If I want to go, I have to go now.
So why do I stop in the doorway and look back?
Mikhail's long legs are draped over the side of the bed. One hand is resting across his stomach. Regret pangs through me so painfully my breath catches.
This-this is the danger of Mikhail Novikov. There's a reason he lurks on the edges. There's a reason he shields himself with an icy, indifferent mask. He reveals nothing because all it takes is one tiny sliver of him... and you're hooked.
I close my eyes before I turn away.
Then, without looking back, I slip into the hallway and run like hell.
4
MIKHAIL
I should feel like a piece of shit.
Not for fucking my brother's girl-I would have gladly busted into the suite in the middle of Trofim's wedding night and fucked his new bride first just to spite him.
But Viviana never belonged to him. Not in any way that mattered.
No, I should feel like a piece of shit because I wanted her at all.
Since the day we met, actually.
The only reason I was at their engagement party is because my father demanded it. "Family unity is important, Mikhail," he snarled when I suggested staying home. "You need to show your loyalty to your brother. You need to remind people that you're still here."
Still here after my world shattered. Still here after they took everything from me.
"Plus," he added, "Helen will be there."
It would have been physically impossible for me to care any less about Helen Drakos, the Greek mafia princess. My father didn't care about her, either. Not really.
Then and always, my father's goal was to make sure everyone knew the full might of the Novikov Bratva. He didn't want there to be any more questions about whose horse the family name was being hitched to.
Before my father announced Trofim as his official heir, there were whispers it would be me. That it should be me.
I don't mind answering those questions with an obvious truth: It should have been.
But I played the dutiful spare and watched Trofim parade his new pet around their engagement party without ever really looking at the spectacle. She was a nameless, faceless woman in a green dress. My sadistic brother's trophy.
Then Viviana came over to me.
I felt her watching me as the party dragged on. It was a prickling awareness. An itch down my neck. The same kind I feel when I'm being approached from behind. A vulnerability I can't ignore.
She hadn't tried to talk to me all night. There was no time, not when Trofim needed everyone to see the woman he would impregnate and then spend the next lifetime cheating on with a revolving door of mistresses.
I couldn't even blame him-well, not for that, anyway. It's what our father did. His father before him. A real noble lineage of Novikov pakhans fucking anything with a heartbeat, wedding vows be damned.
I was the freak who broke the mold. Alyona and I were only twenty-three when we got married, and I never once even thought of straying from her.
But during a break in the parade, Viviana slipped away. Trofim was caught up in a financial circle jerk with a group of businessmen desperate to strike deals with our family and too afraid to approach our father. He didn't see his little wifey-to-be cross the room. He didn't see her walk towards me.
But I saw.
I noticed all of it without noticing the one thing that was truly important.
I wanted her.
That realization rang loud and clear only once she was standing in front of me. The moment she curled her honey gold hair behind her ear and smiled.
It wasn't some fate bullshit or love at first sight. Life has kicked me when I'm down enough times for me to know that there's no reason to roll over and show it your soft underbelly. No, it was that my brother's fiancée had fuck-me lips and an ass I wanted to take a bite out of.
The second thought quickly chased the tail of the first: I should feel like a piece of shit.
But I didn't.
I still don't.
Viviana Giordano is the first woman I've wanted-the first woman I've fucked-since I lost Alyona three years ago. And I still don't feel one shred of guilt.
I spread my arms out across the bed in a long stretch. It's empty, thank fuck. Viviana must have made the right choice and ran.
No matter how glad I am I finally got to feel her tighten around my cock, it wouldn't have been worth it if she'd tried to stick around afterward. The last thing I need is some lovesick damsel in distress pining after me.
I meant what I told her last night: I didn't walk into this suite last night to save her.
I was on this path long before she made her dirty deal with my brother.
The moment I lost Alyona and our daughter, I knew I was done being the spare to my brother's heir. I was done waiting in the shadows while someone else called the shots. I was never going to let anyone else have the power to hold my family's fate in their hands.
I swore that much as I stood over my family's graves. Even as I swore I'd never have another family again.
Add "sworn bachelorhood" to the long list of reasons why I have no interest in taking Trofim's place at the altar today. I pledged my love, 'til death do us part.
Then death parted us and took my wife and daughter with it.
One pretty woman moaning my name is not going to change my mind about the things I vowed while I stood over the corpses of my wife and daughter. Even if I go to my grave thinking about the way Viviana milked my orgasm out of me.
I'm sure six months without sex is like a lifetime for you.
It wasn't. I did just fine for two and a half years.
The last six months, however, have dragged.
Hell, maybe I solved two problems last night. Trofim is out of the line of succession and Viviana should be out of my system.
I told her I only wanted one thing from her. The only thing I've wanted for six months. The thing I imagined every time I wrapped my hand around my cock.
So I took it.
Now, it's time to claim the rest of what is mine.
My father is sitting behind his desk when I walk through the door. It's barely dawn, but he's in a white button-down and an undone tuxedo tie. The suit jacket he's planning to wear to the wedding I just canceled is hanging from a hook behind him.
He doesn't look up from the letter he's writing as I enter. Someone probably warned him I was heading this way already. He knows it's me. He just doesn't care.
Until I drop Trofim's signet ring on his desk.
He stops mid-sentence. Stares down at it. Sits back.
Then he carefully picks up the ring with liver-spotted fingers that have grown shakier over the years and holds it to the lamplight. A spot of blood I didn't notice is dried into the grooves of the Novikov family crest. It was hard to inspect the ring too closely while it was deep inside of Viviana.
I bite back a rare smile when I realize I finger-fucked my brother's fiancée with the ring I won from him. It's almost poetic.
My father leans back in his chair and looks at me for the first time. He sighs, tired. "Is he dead?"
"As far as you're concerned, he might as well be. You're never going to see him again."
Iakov rolls his lips together and places the ring in the center of his desk. "What's the plan now?"
Are you going to kill me, too? The question is layered there, unspoken.
I could. It's been done before. A hostile takeover from within is the kind of patricidal shit that happens when power is passed to the person who happened to be born first rather than the person who is more qualified to wear the crown.
I overpowered Trofim. I stripped the ring off of his finger.
His position is mine.
"I'm going to wear that ring and become the next pakhan."
He nods. "And when will that be? My death?"
He's speaking evenly, staying calm. He's hiding it well, but he's terrified. Yet another sign that the sun is setting on his leadership.
The bloodstained legend who has run this Bratva for the last three decades wouldn't sit there and ask when he was going to die. He'd stand up and fight. But my father doesn't even bother calling for the guards I know are stationed nearby. He sees the writing on the wall, clear as day.
"I'm not going to kill you unless I have to."
His shoulders ease down from around his ears. If he's sad about his oldest son's fate, he doesn't show it. For thirty-one years, my father prepared the way for Trofim. He poured everything he had into making him a great leader. Now, he doesn't even shed a tear.
I never expected him to. Death is a cruel fact of our world. If you're powerful enough to avoid it yourself, then you'll live long enough to see everyone you care about die. One way or another, it takes everything from you.
"I didn't even have to fight him," I add. "He was too busy beating his fiancée to see me coming and too drunk to resist. I exiled him. With the promise to kill him if he ever returns."
He arches a graying brow. "I'm surprised you didn't kill him for hitting Viviana. You've always had a tender spot for that kind of thing."
"You're confusing me with Anatoly."
