Arlo started pacing, the clear intellect on his expression telling me he was thinking about all possible outcomes and disadvantages and advantages to killing the Pakhan of the Desolation Bratva.
Arlo stopped and growled out, “She’s mine.”
Dmitry started laughing. “Yeah, I think you made that pretty fucking obvious when Dima touched your girl and you pulverized his fucking hands.”
I started laughing even harder this time after my brother spoke.
“Although it served the fucker right. He was a touchy bastard and doesn't know what the word ‘no’ means.”
And that’s when I saw everything settle within Arlo. He’d made up his mind.
“You and I both know you’re going to take him out.” There was clear confidence in Dmitry’s voice.
“My brother and I don’t need more war. We want an alliance between the Cosa Nostra and Bratva. We need to grow stronger and create not only domestic deals but international ones. And we found a way to do that. But if our father stays in power, he’ll destroy the progress we’re making.” Dmitry looked at me and smirked, a silent affirmation of all of this passing between us.
“Didn’t you know?” I prompted and stalked toward Arlo. “I’m getting hitched. Got an arranged marriage to a sexy little just-turned-eighteen Italian hottie.” Although I didn’t fucking know if she was sexy, it didn’t fucking matter, not when this was strictly a power move. But Arlo didn’t need to know all the details.
I wagged my eyebrows and grinned lasciviously.
Arlo stared at me in the eyes. “That’s your plan? An arranged marriage between the Petrov Bratva and Cosa Nostra?” He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. “You guys are even crazier than I thought.”
Dmitry grinned but didn’t say anything else.
“So we came to a father killer to handle this.” I knew that would drive the nail into the proverbial coffin for Arlo. He knew all about killing fathers seeing as he did his own in when he was only sixteen.
And as I watched Arlo’s eyes narrow, I grinned. Yeah, he’d do this for us.
He’d help us bury our psychopathic father.
Chapter
One
Amara
“But I don’t love him, papa,” I whispered as I stared at my father, knowing my words fell on deaf ears but I said them anyway. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure why I was so shocked that this was happening. “I don’t know him.”
In our world—the dark and gritty, ugly and brutal one that was ruled by the mafia—arranged marriages were common. The women didn’t have to know the men they were to marry. They didn’t have to love them or even like them.
They just had to obey because this was all done to strengthen ties between families.
But this wasn’t a marriage to a fellow Italian mafia house, which had always been the norm.
This was me being given to Nikolai Petrov, second born son to Leonid Petrov, Pakhan to the Petrov Russian bratva.
Nikolai Petrov.
It was a name I’d heard my father speak before as I eavesdropped on his meetings, on the phone calls he made in his office in the weeks leading up to this conversation. He’d beat me with his belt if he’d known I’d been listening to his private meetings, but when I’d heard my name mentioned, tying my life to a man I didn't know, a man who was more than likely the exact same breed and cut from the same cloth as all the other monsters surrounding me, I’d taken notice and didn’t care about repercussions if caught.
My father, Marco Bianchi, had his hard eyes set right on me, his jaw looking even more severely cut as he ground his teeth. Me questioning anything he did was an affront to him, an offense. Because I was nothing but a lowly daughter good for nothing but pawning off to secure my father’s power even more.
His expression told me plenty even though he said nothing.
“He’s crazy, papa,” I said low, my tone desperate, not knowing anything about Nikolai, but I didn't have to know him to understand the type of male he was and where he came from. “He’s a Russian.” Those three words seemed like the most logical explanation for him being a lunatic.
I knew enough of our world that it wasn’t as if the Cosa Nostra was friendly with the Bratva, certainly not close that they’d pawn daughters off to sons. Yet here we were. Here I was.
“You’ll do what I say, girl, and thank me afterward,” he clipped out in Italian. His tone said that was the end of it and there would be no other questions asked.