like the hawk he is, never missing a damn thing.

  “What’s wrong?” he says.

  “My jaw,” I lie.

  “Try again.”

  “No, honestly, it’s my jaw.”

  He says nothing but gets off me and holds out his hand. I take it, and he pulls me from the bed. I think the conversation is over, but then he reaches up and gently cups my breast. He’s using hardly any pressure, but I gasp at the pain.

  “What the fuck?” He lifts my nightdress, and I grab his hand as it reaches mid-thigh.

  “No, what are you doing?”

  “Let me see, Cassie,” he growls.

  I’m wearing panties, and while I don’t really want him seeing my boobs, that isn’t the reason I’m stopping him. I’m stopping him because I’m worried what he’ll do when he sees Denis’ handywork.

  For a moment, we engage in a battle of wills, but like always with this man, I lose.

  I let go, and he pulls my nightdress up, past my panties, the kind I wouldn’t normally wear but are the only kind Derek bought for me, sexy and red.

  Up, up, up past my stomach until he raises just one side, exposing my left breast.

  I glance at him to see his gaze darken, his forehead furrow, and his brows dip low.

  Pure rage suffuses his face as he looks at my breast. “You need a doctor,” he says.

  I shake my head. “No, no doctor. Please.”

  I can’t bear it. More fuss, more hassle. I’m so tired of it all, and I don’t want a doctor poking and prodding me like I’m a piece of meat.

  “Denis?” he asks.

  I nod because there’s no point lying now.

  “He’s going to suffer much worse when I get ahold of him,” he says as if it’s a promise I want him to make.

  “Not for me,” I tell him. “I don’t want him hurt more for me.”

  “Despite this?” He nods toward my tender, bruised breast.

  “It’s already done, and I don’t see how him being hurt worse by you will take this away.”

  “It won’t, but it will be right.”

  “An eye for an eye, eh?” I say sadly. “My grandma says that just leaves the whole world blind.”

  He pulls my nightdress down, gentle and careful.

  Then he takes his phone from the nightstand and dials a number. “Derek, get a nurse, female, private, discreet, to come to the house this afternoon. Cost is no object, and in the meantime, can you bring an ice pack, some anti-inflammatories, and some breakfast to my room please? The breakfast is for Cassie; bring the things she likes. And coffee … no, sorry, peach tea. Iced.”

  He hangs up.

  “I’ve got shit I have to do; things are fucked. I need to get to work, but you stay here in my room today, okay? Eat the breakfast, take the meds, and use the ice pack. What do you like to watch?”

  I stare at him for a moment. “Sorry?”

  “Movies, what do you like?”

  “Horror,” I say with a shrug.

  He grins at me then. “You’re a dark horse; you know that, Cassie? On the surface, you’re good, wholesome, golden. But underneath? There are dark currents. I’d love to swim in them one day.”

  “You got all that from me liking horror?”

  “And from the fact you read depressing Russian literature and tragic tales and love them. And the fact you took part in a hacking project, despite in every other way being a goody-two-shoes. The flashes of temper you have when you’re not trying too hard to be good and kind. It’s not an insult,” he says with a wolfish smile. “It’s a fucking compliment. I like your dark side, Cassie. Maybe one day you’ll show me more of her.”

  Then he takes my face in his hand, the side that isn’t bruised, and gives me a swift, hard, panty-melting kiss before turning and putting the TV on.

  “What kind of horror? Slasher?”

  I shake my head.

  He grins again. “Me either. It’s boring.”

  “Bit too like real life for you, I bet,” I deadpan, and he shoots me a surprised glance, one brow raised.

  I laugh, and he does too, showing those gorgeous dimples. Softness in a hard face, like his eyelashes.

  “Ghost stories? Psychological?”

  “All of it, except torture porn,” I say.

  He flicks through some titles and spools up a Stephen King adaptation.

  “The master,” I say.

  “The king,” he agrees.

  “Nah, you’re the king; he’s the master,” I joke.

  I look at him, and he at me, and something passes between us.

  “Maybe I’m the master,” he says, and my knees go weak.

  I know what he means.


  I don’t know what this is. He kissed me, and we’re getting on. I want him. He wants me. We have a strange dynamic, one I’ve never encountered with anyone else, but it works. But we’re not dating. He’s not my master. Or my boyfriend, lover, or any of those things. I’m his captive to all intents and purposes.

  I flush and look away, and he lets me have my privacy, busying himself gathering some things and then going into the bathroom. Loud heavy rock blares out, and I smile. His taste in music is awful. He comes out about twenty minutes later, dressed in the clothes he took in with him, and gives me another panty-melting kiss, and then he’s gone. Off to plot his war and his troops like the king he is. Maybe, though, he is the master too? My master. Do I want a master? I don’t know. Not formally. I don’t want to be his slave, and I also don’t want to be his prisoner.

  I wouldn’t mind him bossing me about a bit. Caring for me in that domineering way of his. Deep down though, I know what I want, and it scares me.

  I want him to love me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Konstantin

  Christ, I want her. It’s a constant drumbeat in my head and my cock. Pure, unadulterated want. It’s like being a fucking diabetic in a candy shop being surrounded by Cassie all day and trying to keep it in my pants. Pure, unadulterated torture.

  I should go find someone to fuck and take the edge off, but if they’re not dirty blonde, with red streaks, freckles, and green eyes, I won’t be interested. The whole thing is a fucking nightmare on top of the utter shitshow that my life has become in just a few months.

  Everything was planned out. Get rich, or richer. Consolidate my power, move Vasily into action more on the illegal side of things, and … well; I hadn’t thought beyond that. Michael was going to inherit everything, and he’d get married and have kids. While they might not be my blood, they’d be my grandkids, and one day, I’d be an old, wealthy man, surrounded by grandkids and finally, fucking finally, I might be happy.

  Or, at least, not dead inside.

  Speaking of Michael, why the fuck is he spending sleepovers at the Bianchi house? It seems a bit odd to me that he’s staying there with the whole familia, rather than simply waiting until he’s married, and he and his wife, as she’ll be then, can be together in their own place. I think about what a mess it’s been at home for him, and I feel bad. I told him to learn about basic biology and then went and made the same fucking mistake myself, didn’t I? Except, it seems I didn’t. Denis did, the dumb fuck.

  Thank fuck, I always gloved up with that bitch. Seems like Denis was too stupid to take that precaution and believed her when she said she was on the pill.

  I hit the bottom of the stairs and take my phone out of my pocket. I dial Michael, and he answers on the third ring.

  “Yes, Daddy,” he says. It’s his new thing, taking the fucking piss out of the fact I’m in the same boat he is.

  “Knock it off and listen to me,” I grouse.

  “Something wrong?” His tone turns serious immediately.

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “What’s going on, Konstantin?”

  “I don’t quite know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Baby isn’t mine, and Denis has betrayed me. He’s stolen from us, and I’m not sure how safe things are. Now, I know who the Bianchi family are and what they do, so I’m thinking they’re highly security minded?”

  He laughs. “Dad, it’s safer than at yours. We’re talking five or six armed men, Dobermans, spiked and electric fencing. Her father is a paranoid man.”

  “In this instance, that’s good.”

  Me and the father of the bride are going to need a long sit-down talk in the next day or so, one I’m not looking forward to. We are going to end up embroiled—I just know it, and it will start with me having to ask him to keep my son safe. The Bianchi family, fucking mobsters of the lowest rent kind for years, until this Bianchi took the helm about thirty years ago now. He raised their game and turned them into the kind of mobsters no one messes with. He’s old, sixties, but his wife is in her forties, and Lucia is their kid together. There’s a half-brother, to the first wife, living out in Italy, building his own empire out there, on the Amalfi coast, and I hear he’s a hard, cold son of a bitch. He’s close to Bianchi senior, and has had lots of financial help to set up his operations out there. They say he’s a genius at the markets and with numbers; they call him the Amalfi Banker, which makes no sense as he doesn’t live in Amalfi and isn’t actually a banker.

  Then again, they call me King K, and I’m not an actual king. My son is going to be in safe hands marrying into their family. It’s just not what I wanted for him.

  “Can you stay there for a couple nights?” I ask.

  “Sure, but don’t you need me there if things are unravelling?”

  “No, Michael. I never wanted you to be part of this life. Now, you’re marrying into it, but you don’t need to be tied into it twice.”

  There’s a long beat of silence, then he says something that makes my heart ache. “You do understand that I’m tied into it with you anyway, right, Konstantin? You’re my father. I love you.”

  “I love you too, son,” I say, the words hard to get out but important. I don’t tell him enough. I struggle to say those words to anyone. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’ve barely heard them myself.

  Maybe because nearly everyone in my life, except for Yulia and my sister, betrayed me. Even my mother to a degree, by being too weak to stand up to father, and for making me step up and become the head of the house when I was barely into my teen years.

  “God, Dad, you sound like you’re choking on glass.” Michael laughs, and I smile. “You need to get with modern times. Men showing their feelings is the new in thing.”

  “Yes, well, I’ll work on it.”

  “Practice with Cassie,” he says and then hangs up before I can reply.

  What the hell? Even Michael’s noticed the hard-on I’ve got for the girl.

  “Vasily?” I shout.

  “Yeah.” The reply comes from the study, so I head that way.

  I find Vasily pouring over his laptop. He has access to the accounts, all of them except my personal ones.

  “He’s taken nothing from the business accounts. Only robbed your personal account. This is on her, you know?”

  “Liza? I know.”

  “Fucking cunt. I think she’s jealous. She can see—anyone with eyes can see—you’re crazy about that little blonde thing, and Liza doesn’t like it.”

  “I’m not crazy about anyone. It’s complicated.”

  “No, it’s not.” He sighs and shakes his head. “You want her, she wants you, but for you, there’s emotion there, and you’re not used to that, and it’s freaking you out and stopping you from making a move. You could have found someone else to hack Popov. You could have trusted Damen.”

  “We don’t know the Greeks well enough—”

  “Boss, you know I totally respect the shit out of you. There’s no one I respect more.” Vasily has interrupted me, which normally would be a huge no-no, but right now, I’m fucking up left, right, and center, so maybe I ought to listen to him.

  “But…”

  “But you hiring her to hack Popov, that wasn’t purely business, K. It fucking wasn’t. You can tell yourself it was until you’re blue in the face, as the British say, but it was more than business. You went with your gut, and I think you went with your gut because you wanted to keep her close to you somehow.”

  He’s right. I know he’s right, and I have no answer. I’ve screwed up. I don’t mix business with pleasure, and now I’ve gone and mixed business with something much deadlier. Feelings.

  “Fuck,” I say and sit heavily in a chair.

  “I don’t get why you don’t just make her your girlfriend or something?” He shrugs.

  “Unless it has escaped your notice, she’s here against her will,” I say.

  “If you don’t think you can take that girl home right now, and
tell her you’ll pick her up tomorrow and take her for a drink, and she’ll be waiting for you eager as fuck, then you’re the one not noticing.”

  He reaches into his pocket and takes out a cigarette. It’s the only room in the house I allow smoking. Mostly, it’s cigars, but Vasily still smokes one or two cigarettes a day; sometimes more if he’s stressed.

  He lights it, sucks in the smoke as if it is life itself, and blows out on a relieved sigh.

  “She’s so far gone for you it’s not even funny.” He shakes his head. “She’s in love with you, K.”

  I bark out a shocked laugh. “No, she’s fucking not.”

  “Yeah, she is. She might not even know it herself, but I’ve been watching her, and I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I didn’t want her here at first, still don’t, but then my reasons were that I didn’t trust her. Now? Now, I know that girl isn’t going to betray you, not unless she’s forced the way Denis did, because she’s fucking in love with you. Which is a whole other issue and reason I don’t want her here. She’s gonna complicate everything, but she’s into you.”

  She’s in love with me?

  It makes no sense. She doesn’t even like me.

  “I did some digging,” he says. “Can I share without you killing me?”

  “Yes,” I grit out.

  Fuck, I need a drink. I head to the cabinet and pour a shot of vodka. I hold the bottle of Grey Goose up to Vasily who shakes his head.

  “Bit early, K,” he says with a soft laugh.

  “Yes, it is, but I fucking need it.” I pour a large shot and take a swig. “So … talk.”

  “I looked into her, did some digging. Now, I’m no expert hacker like our friend, Damen, but I can dig around when I need to. That girl, she’s broken, man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s had a shitty, shitty life. Her father walked out when she was really little, and her mother.” He shakes his head and blows out smoke. “The mother was sick, mental and emotional health issues, really bad. Apparently, she lost custody of Cassie when Cassie was young, so she had to go stay with her grandparents. She got a lot of love from them, but she loved her mum. She loved her mum to pieces, but her mum just couldn’t cope. Kid went back and forth a fair bit at first, before staying with her grandparents permanently.”