by Maura Rose
BLAZING FOR THE BRATVA
A Russian Mafia Romance Novel
By
Maura Rose
TNA Publishing
Blazing for the Bratva © 2018 by Maura Rose
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design © Ran Designs
First Edition November 2018
Chapter One
Pavel waited patiently outside the door to the inner office. Ivan was finishing up ‘something with his wife’ and Pavel could very well guess what it was, and he wasn’t taking any chances after bursting in the last time.
He’d been the most embarrassed of the three. Ivan had just laughed and said that would finally teach him patience.
Kate popped her head out of the door. “You can come in now, Pavel, I promise we really were just talking about the accounts.”
“No offense, ma’am, but I will believe that when I see it,” Pavel replied, stepping in after her and closing the door behind him.
He knew this had to be important. Most people in the mob families—any mob families, be they Russian, Irish or Italian—would object to the wife of their head being present when they were given orders, but Ivan had made it clear that Kate was his equal. She had helped to run her family’s business before marrying Ivan, and she was an Irish firecracker in every sense.
Pavel couldn’t help but admire their partnership. Ivan was a difficult man at times, a stubborn one, and he’d struggled not to give into the temper he had inherited from his late father. But Kate was good for him. She knew how to get Ivan to listen and she was just as stubborn as he was, refusing to take any of his bullshit.
Honestly, it had made Pavel start to think a little more about the long-term himself. He’d had a few flings, but with the upheaval of the family and trying to gain more ground and respect with the Russian mafia in general, he hadn’t had much time for proper dating. And he was well aware what his reputation was with the women who ran in the same circles as his coworkers and friends—Pavel the puppy, Pavel the messenger, Pavel the soft.
Pavel was honestly proud of his job. He’d been Bogdan Sokolov’s driver and messenger boy, but Ivan was in charge now, not his old man, and Ivan trusted him. So what if he wasn’t one of the men at the front lines, conducting raids or one of the bodyguards? He was the second in command of the Sokolov family now. He had the power and the brains.
But it did mean that he wasn’t going to date anyone in the Sokolov family anytime soon. None of them were interested, and frankly, he wasn’t interested in any of them either. So although he was starting to wish for a relationship like Ivan and Kate had, he knew it wasn’t in his cards—at least not anytime soon.
Pavel snapped back to the present with a start. Whatever Ivan wanted to talk to him about, it had to be important if he was having Kate stay there with him. Kate was present for all of the most important meetings that Ivan had—if it was routine, run-of-the-mill stuff, then Ivan wouldn’t have bothered to have her there.
“What do you need?” he asked.
Ivan glanced over at Kate, then looked back at Pavel. “As you know, we’ve been struggling to build ourselves up after my father ran this family into the ground.”
Pavel nodded. Ivan had possessed a kind of loyalty to his father, the fierce loyalty that all Russians had, but he had come to acknowledge in the time since his death that his father had been the type of man who was simply too ruthless, too angry, to be a good leader.
“Alliances are necessary,” Ivan explained.
Pavel knew all of this already. It raised his suspicions that Ivan was bringing it all up again, that Ivan felt a need to reiterate it.
“We need to court the powerful Russian families, specifically,” Ivan went on. “Our alliance with the Irish has done us good, and we’re a lot stronger than we were, but getting in with those families will secure both our legacy and our safety.”
Pavel’s mind started racing. Could it be that Ivan was going to propose an exchange of men? It happened sometimes—a high-ranking man or two from one family would be swapped with men of equal importance from another family. Those men could serve their new boss for months or even years, sometimes permanently.
He hoped that wasn’t the case. He liked working for Ivan—but more importantly than liking Ivan as a boss, he liked Ivan as a friend. They’d grown up together. He didn’t want to be forced to abandon the one friend that he could count on completely.
“Normally,” Ivan said, his voice taking on that cautiously even tone that it did when he was about to suggest something he knew the other person wouldn’t like, “the head of the family would marry in order to secure an alliance, but I’m already with Kate. And the only man worth doing an exchange with would be you, and I can’t afford to lose you as my right hand.” Ivan looked Pavel right in the eyes before continuing on.
“But the family that I’ve been… courting, so to speak… the head has five daughters. As you can imagine, he’s eager to get them married to secure alliances and to get some sons—albeit sons-in-law—and perhaps grandsons.”
“Ah, the patriarchy,” Kate said sarcastically.
It was well known among the Sokolovs that Kate’s father had passed her over for heir in favor of her brothers, in part because of her gender, and Kate was actively working to get women better recognized as leaders among the families.
“He’s willing to marry off one of his daughters,” Ivan said. “And I can’t marry her, but you can.”
It took Pavel a moment to understand what he was hearing. Then he realized what Ivan meant, and his stomach twisted.
“You—you’re marrying me to the daughter of one of the Russian mob bosses.”
“Not just one of them,” Kate added. “To the youngest daughter of Ivan Mikhailov.”
Oh shit.
Pavel wasn’t just getting an arranged marriage.
He was getting an arranged marriage to the daughter of the most powerful damned man on the east coast.
Chapter Two
“Absolutely not,” Natalia said.
Her oldest sister, Irena, pursed her lips. Irena had raised all of them after their mother had died in childbirth with Natalia, and she tended to expect absolute obedience.
Which Natalia was not giving her on this matter.
“I am not getting married off like some piece of cattle,” Natalia protested.
“For heaven’s sake, Natasha, stop being so dramatic,” Irena snapped, using the diminutive form of her name almost condescendingly.
Dramatic? She was supposed to marry this random goon from another family, sight unseen, and she was dramatic for daring to object?
She’d known for years that her lot in life was to get married to secure an alliance. It was why Father had permitted her to go to art school—her profession didn’t matter so much as who put a ring on her finger in the end. It was the same with her sisters. Even Irena, trusted implicitly by their father, was expected to find an advantageous marriage to some other family’s heir.
But for the love of god, she’d thought she could at least get to meet a couple of prospects at a party or something first. What was this, medieval times?
“He’s no
t even an heir,” she went on. “He’s the lieutenant.”
“He’s the right hand man to an up-and-coming head,” Irena corrected. “And since the head of the family is currently childless, his lieutenant is currently his heir.”
“That’ll change the second his wife gets pregnant, and then where will I be?”
“Sometimes it’s better to stand behind the throne than to sit on it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re going to be the one sitting on it.”
Irena was engaged to the heir of the most powerful Japanese Yakuza in the country. Father had worked tirelessly for months to get an agreement on it, since there was still a lot of tension when it came to heritage and lineage, as much as nobody liked to talk about it. The Russians didn’t want a non-Russian in the family (or a least not a non-European), and the Japanese didn’t want a non-Japanese in their family (or at least not a non-Asian).
Those talks had lasted for hours, but now Irena was set to be possibly the most powerful woman in the mafia world once her wedding was over.
And Natalia was getting married to the second-in-command of a family nobody had even heard of.
“Who are these Sokolovs, anyway?”
Irena sighed, folding her arms. “They’ve been around for a while but were far too… base in their methods for our tastes. Or for anyone’s taste. But after the old man died, his son has stepped up and been making something of the family. We’ve been keeping our eye on them for the past year and they seem promising. Clever, but not too ambitious, wanting to make something of themselves, but not overstepping their bounds. Father has met with the head and tentatively likes him.”
“He likes him enough to marry me to his lieutenant.”
“By all accounts, the man is very pleasant. His nickname among the family is щенок, for goodness’ sake.”
‘щенок’ meant ‘puppy’ in Russian.
“Just because he doesn’t hit me doesn’t mean that it will be a pleasant marriage.”
“I’m just saying that you could do much worse.”
“I could also do much better!” Natalia stood up, her hands curling into fists. “I have a Masters in Fine Art, I was top of my class, I do ballet, I speak fluent Russian, I sat in on all of Father’s meetings the same as the rest of you. I would make an excellent wife, and I’m being treated like I’m second rate.”
“Grow up,” Irena snapped. “We’re daughters, not sons. As much as Father might love us, we will always be second rate, to him and to everyone else. It’s the way of the world, Natalia. At least our world is more honest about it.”
Natalia felt herself deflating. She hated it, but she also knew that Irena was right. No matter what she did, no matter how smart she was or how hard she worked, her father and everyone else in the Mikhailov family had made it clear that the women weren’t valued as well as the men.
She just hadn’t thought that she would be reminded of it so violently. It felt like a slap in the face.
“Do I even get to meet him before the wedding?” she asked dully. “Or is he going to see me for the first time by dramatically lifting my veil?”
Irena sighed, walking over and taking her sister’s hands. Irena was blonde and pale, like the rest of her sisters, taking after their mother in appearance. Only Natalia had her father’s dark, rich hair and fathomless eyes. She’d sometimes wondered if it made Father love her more or less, knowing she looked like him.
“I know this is hard,” Irena said quietly, her voice firm but not unkind. “I would have preferred you get a courting period, as I do with my husband and as your sisters get with theirs. But sometimes we just have to take what life gives us. Father has assured me that this man—Pavel—is a good one. You will be well taken care of. And you will be serving the family.”
That was the number one rule that Natalia had grown up with: serve the family. The family was everything, and family in the bratva—the brotherhood, the Russian mob—was not merely flesh and blood. It was the lieutenants who helped to watch over her, the bodyguards who protected her, the grunts and foot soldiers and messengers who worked like a finely tuned clock to make sure that the business kept running as it should. She had been taught that everyone in the ‘family’, even if not related to her, was to be treated with all the respect and affection she would give her sisters and her father.
She’d thought it was sweet as a child. Now, as an adult, she knew how stifling it was. How the family criticized anyone who tried to be independent, who tried to simply do anything for themselves, as if daring to do something like want a marriage of love was selfish and a betrayal.
And maybe it was selfish. But go ahead, call her selfish, then. So what? She had a right to want to be treated as well as a man, she had a right to want to fall in love with someone.
“Can I at least meet him before I marry him?” she asked. She wanted to know a bit of what she was getting into before she was legally tied to this guy.
Irena pursed her lips. “Father won’t like it.”
“But you can arrange it.”
“Yes, I can arrange it.”
“It doesn’t have to be long. Just twenty minutes, or even five minutes, I don’t care. I’m not going to marry someone I’ve never even talked to before.”
Irena nodded curtly. “All right. But if Father finds out, it’s on your head.”
“Fine.” She wasn’t holding out hope that this Pavel would be the man of her dreams, but hopefully she’d find something in him to make this… arrangement work.
Hopefully.
Chapter Three
Pavel couldn’t believe his ears. “You—you’re marrying me off. To the daughter of the head of the most powerful Russian family in the entire city.”
Kate gave Ivan one of her I told you so looks. Ivan sighed. “I know that it’s not your ideal. We would all like to marry when and whom we choose. But this way, I can keep you by my side, where I need you and where, I think, you like to be, and we get the alliance we need.”
It made sense, but Pavel was well aware of the pressure this placed him under. “You realize what is at stake if we mess this up. Mikhailov will destroy us.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Ivan replied testily. “This is our big chance, and we need to take every advantage of it. If you, and myself through you, get in well with the family through this arrangement, we could secure our place in the world for generations. Mikhailov is known to be generous to friends.”
“And ruthless to enemies,” Pavel reminded him. He had no idea how he was supposed to handle his. And what did the daughter think? Would she approve of this arrangement? Was she excited or angry or indifferent? How was he supposed to treat her? One wrong move and he wouldn’t get a divorce—he’d end up dead.
Quite a lot of pressure under which to be starting a marriage.
“We all have to make sacrifices for the family,” Kate said softly. Kate was not known as a soft woman, but she was always gentle with Pavel, and he appreciated it. She was a passionate woman, but not an uncaring one.
And she was right. He had been raised in the Sokolov bratva, and he knew the rules. Loyalty was everything. What was good for the family as a whole came before what was good for the individual. It was how the family, the organization, survived in a world where everyone, from rivals to the police, was trying to take them down.
“I understand.” Pavel kept his voice neutral.
Ivan’s eyes searched Pavel’s face. “I admit I expected more of a pushback.”
“You are the boss,” Pavel reminded him. “What would be the use in pushback? And it is the right thing to do for the family.”
Ivan sighed, coming out from behind his desk and clapping Pavel on the shoulder. “I’m not my father, Pavel. I don’t expect you to obey me in everything or to keep your head down.”
“It’s a smart decision,” Pavel replied. “We don’t always like doing the smart thing.”
“Is there someone else in your life?” Ivan asked.
“
No, there isn’t anyone. I would like to meet this girl first, if possible.” He at least wanted to have a good idea of what sort of person she was, how much frustration he was going to experience in this arrangement.
“Fair enough,” Ivan said. “I’ll speak to Mikhailov about arranging something.”
“He won’t like that,” Kate warned. “He’ll see it as a sign that we don’t trust him.”
“Then we’ll talk to Irena,” Ivan replied. He looked over at Pavel. “Irena is Mikhailov’s eldest daughter. She runs quite a lot of the more personal sides of the business for him. She’s engaged to a Yakuza heir.”
Wow. Powerful woman. Pavel couldn’t help but wonder what her sister was like. She couldn’t be happy with marrying someone like him—he was a step down for her, power and status-wise, surely.
Hopefully she wouldn’t resent him too much. Pavel wasn’t in any kind of mood to get married to someone who hated him. If they could talk first and form some kind of respect for one another, though… god help him if she had a boyfriend or something already, though.
There were a million ways that this could blow up in his face. And that was only the ways that he could think of off the top of his head.
But he didn’t lead this life because it was the safe or the easy one.
“Who am I marrying?”
“Natalia, the youngest. I hear she’s pretty strong-willed.” Ivan smirked in amusement. Pavel wasn’t known for his temper—Ivan probably thought having a spitfire for a wife might do him good. “She went to college for art, but that’s about all we know of her. You can learn more when you meet her. I’ll set things up. Perhaps a lunch next week. The wedding itself should be in a few months. Mikhailov will want something properly expensive and showy, even if we’re still a smaller family, and that’ll take some time to plan.”
Pavel nodded. A few months to prepare himself for the idea of getting married to someone he’d only be meeting once, perhaps a few more times if they could manage to arrange it.