Chapter 11: Chapter 11

She stirs slightly when the plane encounters some turbulence. But she won’t be waking anytime soon.

The serum Martin coated her wine glass with put her to sleep for a few hours. And the sedative I injected her with fifteen minutes ago will keep her out until we’re home.

My home, that is. My secret stronghold for the last ten years or so, from which I’ve struck at my enemies from the shadows, setting things in motion to destroy those who would have destroyed me.

Ironically, Elba, the Italian island off the coast of Piombino in southern Tuscany, is the very island where Napoleon was once exiled, when the world and his own government feared his power.

My home is on a small island off Elba, a small piece of the world drifting away into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

It’s where my family died.

There’ve been times when I’ve wondered what drove me to rebuild the seat of my empire in a place overlooking the very graves of those who were taken from me. Nostalgia? Perhaps. An unbroken love for my lost family? Of course.

But also… Anger is a powerful motivator. Rage fuels vengeance like nothing else.

I buried my family the morning after the massacre, digging in the dirt with my bare hands and whatever tools I could salvage from the charred wreckage to give my lost loved ones a simple, modest burial.

But years afterward, when I finally returned, I had the whole site of the former house cleared. The graves I’d dug were long gone by then, lost to regrowth. In their place I planted a small, wooded glade, and surrounded the whole thing with a high fence and a locked gate.

I had my new home built on the other side of the little island, turning the overgrown, crumbling ruins of an old palazzo my sister and I used to climb on as children into a sprawling new mansion.

That’s where we’re heading now. That’s where I’ll keep her.

Bind her.

Ruin her.

I pull my gaze from the window of the private plane back to the redhead slumped in the seat across from me. A lock of fire drapes across her sleeping cheek. My eyes trace the soft curve of her lips, the delicate cleft leading up to a petite, slender nose where her glasses are perched. The flush on her slightly freckled cheeks.

The flutter behind her closed eyes as she dreams, perhaps. The long lashes and the soft, delicate brows.

She’s beautiful.

Instantly, my face sours as the thought enters my brain.

I categorically refuse to acknowledge the beauty of her face, the soft, athletic curves of her slender frame. The swell of the breasts that I know firsthand the feel of, remembering the eager way her pale pink nipples tightened and pebbled under my rough touch.

The slickness between her thighs. The silken feel of her messy little pussy, begging me for more.

I rip my gaze away to stab it out the window at the darkness of the Atlantic.

No. She’s not a potential plaything. She will not be an outlet for my depraved desires and my dark urges.

Even though she’s SUCH a willing partner.

Compliant. Eager.

Hungry.

With a blackness inside that matches my own⁠—

No.

I haven’t gone to all the trouble of drugging her, kidnapping her and bringing her to my lair across the ocean to fuck her. I’ve done it to destroy her, as she destroyed me. If my dick has other ideas, he can go fuck himself.

I glance back at her sleeping form: at the strap of her dress slipping off one creamy shoulder. At the riot of red falling down one side of her face and onto the opposite shoulder.

At the pebbled points of her nipples through her gown. At the way it rides up her smooth, long legs.

I stand and grab a blanket out of an overhead compartment. Without fanfare, I turn and toss it over her.

Not because it’s cool in the plane and she’s only wearing a flimsy dress.

To stop the hungry part of me from looking at her that way. Because I refuse to.

I’ve just turned to the window again when I sense movement. Turning back, I frown quizzically as Milos comes down the aisle from where he’s been sitting toward the front with two of my men. His brow furrows as he indicates his phone.

“I’ve just had an interesting conversation.”

“With?”

“Yelizaveta Solovyova.”

Interesting.

Yelizaveta is the sole woman sitting at the Iron Table. In fact, she’s the lone woman ever to have sat at that table of powerful, brutal men. Some might make the mistake of thinking that as a woman she’s automatically weak.

They’d be dead wrong.

The very fact that Yelizaveta has commanded that seat for almost thirty years is testament to the fact that she’s even more brutal and ruthless than any of the men she sits with.

She’s also been one of the strongest opponents to my attempts to ascend to the Iron Table.

Technically, there are two unofficial “governing bodies” of the Bratva world. One is the Iron Table, which wields absolute and exclusive power in Russia. The other is the High Council, which holds sway pretty much everywhere else.

The latter was an easy wall for me to breach. In that case, all it took were threats, proof of treasonous intentions within their ranks, and small Machiavellian “nudges” here and there to assert my place at the table alongside the Reznikov, Kashenko, Volkov, Javanović, and Kalishnik Bratva families.

The Iron Table has proven a harder nut to crack.

The High Council, relatively speaking, is a newer institution. A bit more eager to keep the peace in the name of business.

The Iron Table, however, is a machine of war, belching black smoke and stopping for nothing on its relentless march forward. That collective is beyond “old-school”, descended from pirates and smugglers from the times of kings, long before the concept of a Bratva brotherhood even existed. They’re tightly knit, they absolutely do not have infighting, and they’re seemingly impervious to threats.

And yet…and yet…

I want my seat at that table. It will expand my empire in ways almost too massive to comprehend.

But more importantly, I need to rule it. Because for all my crusades against those who wronged me, there’s one man who remains utterly untouchable:

Vadik Belov, head of the Belov Bratva.

It’s taken me years to map the web of lies and treachery that destroyed my life. Sure, the others I’ve put into graves, whose empires I’ve razed to the smoldering ground all played their roles. Even the woman sitting slumped across from me had a hand in it.

But every web has a big, fat, juicy spider, and Vadik Belov is mine.

That, above all else, is why I seek a seat at the Iron Table. From the outside, not even I can touch him. Not when he sits united with four other insanely powerful old-school Bratva families. But if I were at that table, in their midst…or even better, leading that table…I could bend them to my will.

I could, and I will, turn them against Vadik. And then, I will sit back and drink his fucking blood from a golden chalice as I watch the rest of them tear him apart at my bidding.

I shake my head and refocus on Milos. “And what does the White Queen say?”

Yelizaveta Solovyova has albinism, giving her a ghostly white appearance. “White Queen” isn’t a slight, either. She came up with the name herself.

“She wants to speak with you,” Milos growls. “In person.”

I raise a brow. “When?”

“She’s enroute now. I believe she’ll be meeting us on the tarmac when we land.”

Well, now.

Color me curious.

“Drazen.”

The plane’s engines are still cycling down as I leave the cabin and walk down the stairs. The helicopter that will take us from the mainland across to my island sits prepped and ready a few hundred feet away. Another private jet is parked nearby as well.

Waiting near the bottom of the staircase is Yelizaveta herself, dressed all in black and surrounded by ten of her elite guard—all very conspicuously armed to the teeth.

The White Queen herself smiles warmly as she purrs my name, but I’m smart enough to see through that.

Yelizaveta is as much a politician as she is a ruthless gangster. The smile doesn’t mean we’re friends. It means “watch your back”.

“Yelizaveta,” I say as I walk toward her. I stop a few feet away, and even allow the indignity of two of her men patting me down.

“I’ve always appreciated your eye for caution,” I continue, a practiced politician’s smile on my face.

“I have grandchildren these days, Drazen,” she says grimly, her alto voice heavily accented as she speaks to me in English. It could very well be intended as a dig at my mixed, i.e., “not pure Russian” blood. If it is, I choose not to give her the satisfaction of seeing that it’s pissed me off.

Honestly? It didn’t.

“And I plan on seeing them ascend to the Table before I’m dead.” She smirks. “Caution is part of the game.”

“True,” I reply. My brow furrows. “My second tells me you were eager to speak face to face.”

Yelizaveta nods, taking a slow, measured breath and clasping her hands in front of her.

“This business with you seeking to join the Iron Table…” She frowns as she dips her chin. “I think it’s time we put that aside.”

My jaw tightens. “Is that so.”

“Yes, Drazen,” she murmurs. “And I think perhaps now is as good a time as any to explain why, so that you can stop wasting your time chasing smoke you will never catch.”

Darkness throbs inside me. But I hold it at bay, keeping my expression neutral.

“I’m sure you’re aware that while you aren’t exactly popular with anyone at the table, I have been the main voice of opposition to you joining.”

“Really.”

She levels a withering look at me, her silvery-white brows arching as her almost purple eyes bore into me.

“Let us not insult each other, Drazen.”

I smile faintly, tilting my head.

“I think it’s only fair that you know why, so that you can focus your efforts elsewhere.” She clears her throat. “I was close with the Brancovich family.”

Yeah, no shit. Which is how she and the rest of the Table probably helped that spider Vadik Belov weave his web and murder my entire family.

“I think I’ve heard as much,” I growl quietly.

“I doubt you’ve heard that we were so close that Mihajlo Brancovich was my godson.”

Fuck.

Fucking fuck. I had not, in fact, ever heard that. At all.

My eyes narrow involuntarily.

This is… seriously not ideal. I didn’t personally kill Mihajlo and his wife. That privilege went to infighting or perhaps a mutiny within his ranks, if the stories are correct.

Except, there are other stories: rumors that I was behind their deaths. I was not, but I’ll admit to having let the rumor run without opposition.

“Was he really,” I murmur tightly.

Her lips curl. “Indeed.”

“We’re both intelligent and busy people, Yelizaveta,” I growl. “So perhaps we should cut to the chase You’re angry because of the stories of my involvement in his and his wife’s deaths.”

She tilts her head thoughtfully. “I’ve heard the rumors. But I also don’t believe them.” She shakes her head. No, Drazen, it isn’t rumor that has me resolved never to allow you even to glance at the Iron Table.” Her purplish gaze glints at me. “Nor is it, as you might be thinking, the fact that you’re not pure Russian.”

Just some casual ethnocentrism there. No big deal.

“As I said, Yelizaveta,” I mutter. “We’re both busy, intelligent people. So why don’t we⁠—”

“I was quite fond of the girl, you know.”

I go still.

She means Annika.

“I understand you believe she played a part in the treachery that took your family⁠—”

“She literally let them into my home,” I snarl.

Yelizaveta just smiles coldly. “All the same,” she says in a brittle voice. “I cared deeply for her. And you took her from this world, and from me.”

My anger flares. “She was attempting to flee across the only bridge off my island, and one of my men blew that bridge while she was crossing. I didn’t take⁠—”

“Your men, your island, your orders,” Yelizaveta growls. “Save your breath, because nothing will change my mind.” She levels a withering look at me. “That, Drazen, is why you will never sit at the Iron Table. Not ever. I thought it was time you heard that in person.”

She nods at her guards. They form a circle around her as she turns to walk back to her plane.

For a second, I almost let it go. Revenge is right there, still sedated on my plane, ready for me to destroy at my leisure.

But I realize I’ve been presented with a choice I never thought I’d have.

Vengeance on the tool that ultimately destroyed my world? Or vengeance on the hand that wielded that tool?

Annika versus Vadik. Vadik versus Annika.

The wheels in my head are still turning as Yelizaveta walks away.

And then my choice is made.

“What if she were still alive?”

Yelizaveta pauses, holding up a hand to stop her men. She glances back at me with a dry smirk.

“I’ve no interest in sick what-ifs. Goodbye, Drazen.”

She turns and starts to walk away again.

“I asked you a question.”

This time, there’s a fiery indignance when she stops. Yelizaveta turns fully to face me, her eyes blazing.

“Don’t play disgusting games with me, Drazen,” she hisses. “They don’t amuse me.”

“Just answer the question, Yelizaveta,” I growl back. “If Annika Brancovich were still alive, and still my wife, would you continue to block my attempts to join the Table.”

Her violet eyes narrow, her silver brows and almost translucent forehead furrowing.

“If you were able to raise the dead, Mr. Krylov,” she says venomously, “then perhaps I could be persuaded to stomach sitting across the Table from you.”

I smile. “That’s all I needed to hear. Have a good flight back to Moscow, Yelizaveta.”

She gives me a long, curious look before she turns again and marches back to her plane.

My lips curl darkly at the corners. A throb of malice flickers in my heart.

Change of plans, Annika…