by SR Jones
The Soldier
Bratva Blood Prequel
SR Jones
Copyright ©2020 The Soldier, by SR Jones
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or used without the written permission of the publisher.
All events depicted are fictional, and any resemblance to places and persons is coincidental.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Cassie
Chapter Six
Epilogue
This book is for Jessica Fraser.
Thank you for all the help. For being the best person to bounce ideas off, the best beta and proofreader, and all-round amazeballs lady!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
Thanks go to my amazing editor, Silla Webb, and beta’s Jessica Fraser, and Ana Rita Clemente.
Big, big thanks to Silla for organizing me! Always!
Also thanks to the Addicted to Alphas girls! And big thanks in particular to:
Jessica Fraser, Kathi Soniat, Patricia-I Severson, Stephanie Ditmore, and Ana Rita Clemente. You girls are the best! I know I will have forgotten someone, so huge apologies to anyone I missed out.
Thanks to Obeithion Design for the absolutely gorgeous cover!
"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see their near and dear bathed in tears, to ride their horses and sleep on the bellies of their wives and daughters."
Genghis Khan.
Prologue
I was born to fight. It is in my DNA, a natural born soldier.
I wasn’t born a monster.
Who is?
Outside of fairy tales and the reassuring stories we tell ourselves, most monsters are made … by us. By society.
The same could be said of me.
I was born a boy. An ordinary boy, but maybe one with a hidden propensity for violence.
For mayhem.
For ruthlessness.
That little boy grew, as most do, unless tragedy strikes, into a man. Once a man, the state took my violence and honed it, trained it, and I became a solider. One might say they tamed me in some ways, tamed my anger and channeled it. Violence tamed, corralled, is a powerful weapon.
The wars I fought were horrifying and bloody, and still, after all I saw and did in war, I did not become a monster.
No, the monster came later.
Unlike the monsters in our collective stories and fairy tales, I didn’t lose control of myself and change shape, a terrible warning to all and sundry to stay away.
No, my demons hide on the inside.
My outside? Wealthy. Powerful. Successful.
Names matter. Words matter. Labels matter.
Those who don’t know me label me as a soldier, warrior, hero and later, businessman. Venture capitalist. Philanthropist.
Those who know me better might use different terms. Fighter. Oligarch. Ruthless. Shark. I like that one a lot. “You’re a shark,” my rival had said as I tore his empire down and sold off the bits I didn’t want. Once a soldier, always a soldier. For what is war if not organized theft? And what is business if not war?
All these labels fit. A great deal of my business is legit; a good portion … is not. No one cares. Money is legitimacy in this fucked up world. And I wear my wealth like a suit of armor, a disguise, and one that opens so many doors.
I have residences in Moscow, London, Paris, and New York. Businessmen come to me for advice, and I once got an invite to a meeting of world leaders, which I turned down rudely enough to not get anymore. I don’t need to hear what the latest bullshit policy is on sustainable capitalism. Capitalism, too, is war.
And like any good soldier, I enjoy the spoils of battle. Supermodels party with me on the yachts I holiday on, whilst politician lurk in corners and let me line their pockets for influence in the affairs of whole nations. I own the sort of toys most men can only dream of, and I could drown myself in beautiful women every night and never run short of offers. I drink the best alcohol, smoke the best cigars, and have more gold in the vaults than a small nation.
Yet through it all, through all I do, beats one thing—my overwhelming need for revenge. Revenge on the people who breathed the monster within to life.
In this fairy tale I am not the tragic beast yearning for love to make me a man again, but I’m not the handsome prince either.
I am the motherfucking king of my fiefdom. On the one hand, a legitimate businessman, but on the other, a Bratva Pakhan, and in the Bratva, the Pakhan is king.
Yet my kingdom is too small, and kings, as soldiers, love nothing more than the spoils of war and the conquering of new lands.
It suits me that conquering new lands will hasten my revenge.
It won’t be easy. It might get bloody. But the best wars always are.
The best revenge too.
This king is on the march, this soldier is armed, and in this coming war his enemies will tremble before him.
Chapter One
The boy
Russia in the 1990s.
“Konstantin, come and eat your stew.”
Mother calls me, and I run to the door of our home.
It is simple, a country home in a vast rural landscape a hundred and thirty miles from Moscow, a fact which I learned in school last week.
I reach the wooden door, with its peeling paint, and push it open.
“Sit, sit,” Mother says, fussing over me as I enter the kitchen. I do as she says and smile at Father as I take my seat.
My grandmother is already eating, slurping away at the stew, and I look away from her as a piece of beetroot dribbles down her face. I know it’s wrong because she’s elderly and can’t help it, but sometimes she makes me feel sick with the way she slurps and dribbles.
She’s very old, only has one eye, and with her long white hair, sometimes us children used to imagine she was a witch.
Grandma would play along and pretend to cast spells on us. Now she doesn’t. Now she mostly sits and hums and stares at nothing. I think she’s lost her mind, or most of it.
Some weeks we struggle to feed ourselves. Not this week, though, because Father shot a deer.
Mother serves me some warm bread to go with the soup as it is thin and watery. Thanks to father though, tonight we will eat venison stew.
Her rounded belly bumps my shoulder as she leans over me. I have a brother or sister in there. I don’t know how I feel about it. Neither does Father. I know because I heard him talking about it the other night when he’d had too much vodka. He was talking to his friend from the village, Yanis. Father said that with the collapse of communism things were meant to get better, but instead, no one could eat. The government didn’t care, and instead of being like America, we were more like Germany after the war. He was angry, bitter. Said we’d been defeated without a shot being fired.
Soon, he said, there’ll be another mouth to feed.
I eat my soup and try not to worry. Sometimes I worry a lot. About Mother mostly. Father can be horrible to her. He shouts at her, talks to her like she’s stupid, and sometimes, he even hits her. I’m getting bigger every month now, and one day I will hit him right back.
After lunch, I ask if I can go out again. Mother says yes, and Father ignores me. I think he’d be happy if I didn’t come back, then there’d only be the new baby to feed when it comes.
Thankful to be out of the stifling atmosphere in our house, I breathe in the spring air. It’s still cold enough to hurt your lungs a little during the first few b
reaths, but not cold enough to freeze your piss like in January.
Picking up a stick, I head up the hill to meet my friends. We’re playing soldiers in the woods, and this stick will be my gun.
At thirteen, Father says I should be done with childish things like this, but life is shit here, and there’s not money for much else. Maybe one of my friends will have smuggled some vodka and we can drink too, warm ourselves up.
As I cross the field, I see a lonely figure, a girl in a long wool skirt, and a coat far too big for her. Yulia. She’s the best friend I have, but today, I can’t spend time with her. She used to play with us, but in the last year or two some of the boys started to get too handsy with her, and it scares her. To be honest, it scares me. I don’t want anyone to hurt her. Yulia and me … we get on. We like the same books, the same films. We both love Silence of the Lambs and watch it repeatedly on a video machine her father got when he did some work for some rich guy, freaking ourselves out and scaring one another.
In many ways, she’s the person I’m closest to in this world, but today, I need to get rid of some of the aggression boiling inside me. Not watch a movie and talk about my dreams; dreams I know will never come true. I wave at Yulia, but then turn away and head to the trees.
I reach the edge of the woods and listen. Voices drift to me from my right, and I head in that direction. Reaching the group of boys after a few minutes, my stomach sinks when I see Igor there. He’s fifteen and huge, and he’s a bully. Mostly, he ignores me, but he picks on my best friend, Maxim.
Maxim is small, skinny, and wears thick glasses. He’s also scary smart. Maxim will be a great scientist one day, I predict. Unlike me. I fuck up in class all the time. Mostly, I mess up because I’m bored. I should focus but as Father said to Yanis last night, there are no jobs, so what’s the point?
Igor takes the lead, of course, and divides us into two teams. Reds and whites. We play this a lot based on the history classes we have in school. I’m on the red team with Maxim. We’re the communists, and the white team is our enemies.
“We will fight them to the death,” Maxim whispers seriously in my ear, making me grin.
Igor is on the white team, and he tells us in this battle, the reds are on the run having suffered a heavy defeat. I sigh. He’s so predictable. Such a fragile ego always has to be in the lead, or on the winning side, even in a game.
“You have ten minutes to go hide, so make it good,” Igor tells us. “Then we will search you out, and the battle will commence.”
We head off through the woods, five boys, all carrying sticks.
“It’s not much of a war game, if we’re to spend half of it hiding,” Maxim says.
“Who cares; look what I have.” Alek opens his thick jacket to show us one of those flask shaped bottles of vodka poking out of the inside pocket. Then he opens the other side, and I see a pack of cigarettes.
“Yes,” I say. “This is going to be a good game.”
We laugh and keep going, until we reach the road.
“Let’s cross to the other side and hide down by the river. There’s big stones down there. We can sit and have a drink and smoke.”
We nod at Alek’s suggestion, but as we’re lingering on the edge of the tree line, the rumble of engines disturbs the peace. Three sleek black cars come slowly around the bend, and as they near us, they stop.
Something, some instinct, has us slinking back into the trees, keeping quiet as we watch.
The front car’s back door opens and a big man, dressed in a dark blue suit, steps out. His face is serious, hard, but when he scratches his short beard, I see a big steel and gold watch on his wrist.
The front door opens, and a man in a black suit, with a cap too, steps out. He must be a paid driver, I think.
“Moneybags,” Maxim says under his breath.
A stunning woman clambers out of the back of the car. She’s like the women I jerk off to in Mother’s catalogue, only better.
Her legs are long, and she’s wearing a leather mini skirt and a strappy top, with a huge fur coat covering her.
“Take the fucking coat off. You get piss on this, and you’re dead,” the man growls.
“I wouldn’t get piss on it if we weren’t stopping in the middle of nowhere for me to go, would I?” The woman tosses her hair, and the man grabs her shiny locks, wraps them around his fist, and pulls her in to him.
“Don’t answer me back, and take the fucking coat off.”
She narrows her eyes, but does as he says, shrugging the coat off and leaving herself in only her strappy top and mini skirt. Her breasts are large and pushed up in the top, showing a lot of cleavage.
“Fuck, I’ve never seen a woman like her around here.” Maxim is almost panting.
I haven’t either. Most of the women around here are older and downtrodden. They don’t wear high heels, and they don’t wear gold necklaces and bracelets that look like they’d feed a family for a year.
“Get back in the car, and don’t look.” The woman stomps off toward the woods, toward us.
“Go into the woods, and we won’t be able to see,” the man says with a sneer, and then he’s climbing back in his car.
She totters unsteadily on her heels into the trees, and we shrink back, keeping quiet. Who knows who they are? Who is this man? Maybe he’ll kill us if he thinks we’ve seen him here? He might be a gangster, or worse—a corrupt government official.
As we creep back, and she stomps forward, we stop when she does. With a sigh, she pulls her dress up and her panties down.
I know I should look away. I don’t, though. I see the white flesh of her buttocks as she squats, and then I see her pussy as she lets out a stream of pee with a sigh.
My cock is so hard I think I might come in my pants, and trust me, it won’t be the first time. These days, since I turned thirteen, I seem to come all the time.
“Oh my God.” Maxim breathes next to me.
She stands and pulls her panties into place, grumbling under her breath about the indignity of having to pee in the woods, when Alek stumbles and falls to the side with a cry.
I freeze, the woman freezes, and then she whips around and stares right at where we’re hiding, in a shallow ditch not twenty feet from her.
“Come out of there, right now,” she demands.
I don’t move, but Maxim, the fucking idiot, stands and puts his hands in the air as if she’s holding a gun or something. The stupid fucker. He might have school smarts, but he has no common sense.
“You filthy little perv. Do you get off on hiding in the woods watching women go to the toilet?” she demands.
“No, you’re the first lady who’s ever peed in these woods, so it would be a bad plan.” Maxim smiles at her, and she considers him for a moment before her face twitches into a smile.
“I suppose it would,” she says. “I won’t tell my husband you saw me take a pee; he might kill you.”
I suck in a breath, but I don’t move. If Maxim is getting himself killed here today, then he’s alone in that. I’m not coming out.
“He’s a jealous man,” she says. “He bought me with all the money he made after the crash, and now he treats me like any other object.” She takes a cigarette packet out of the pocket of her skirt, and lights one with a gold flip up lighter. “This new world is dog eat dog.”
She inhales and blows the smoke right in Maxim’s face. “Listen to me, boy.” She leans in, and as I really look at her, I see she isn’t beautiful; not really. Underneath her hair and makeup, she’s hard. “This new world isn’t easy, and it’s divided into winners and losers. Don’t be a loser because losers get nothing. Remember that. To the winner goes the spoils, or something like that. I’m a spoil, and I went to the winner.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.
“Do well, make money, and leave this country. Nothing good is coming; you’ll see.”
She takes another deep inhale before handing the cigarette to Maxim. Shen winks, leans into Maxim, and kisses him right on the
cheek before stomping back through the woods toward the road.
None of us move or make a sound until we hear the cars engines gunning as they drive off.
Maxim holds the cigarette, covered with her lipstick mark, and we stare at it.
To the winner goes the spoils. Those words burn themselves into my brain. Winners and losers, it seems that’s what this brave new world is made of.
“What the fuck?” Igor bursts through the woods before the rest of us have managed to stand. “You only got this far?”
He looks at Maxim and stops. “What’s that on your cheek? Lipstick? What the hell?”
“He’s just been kissed by a movie star,” Alek says.
“Don’t be a stupid dick,” Igor says. “As if.”
“How do you explain the lipstick then?” I ask with a smirk.
This is the chance for Maxim to become a someone in our little community. “It’s true,” I say. “They stopped here, a car full of movie stars and rich businessmen, and one of the women came into the woods and took a piss. She gave Maxim a cigarette, and then she kissed him on the cheek and told him he was very handsome.”
I embellish the tale somewhat.
Igor’s piggy eyes grow round, and he stares at the perfect lipstick mark on Maxim’s cheek.
“I need to go home,” Maxim says, his eyes alight. “I’m going to draw her.”
Maxim’s talented at drawing. He uses pencils and sketches people and animals. They’re amazing, but he doesn’t show many people.
“Draw her without any clothes, and I’ll get a bottle of vodka for you,” Alek says.
Maxim pauses, then nods once. “Okay.”
He races off in the direction of his home.
“Fuck it, I can’t be bothered to play stupid war games. Shall we drink the vodka?” Alek flashes the bottle, and Igor grabs it from him, opening it and taking a swig.
“Yes, we’ll drink vodka, and tomorrow I want to see this alleged movie star for myself, when Maxim draws her.”
By the time I get home, the light is fading, and I sneak into the house hoping Father is still at work because if he smells vodka on me, I’ll get the belt.