CHAPTER 25
Gavril
I stood at the window, looking out as the city lights twinkled in the distance. In a few short hours I would be going to war to protect my Bratva and all that I cared about.
Including my wife.
I hated that Naomi hadn’t told me the truth about Jon. I fucking hated that it had to be someone like Konstantin Poroshenko who forced me to confront the truth about my marriage and my relationship with Naomi.
A tortured chuckle escaped me. Naomi wasn’t my wife. The name on that marriage certificate wasn’t hers, and now that the secret was out, I could cut ties with her permanently. I didn’t need to have her in my fucking house for her to give birth to my child.
She had deliberately and willfully held back information that could destroy all that I had worked for. Her ex could bring hell down on me, and no number of good fucking lawyers was going to dig me out of that hole.
I fucking hated it. I thought we had gotten past that, gotten past the point of her hurting me.
It was an ugly admission, but it was the truth. Her not telling me the complete truth hurt me deep down, in a place that I had written off. A place that I thought she had brought back to life.
She had hurt my fucking heart.
I drew in a shuddering breath, willing away the pain of what Naomi had done. As much as I hated to admit it, Naomi had been using me just as much as I had her. She had used me to keep her ex at bay. While I couldn’t completely disagree with that tactic—hell, a part of me even admired it—I just wished that she’d trusted me enough to tell me everything from the beginning.
This was just a repeat of Katya, but on an entirely different level.
I remembered once when I had asked Katya to tell me everything, so that we had no secrets between us.
And how it had all turned out.
***
I stretched my arms behind my head and watched Katya as she walked back into the bedroom, admiring her lithe naked form. She had the body of a dancer, a result of being classically trained her entire life for the Russian ballet. She had never made it past local regional theaters but still liked to keep her body in top shape.
I wasn’t complaining in the least. Katya could do things with her body that astounded me.
“Katya,” I said as she joined me back in the bed, placing her hand on my bare chest. “Do you keep secrets from me?”
“Gavrushka,” she laughed, placing her ruby red–tipped fingers on my skin. “I have no secrets from you.”
I grasped her hand and brought it up to my mouth, placing little kisses on the tips of her fingers. “Are you certain, my love?”
She gave me a smug smile, her eyes lit up with the same heat that coursed through my body. “Of course. You know everything there is to know about me. I would never withhold anything from you, my darling.”
I put her hand back on my chest, right over my heart. “If you did, I would be devastated.” I trusted her with every fiber of my being, every beat of my heart. Being betrayed by Katya would be certain death for me. “You know how secrets can tear down my Bratva.”
Her fingers lightly scored my bare skin as her hand slipped down to my abdomen, then to my semi-hard cock, still wet from her release. “Darling, you are going to be the strongest Pakhan of any Bratva one day. I do not wish to stand in between your dream and all you have worked so hard for.”
I looked into her eyes, a wealth of feelings building inside and threatening to overflow at any moment. “You are my dream.” If she asked me to step down tomorrow, I would do it. Without Katya at my side, my life held no meaning.
My mother would likely have a different opinion, but I didn’t give a shit about her concerns. She wasn’t in this relationship. She didn’t understand the feelings we had for each other. She was nothing but a bitter old woman who hadn’t realized what she had with my father until he was gone. And now she was trying to dictate my life for her benefit. Just yesterday, she had voiced her complaints about Katya moving into my suite, stating that she wasn’t running a fucking hotel.
I had been quick to remind her that I owned everything that had our family name attached to it. Without me, my mother would have nothing.
Katya’s expression softened and she leaned down, pressing her lips against mine. “And you are mine. I want nothing else in this lifetime but you.”
I gripped her shoulders lightly and rolled us over on my massive bed until she was underneath me. “Say it again,” I told her, positioning myself at her entrance. “Tell me what you want.”
Her nails raked across my shoulders. “I want you,” she moaned. “I want nothing more than this between us. I love you, my dearest Gavrushka. My heart, my Pakhan.”
I pushed into her before she could finish the last word, feeling her body convulse around my cock. “You are mine,” I growled as I buried myself to the hilt. “You are only mine.” I could see her by my side while I took my family’s name among some of the great Mafias of this century. I could see her giving me the heirs that would carry on the family business, and it would be Katya that I would drape in diamonds to show off to all the other fuckers that thought they could compete with me.
Katya wrapped her arm around my neck and pulled me down into a hungry kiss, her legs wrapping around my waist and fitting me in deeper. “Nothing or no one could ever come between us,” she said before nipping at my lower lip. “No one.”
“No one,” I echoed, thinking about my own family and how they were trying to break us apart. Katya was all that I needed in life, and the rest could go to hell.
When I withdrew, she shuddered underneath me, arching her back to pull me back in. “More,” she begged as I captured her nipple between my teeth. “More, Gavril. Give me everything.”
I had nothing left to give her. She had everything in the palm of her hand. I was hers.
***
I shook myself out of the memory, still feeling the sting of her bite on my lips. Even after all this time, Katya haunted me in more ways than I cared to admit. She haunted my dreams, reminding me of what I had been forced to do to save my own life. She had destroyed me that day, and maybe that had been her plan all along.
Sometimes I wondered if I would have been better off had she been able to bury the knife in my gut. Katya would have put me out of my misery to avoid this sort of thing happening again.
Now her betrayal had found its way into my marriage with Naomi. And I didn’t think I would ever be the same. I had let Katya far too close to me, let her become everything to me. Every fucking move I had made back then was with her in mind, with our future in mind.
And now, I had done the same with Naomi. Somehow, she had pushed her way into my life when I had not planned on having one with her, and now, I stood at a crossroads once more as to what to do next. Her actions—my actions—could be the death of both myself and my Bratva.