by Bethany-Kris
THE DARKEST LIES TRILOGY
BOOK 1
BETHANY-KRIS
For all those Russian Guns fans ... you’ve waited long enough. XO
CONTENTS
THE AGREEMENT
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS
Copyright
PROLOGUE
“It started with a bit of cocaine.”
A dark chuckle sounded from Demyan Avdonin’s left before his friend—one of his oldest—replied only, “Don’t all the best stories?”
Side by side in matching leather bucket chairs that faced a familiar landscape, in one of the best parts of New York City, the two men shared a laugh that Demyan hadn’t realized he needed. He wasn’t the type to spill his family’s secrets—or their problems.
His adult son was certainly one of those.
“If only it stayed that way, though,” Demyan added after a second.
Maxim hummed under his breath. “This is a life of temptation, and we’re men made for it, Demyan.”
Maybe so.
Sighing, he told Maxim, “I don't think I ever taught him how to tell himself no.”
He didn’t need his friend to say what he already knew—that was a lesson no man in their life could afford to miss. Except, apparently, if it was Demyan’s son.
Roman Avdonin had a knack for pushing every limit—testing each line drawn for him. It didn't matter the man or the establishment making the rule, he swore his son was born to break them.
Men, that was.
Better men than him, anyway.
And rules.
Couldn’t forget those.
Demyan didn’t have a proper excuse as to why he felt the need to discuss his personal issues with Maxim during the man’s very short visit to the city, but here he was—who the fuck else is listening?
At his left, Maxim jerked a hand his way, the cigar between the man’s fingertips losing an ash on the way. It fell to the shiny floor of a townhouse Demyan used for occasions just like this. A last-minute meet up with an old friend in the business—the mafia. It wasn’t often that the bosses of rival bratvas became friends, even if their business rarely overlapped.
The two were an exception to the rule—mutual respect, a bit of distance between their territories, and easy conversation helped the friendship along. He didn’t particularly like all the man’s business, but he’d also never dropped it on Demyan’s doorstep, either. Maxim never asked questions that probed too deep unless Demyan offered—especially about his family—and he handed back the same courtesy.
Claire, his wife, liked to say Demyan didn’t have enough friends, and he should make the effort to keep the ones he did.
Or at least the ones he liked.
Maxim was that friend—so, yes. He dropped everything for a fifteen-minute conversation in a mostly empty townhouse in a room full of cigar smoke because his counterpart never went anywhere without one at his lips.
Demyan didn’t really mind.
“He’s found himself some trouble, then, no?” Maxim asked.
Demyan kept his gaze on the bay windows overlooking the Hudson, and the view across the river. Boats skipped fast and slow over the water, and for a moment, he said nothing as he watched them go.
What was there to say?
He’s a grown man.
Roman can make his choices.
My son might get himself killed.
All of those were true, and more. They were also very telling about how Demyan felt, and he wasn’t keen on going there. No man in his position did, considering the risk.
“Nothing that he hasn’t managed to find his way out of,” Demyan eventually muttered. “So far.”
“I could help with that.”
The offer made Demyan still in his chair. He didn’t glance his friend’s way, but as his mind mulled over the offer—and implications—he already knew his answer. He didn’t really need to think about it.
His love was loyalty.
It would always be his weakness.
“I’m not interested in setting up my son to get him under control, old friend,” Demyan murmured, reaching for the glass of vodka on the table between them.”
“Well, that’s the best part,” Maxim replied, striking a bemused grin. “Nobody said you had to do a fucking thing.”
Demyan sipped his drink, and said nothing—he didn’t agree, or otherwise.
Well, he thought, so be it.
ONE
Roman Avdonin had never learned when enough was enough, and he blamed it on the fact that no one thought to step in and teach him. That was undoubtedly why his father’s men didn’t bat an eye at the Bratva Prince of Brighton Beach stepping outside the Pakhan’s three-story colonial estate to nab a baggie of ivory powder from his best friend.
Marky Thompson—the right-hand man to Roman’s car theft and chop shop scheme—held his drug of choice out the driver’s window of his pearl black Ferrari without concern for who watched. All it took was one look at Marky’s shifting gaze for him to know the man’s true feelings on being called in to deliver Roman’s drugs on a day like today.
“I know how you don’t like being told what to do...” Marky started, tilting his head out of the window a little more.
“Then don’t.”
Roman snatched the baggie, encompassing it in his palm and slipping it into the pocket of his grey jeans. He didn’t look over his shoulder or at the bulls walking around the estate. The bratva enforcers had their eye on everything. They saw everything. It wasn’t like he was trying to hide it. They knew who he was. Everyone knew who the fuck he was. Maybe a man different from Roman, would have felt a sense of responsibility given the circumstances of the day. Maybe even some shame.
Not Roman.
He didn’t give a single flying fuck, and he was pretty sure his family didn’t, either.
“Well, I’m just trying to make a suggestion, man,” Marky continued.
Roman grinned—it took the edge of the irritation already starting to simmer below the surface of his constantly short fuse—but only because he knew what was coming. This was one of the things he hated most about this place. About his world—this life. Everyone was so damn predictable. He waited a few beats, knowing Marky would continue speaking, but he wasn’t about to jump in and encourage his friend to go ahead and get told to fuck off faster than the guy wanted to.
His prerogative, and all.
“Maybe today is not the day to piss off your papa.”
Right.
Was there ever a day for that?
Shit, Roman had been making that a daily occurrence since his ass hit puberty. Here he was, a grown ass man, and not much changed. He’d stopped worrying how Demyan Avdonin would feel when it became apparent that the disappointment of others didn’t do very much to or for him except cause him unneeded shame.
Giving Marky a shrug, Roman said, “Listen, everyone around here is acting like the world is going to crash down on us just because some middle-aged men from Chicago are showing up in town.”
Marky drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He looked past Roman’s shoulder to the bul
ls leaning against the estate’s gates. “They are more than just some middle-aged men. Even you know better than that, Prince.”
Nice, Roman thought. The emphasis on the prince—as if he needed a reminder about the men he came from when he stood where he did—felt like a joke that didn’t quite land.
“Roll your eyes and you might just start sounding like a fifteen-year-old girl.”
Marky snickered at that, and Roman finally looked back over his shoulder at the men still lingering too near for his tastes. Two of them, the ones standing closest to the gate, looked quickly away when his stare met theirs, and Roman got the feeling that they were talking about him.
Why wouldn’t they?
He had a pretty good idea of what they thought of him. The only son of a formidable, long-standing Bratva Pakhan. A brat from the moment he was born. Destined to have more control and power in their chosen life than them from the second he was conceived. The Prince of Brighton Beach. Little Odessa’s Devil.
He didn’t have to work half as hard as them to get where he was, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t put in the blood, sweat, and tears to still do it. They knew it, too, and he was sure that his privilege alongside the reputation he’d earned—his violence was swift and severe when barely provoked—aided in the silent understanding he had with these men.
They shouldn’t be saying shit about him, not unless they wanted to die for it, too.
“Where is he?” Marky’s question snapped him out of his thoughts, and brought him back to the conversation.
“Who?”
“Who else?”
“Probably still in bed with my mother,” Roman muttered, adding lower, “Whispering sweet nothings, or whatever the fuck they do.”
By all appearances, though, his mother enjoyed that from her husband. Loyal to a fault and content in her place as the boss’s wife, why would she complain that she had him eating out of the palm of her hand?
“Why do you shit on your father for being in love with his woman?” Marky asked.
“Being in love—do you even fucking hear yourself?”
Roman laughed. It rose up his throat like a snarl. Sometimes, he didn’t even remember why he was still best friends with Marky—the guy could be dense as fuck when he didn’t feel like putting his brain to good use.
“He’s the only bratva man we know who has one woman. No girls in the city when he wants. Not even a woman on the side. What else would you call that?”
“You’re forgetting about my grandfather,” Roman said dryly.
There were a million other things he would rather do instead of having this conversation, but Marky was determined to see it through. The fucking idiot.
“So it clearly runs in the family.”
Marky got that ridiculous twinkle in his eye, one that made Roman want to punch his friend in the throat. They both knew the entire conversation was a joke. Roman with one woman—tied to her for life? Answering her every beck and call like his father did with his mother, his grandfather with his grandmother? Waking up to see the same face over and over again? It made him laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted one thing of anything.
Everything tasted better in large quantities.
Most of all: pussy.
“And just like everything else, I’m going to disappoint my father in that regard, too,” Roman replied with a chuckle while Marky shook his head. “Another family tradition gone straight to hell.”
“One of these days you’re going to wish you listened to me.”
He doubted that.
Highly.
“And one of these days you’re going to wish you didn’t waste my time.”
Marky sighed like he had something more to say, but Roman didn’t want to stand around to listen. It was only because he counted Marky as a friend that he gave the man a pass more often than anyone else—today was one of those days.
“Just get the fuck outta here,” he commanded light-heartedly.
After all, friends did not mean equal. Marky knew it just as well as he did, and while they did well to sometimes pretend like the two of them were squared up in the life they lived, that just wasn’t the case.
Behind him, he heard Marky’s Ferrari roar to life. He wasn’t the type to wave, so he didn’t. He just kept walking. When he passed by one of the bulls, he reached over and drummed his fingers on the man’s shiny bald spot. The man instinctually ducked away but then caught himself and stood still.
Who did he think he was?
Flinching at the Prince.
It was comical.
Roman had grown up around these men. All his life, he treated them exactly the way he wanted to, nobody told him he couldn’t, and he wasn’t about to change that now.
Inside the house, the soles of his shoes squeaked on the polished marble floors. His mother was particular about a lot of things. Whose shoes went where, who could be in the kitchen when she cooked ... cleaning.
She liked the house maintained just-so—no fingerprints on any glass, no dust dancing in streams of sunlight, and certainly no dirty shoes on her floor. She dared to tell him that would change only when she was given grandchildren to spoil.
Another thing he doubted.
She just wanted grandbabies.
He glanced at the clock on the wall in the grand foyer, taking note of the time. Hanging down along the massive, winding staircase, the crystal chandelier swung gently like someone had just been dusting it. One of the maids probably did while he was outside, but the staff in the mansion were as smart as the men who watched it outside. They stayed out of the Avdonin family’s way.
Especially his.
Demyan was late to start his day. Still in bed, no doubt. Roman took the spiral stairs up to the second floor with silent steps, two a stride. His father was free to take as much time as he wanted. It allowed him a chance to put the baggie to good use without yet another lecture about his private activities.
In his childhood bedroom, he shut and locked the door. Not that anyone would enter without knocking or asking his permission. Not much had changed about the space that he had officially moved out of ten years ago, shortly after he turned seventeen.
There was a glass-topped night table on the left side of the four-poster, king-size bed, and he was going to put that to good use, too. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he emptied the baggie on the table, and then spent a few seconds looking for the credit card he wanted from his wallet.
What would this day look like if he didn’t do what he was about to?
He really didn’t care to find out.
• • •
Everyone looked twitchy, Roman thought, with their eyes darting everywhere.
On high alert.
Two bulls in the front, while his father sat in the row behind him. He watched familiar streets pass by the dark-tinted windows of their Mercedes SUV. The muscle behind the wheel, and the one in the front passenger seat kept their eyes focused outside to monitor every car and passerby to find the danger they were sure was there.
Total bullshit.
Roman could have laughed at their paranoia, but someone wouldn’t appreciate that. Except his lack of concern as they drove through the city wasn’t escaping Demyan’s notice while the man chatted on the phone with his own father.
Why the fucking eggshells?
Cocaine certainly had a way of making Roman think he was bulletproof, but he still figured they were making a bigger thing out of this whole day than it needed to be. Had his father ever been chill in his life? Demyan’s voice droned on in the background of Roman’s thoughts, the mention of his grandfather’s name, Anton, almost making him tune into the private conversation.
If there was anyone in the world Roman couldn’t say no to—one person whose word might count when spoken—it was his grandfather. But even the prospect of joining the conversation wasn’t enough to drag him from his annoyance at the day.
What was the big deal?
Well, he knew.
&
nbsp; Three bratvas—New York, Jersey, and Chicago—coming together to discuss business was enough to put an entire city on edge given the right circumstances. Usually bloody ones. This wasn’t supposed to be like that, though. Their business had managed to exist independent of each other for decades other than the mutual work between the Avdonin Bratva in New York, and the Vasin organization in Jersey—proximity sometimes worked to their benefit. A marriage between the two families helped that shit out, as well.
Chicago wasn’t quite the same. They minded their own business, and rarely ever stepped on the toes of anyone outside of Illinois. However, for the first time in more years than he could remember, the Yazovs wanted to meet with them.
New York, specifically. Then they had to go and ask for the Vasin Bratva to get in on the chat, too. That was when Roman’s father started to get serious about how he wanted to ensure safety while their visitors were in town—especially since the Yazov organization made it clear they weren’t discussing anything unless it was face to face.
Nothing good came from demands.
Men like them were also careful by nature.
So to speak.
The sound of his father calling his name—short and low—snapped Roman out of his thoughts. The phone call with his grandfather had come to an end it seemed.
“You could stop ...” Demyan trailed off, glancing him over before adding, “Well, the twitchiness. Add that to the way your pupils look, and it’s a dead giveaway.”
Roman dragged the back of his hand over his upper lip. How did his father figure it out? He suddenly noticed the way he was furiously tapping the floor with his feet; his fingers had been drumming a constant beat to the leather-wrapped armrest. Cocaine tingled with an electric pulse through his veins. He could feel it at the back of his head—a throbbing burst of heat. That, and an inexplicable urge to grab someone and thrash them against the floor of the vehicle until they couldn’t breathe, and he finally could.
He didn’t reply to his father, but apparently, he didn’t have to.
“Don’t look so surprised, son, you left the baggie sitting on top of the damn trash can. In the kitchen.”