Chapter One

Katya 

“What the hell?!” 

There are very few things that can ruin a lovely vacation. And that was the sort of phone call that could ruin not only a vacation, but one’s whole damned life.  

I wanted it to be wrong. I wanted to have misheard it. 

Honestly, I wanted to cover my damned ears so that I could pretend that I had never heard that string of words in that particular order ever again.  

“Please tell me that you’re joking.”  

My voice trembled, and I couldn’t even bring myself to hate it in the way that I normally would. I’m not the sort of person that is prone to emotional displays. But, this? This ripped the world right out from underneath of me and tilted everything on its axis. 

My skin felt cold. I could feel myself paling as the damnable words came from my family’s assistant straight into my ears once more.  

“I’m so sorry Katya… but your mother’s death has been confirmed by our people. Stay where you are, and await further orders. I repeat, stay where you are until Alexei gives orders.” 

Moments ago, I had been allowing the September afternoon sun soak into my fair skin. 

I had been having my feet rubbed by the hunk now awkwardly pawing at my back. Not the best travel boyfriend that I’ve ever had in my life, but he’s stupid handsome and looks incredible in a suit so I can’t complain much. Standing at a good foot taller than me and covered in glorious, bulging muscles and tattoos, he certainly looks good being photographed next to me on the beach for my Instagram. He can’t offer me much in the way of conversation, but that’s not what I want him for anyway. He’s not marriage material. Not by half. But, he will do for now.  

Certainly good enough in bed to keep me fully satisfied. 

What else would one want from a leisurely trip to Valencia, in Spain, if not to have a lot of good sex and sangria? 

“What is it, babe?” Derek muttered as his large hands rubbed up and down my biceps. He tried to kiss the cap of my shoulder but the last thing that I want right now is to be touched. 

I shrug out of his hold, wading across the pool a couple of inches away from him.  

“What the hell happened?! Where is she? Her… her body, where is it? I can go and collect her tonight.” Even as I said the words, I knew that I was not going to be given permission to fly back to Russia tonight and collect her body from whatever pop-up morgue they had her in. I can’t even remember the last time that I was given leave to fly back home to attend to anything. Guilt surges through me at the knowledge that I, being the horrible daughter that I am, have not seen my mother in years. When was our last conversation? Was she alone when it happened? Was she scared? 

The thought of her lying there cold and prodded at by strangers is almost more than I can stomach. I might be sick.  

Derek tries to grab me again, pulling me by my hips back into the warm, broad expanse of his muscled chest.  

“Stop,” I mutter dismissively. Can’t he see that I’m busy right now? Can’t he see that something important is going on right now? I turn my focus back to the phone call. “Does Alexei know? What did he say?” 

This time, Derek seems to not want to take no for an answer. 

The grip on my hip tightens as he yanks me back toward him. Roughly enough that my phone slips and falls right out of my hand and into the pool. 

Whatever my family’s assistant was about to say to me about my brother becomes a gurgly mess.  

“What the hell?” I half shout as my palms collide with Derek’s chest.  

Something shifts on Derek’s face.  

He is no longer the mostly stupid boyfriend that’s been entertaining me for the past couple of months. 

No, he just transformed into something darker. Something that I don’t even have time to process before I’m being yanked under the water.  

My lungs burn. 

For a brief, delusional moment I think that he’s just being petty or something because I ignored him. But then his hand knots roughly into the crown of my long platinum blonde hair and doesn’t budge. 

He’s trying to kill me. 

Panic explodes through my body as my ‘fight’ mode kicks into overdrive.  

I swipe my feet at his, hoping that I can knock him off balance, but he’s so much larger than I am and his grip on my hair is so tight that it feels like he’s going to pull my scalp clean from my skull. 

This can’t be how I go out. I refuse to allow this to be the way that I die. 

Absolutely not. 

I’m a Levine for Christ’s sake. Does he not have any idea? 

Guess the meathead just doesn’t care. He might not have any sense of self preservation, but I sure do.  

I surge forward under the water and grab a hold of his junk as hard as I can, twisting and pulling with every bit of strength that I have left in my body. 

Dark spots are forming on my vision, but it works. 

I can hear him yowling in pain even from under the water. Enough that I can scrape my manicured nails into his arm like talons to free my hair from him and kick away. 

With a final burst of energy, I kick the heel of my foot into his face as hard as I can before swimming for my life.  

Shaking so hard my hands barely work, I gather up all of our clothes and belongings and book it to the elevators. 

I glance over my shoulder long enough to see that the pool water has bled red in a ring all around his frame. 

Derek’s eyes glint with absolute murder and rage as he slowly attempts to wade toward me.  

The elevator doors ding and I burst inside and awkwardly fumble the room key against the lock.  

It’s certainly not going to delay him for very long that he doesn’t have a key to the room, but I will take every second that I can possibly get.  

I throw myself into our hotel room and slam the door shut, barricading the thin wood with the dresser. Adrenaline must be on high time overdrive because the heavy wooden furniture is not something that I would have been able to move on my own before. I don’t think that I’ve ever managed to pack quite this quickly in my whole life. 

I am a hurricane as I tear through the room moving on instinct more than anything else. 

I know that if I stop moving, even for a second, reality is going to catch up with me. I can’t allow myself the time to process whatever the fuck just happened to me. 

I have to move. I have to get somewhere safe. Then I can call Alexei. 

Everything will be okay. That’s what I have to keep telling myself.  

I leave behind everything that isn’t absolutely mandatory for my survival.  

It feels far too much like my childhood to be comfortable.  

Scrambling to hide. Throwing everything into a backpack and mindlessly running until I know that I’m safe. 

Alexei is my safe. He’s always been the one to take care of me – but now my brother is tucked away in New York City and a hell of a long distance from Spain.  

The violent pounding at the door is even more triggering. 

Only, it’s not my father on the other side of the wood this time. It’s an enraged giant of a man whose nose I likely broke a few moments ago after his failed murder attempt. 

My heart thumps into my throat and my shaking is even more violent as I throw my backpack on and lace my shoes as best I can before heading to the balcony. 

Not the best option, I’ll admit that. But, if it’s death or death, I will be damned if I don’t choose pavement splatter when the other option is man.  

Over the balcony and down the drainpipe. I’m nearly down to the ground when I hear the door of my hotel room shatter. 

The angry crunching of wood splintering and furious shouting is the background noise to my heart threatening to suffocate me and a desperate desire for him to not look down.  

I dive into the first taxi that slows. I don’t even wait for it to stop before shouting at the man to drive me to the airport. “Hurry, please. I’ll pay double if you get me there in the next twenty minutes.” 

The man clearly wants to ask me handfuls of super annoying questions but I don’t have time for it. He must read it on my face because in the next moment, he’s peeling down the road so fast it would have made my Russian grandmother incredibly happy to see. I glance anxiously behind me to see if somehow Derek is running behind the taxi on foot. I wouldn’t put it past him.  

Almost trembling too hard to dial Alexei’s number on my phone.  

He doesn’t pick up until the third ring.  

“Brat?” I mutter softly. I hope that by speaking like this, I can hide how terrified I feel right now.  

“Da? I am very busy right now, Katya, what is it?”  

Even though he sounds annoyed that I’ve interrupted his day, just hearing his voice is soothing to me.  

“Has Ms. Lagunov not called you yet?” 

“She’s tried, but like I said – I’m busy right now.” 

“Mama is dead, Brat.” I whisper. 

Saying it out loud makes it real. It makes her actually dead and all at once, the pain hits me. 

The pounding, angry headache that throbs and the burning in my lungs all seems to fade away into nothingness as the reality of the situation sinks in. “Ms. Lagunov just told me. She is with her body now, the mortician is finishing up the autopsy for formality’s sake… but Brat, she is gone.” 

There’s a series of hushed, angry swearing in Russian from the other end of the phone and I know he’s likely covering the receiver with his hand in some futile attempt to shield me from his temper.  

“You are certain of this?” Alexei demands harshly. 

He’s always like this. Business first and emotions second.  

“Why would she lie?” 

“Those damned Italian bastards.”  

Something breaks on Alexei’s end of the phone. I don’t know if he’s punched something or thrown something, but it doesn’t really matter. “I warned those mafia pricks what would happen if they stepped out of fucking line. I warned them! Listen to me, Katya, I will handle this. You are to stay put until I say otherwise. I mean it. If they are making moves, I will not risk you getting in harm’s way.” 

“Yes.” I mutter lamely as I try to keep myself from blubbering.  

“Are you safe where you are?” 

I almost don’t want to answer that. I don’t like lying to my brother. “Yes.” I mutter. I mean, I’m as safe as a person in a taxi can be.  

I don’t tell him about my own murder attempt.  

They have to be related somehow. The timing of it is just too perfect. 

Alexei will go completely off the rails if he knows that somebody tried to hurt me and that somebody managed to find our poor mother. He would have every man in his considerable army mobilized in the hour if he knew… and avenging mother comes first.  

Besides, I’m fine. Mostly. I can take care of myself.  

“We are at war, Katya, do not make trouble. I will send word soon.” 

Just like that, the line goes dead on his end and I’m stuck with the taxi driver and the chaos of my own thoughts as he pulls the taxi around to the entrance of the airport. 

Alexei can tell me to stay put all he wants, but there is no way in hell that he can make me actually do it. He’s not going to cut me out of this situation as easily as he might like. 

He really ought to know me better than that by now.  

I’ve always been more of an act first and ask forgiveness later type of gal anyway.  

He can yell at me all he likes for it when I show up at his place in New York City.  

Chapter Two 

Luca 

‘Russia target eliminated. Standby for confirmation for Spain target.’  

“Well, would you look at that?” I chuckle bitterly to myself as I dab the corners of my mouth with my napkin. 

What started out as a nice lunch with my most trusted right-hand man, Dario, was turning into something truly lovely. Paired with the stunning weather outside, good wine and now this? 

Yes, it was setting me up for a damned good day.  

“Luca?” Dario questions as he sips on his expresso.  

“Looks like my father got busy again. Making even more plans without bothering to loop me in on things. How well do you think that is going to work out for me the next time I have to meet with him?” I ease back into my chair and let the cloth napkin rest on the table in front of me. 

I close my eyes and inhale slowly through my nose to remain as calm as possible.  

It’s not the first time that my father has done something like this. 

This damned war he’s gotten our family involved in is a constant struggle. 

Logic rarely matters when Enzo has the lead. He gets a hair up his ass about something or another and runs with it. In truth, he would rather prefer not to have to tell his son anything if he didn’t have to. I’ve always been the black stain that he can’t seem to rid himself of. But, as his only heir – he’s stuck with me. He certainly doesn’t care to run his choices through his son before acting on them.  

Even if those choices are completely against Cosa Nostra’s moral code.  

Something else that he tends to forget in his cursed wars.  

My phone vibrates with the alert of another text message that I pick up before I can think better of it.  

‘Update received – Spain target en route to NYC. ETA 4:37pm’ 

The updates are coming to me and not my father for a reason. 

It means that he has folded me in and made me responsible for these tasks and hasn’t bothered to tell me. 

Again. 

Some days I swear that he wants for me to fail. 

I’ve done everything that has ever been required of me, and yet it never seems to be good enough.  

And now, he’s put me in charge of this task when apparently only one of the two targets that he wanted killed were actually properly taken care of. Which means that I’m going to have to give my father a bad report.  

“Everything all right?” Dario asks, already packing up his belongings from the table and signaling for the bill. Most people mistake Dario for my older brother based on our looks. Not dissimilar in features despite the fact that I stand a couple of inches taller than him. He doesn’t have quite as many tattoos as I do, but we are matched scar for scar. Guess it comes with the territory. He’s got seven years of age on me, but you wouldn’t know it to speak to him. It’s not something that has ever gotten in the way of our working relationship.  

“No. We will have to reschedule our meeting, Dario. Looks like my father needs to speak with me.” I answer as I tuck my phone down into my pocket and take the car keys from the table. 

I don’t bother to wait for Dario, he will manage on his own. 

Every second that passes between my getting those texts and not showing up in my father’s office will be counted against me, and Dario is my closest and most trusted man – so he understands. 

There is very little that he would ever blame me for.  

My black range rover zips through the city that I’ve called home long enough to know it like the back of my hand. 

It takes almost no time whatsoever before I’m pulling into the parking garage of my father’s skyscraper. 

I pass the keys to the valet and adjust the fit of my black suit jacket before stepping into the elevator coded specifically to work for my father, myself, and our inner circle.  

I see that even those security measures aren’t quite enough for the old man, as the red light of a newly installed camera sits in the top corner of the elevator watching my every blink until I reach the penthouse. 

I can feel my father’s strange mood in the air the moment I enter his residence. It looks more like a sterile art gallery than a home that somebody could actually live in. A cartoonishly sharp version of hyper modern. All stainless steel, sharp edges and matte black everywhere that you look. 

My oxfords make no noise whatsoever as I move to father’s office, where his sweltering fireplace is already lit. 

He’s standing with his back to the door and a glass of brandy in his hand, swirling the contents of the glass around the tumbler as he holds it casually near his hip.  

I have been told that my father and I look a lot alike. 

I haven’t decided yet if that flatters or bothers me. 

The man tends to favor heavily on paranoia so he had nearly all records of his history and life destroyed save for a small album of baby photos in my late grandmother’s house. But the album was buried with her for the same paranoid reasons. 

He stands at a lean six foot, while I am three inches taller and a good deal bulkier than he is. While his head of thick black hair has turned mostly silver with age, hints of the true color still remain in his full beard and mustache. We have the same deep olive skin and russet brown eyes, though he lacks the dimples that I got from my mother.  

“Tell me that you have good news, son.” He addresses me without turning to look at me. 

Son? If that isn’t an indicator that he’s in the mood to play games, then I don’t know what is.  

Honestly, his constant power trips and games have become almost comforting at this point. 

Predictable in their consistency. No point in sugar coating things, get right to the point.  

“Levine’s mother? Are you out of your mind?” I blurt a touch more bluntly than advisable. 

If it was not just the two of us in this room, he would have had beaten the crap out of me for such a comment. 

Instead, he turns slowly, his eyes impossibly darkening with rage over the disrespect that he would interpret my words as.  

“It was supposed to be both of the Levine bitches. A swift strike to eliminate most of the remaining bloodline.” His words are condemnation and explanation both as he slowly sips the contents of his glass. “But apparently, the little bitch managed to give our man the slip somehow.” 

The clinking of the ice cubes around the edge of his glass is the only noise in the room between us for a long moment.  

I understand that he’s pissed that Alexei Levine’s younger sister isn’t dead but he doesn’t seem to understand how serious of a move he has just made. We’re not supposed to go after wives and mothers. Women and children are supposed to be off limits and yet my father has chosen to make his move by going after Levine’s immediate family? That is punching below the belt. This war has been going on for too long, I know that better than most, but this is not the way to move forward. 

However, even if I voiced my opinion here, my father wouldn’t listen to it. His way is the only way. His opinion is the only opinion that holds merit.  

“You know how this is going to go. This war that you’re obsessed with – there will be no turning back now. You’ve opened season on all of us.” Anger starts to bleed into my words as I speak. 

He might be the boss, but his long-term thinking has always been severely lacking.  

“You have no one, besides me, so what do you care? Is it not as if they can kill your wife or daughter as retaliation.” Enzo shrugged.  

“And our men? Those with families? Because you needed retribution for a few clubs and a slight dip in profits… you felt that this was warranted? Going against all of Cosa Nostra’s values? What does this mean for our clan?” 

“My clan, son. You have a long way to go before you get to claim that you have any rights to this family. Do not speak higher than you can reach.”  

“You are telling me that you find your actions to be fair? Especially when you know for a fact how volatile Alexei Levine can be?!” 

I take a step forward as father places his glass down on the mantle of his fireplace. “You said no innocents. It was your cornerstone, father, and yet here you are – murdering a woman who had nothing to do with any of this. I doubt that she had even the slightest idea of the war that her son was involved in. You know as well as I that there have been no reports of them even being in contact for years.” 

“Innocent?” Enzo answers, as if that were the only part of my words that he has picked up on at all. “You stand there and have the balls to tell me that any of those Levine bitches are innocent?!”  

His eyes narrow into slits – something that used to cowtail me into submission when I was a child – but that was a long, long time ago. 

Now I can just feel the muscle in my jaw clenching, knowing how much his impulsive, reckless actions are going to cost all of us.  

“Every one of those bitches is connected to him. That little roach that keeps getting in my damned way!” Enzo’s voice never changes pitch or volume, but somehow it becomes barbed and lethal when he speaks. 

Something about the way he can glare daggers at the person he speaks to, that seems to inflict actual physical damage, is something I have never understood and have also never quite learned how to master yet for myself.  

This whole war is wrong, but I know that I can’t say that to him.  

He wouldn’t listen anyway.  

I think that some part of him knows that I don’t support this war, and that I haven’t fully supported his choices in a while now. 

Maybe this is all just another test that he’s putting me through. 

He’s probably just trying to push me to see where I will break and what the final straw will be that makes me defy him. 

That day will come, I am certain, when I will no longer be his obedient son, and I will become one more name on his ever-growing list of enemies.  

I don’t know which one of us will survive that day either.  

“Care to explain to me why only one of them is dead, instead of both?” Enzo broke the silence, expecting an explanation from me that I just don’t have.  

“I have men on the way to the airport to intercept her as soon as her plane lands.” I answer through my gritted teeth.  

Enzo smirks. “Oh, good. For once we are on the same page about something, son.” 

He lifts a hand and condescendingly pats me on the cheek.  

“I want you to ensure that there are no more fuck ups on this job. I want you to personally go to the airport and pick up the young Levine bitch, and I want you to bring me her head. I will have her stuffed and mounted and pictures sent to that meddling twat of a brother of hers before the day is finished.” 

Just the idea of doing what he asked of me makes my stomach roil. 

It is not because I am not capable of great violence, but this girl didn’t do anything to deserve the horrible, depraved things that I know that my father would do to her. 

Not to mention, it is a damned insult to send me out on a petty wet work job when I’m supposed to be getting groomed to take over as the head of the family.  

“Unless you think that you can’t handle it? Son?” Enzo continues, his thin lips curling up into a devious smirk.  

“Consider it done.”  

It’s the only answer he would accept anyway.

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