
Blood And Betrayal
"She was mine first," Dimitri whispered, his voice deadly calm. "And you stole her in the dark."
Dimitri and Alexei Volkov are twin brothers, mafia kings, bound by blood and loyalty. When one bleeds, both bleed. When one kills, both kill. Nothing has ever come between them.
Until her.
Irina was Dimitri's maid, his peace in a world of violence. The only woman allowed close enough to touch him, to see the man beneath the monster. He fell for her quietly, deeply, and completely.
But one drunken night at a party, Alexei stumbled into his brother's darkened room. He wore Dimitri's robe. She thought he was Dimitri. And in the shadows, a line was crossed that could never be uncrossed.
Now Irina carries the child of her master's brother!
When Dimitri discovers her pregnancy, rage consumes him. When Alexei claims her as his own with a cruel smirk, something breaks between the brothers. The bond that made them invincible now threatens to destroy them both.
Two brothers. One woman. A baby that will crown one king and condemn the other.
In the world of the Volkov mafia, betrayal is paid in blood.
When this war is over, will any of them survive?
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Chapter: Chapter 165Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-FiveIrina's POVThe months after Alexei's death were the hardest of my life. This was grief, pure and unrelenting, a weight that sat on my chest and made it hard to breathe.I had not expected to love Alexei. When I learned the truth about that night, I had hated him. He had deceived me and violated me and taken something that was not his to take.But then I watched him change. Slowly and painfully, he tried. He really tried. He learned to hold Nikolai gently. He learned to speak softly. He learned to ask for forgiveness.And somewhere in those months, I fell. Not the way I loved Dimitri, with passion and fire. It was softer and quieter.
Last Updated: 2026-03-04
Chapter: Chapter 164Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-FourDimitriThe funeral was held in the old church where our parents were buried. The same stone walls that had witnessed their funeral fifteen years ago now bore witness to my brother's. The morning was gray and cold, snow falling in soft sheets that covered everything in white but nothing could hide the truth. My brother was dead. My twin. My other half. Gone.Mikhail spoke, his voice breaking on every word as he buried the second son he had raised. He stood at the front of the church, his cane in one hand and the other gripping the podium for support."Alexei Volkov was a complicated man," Mikhail said, his voice rough. "He made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. But at the end, he chose love. He chose sacrifice. He gave his life to protect the innocent. And that is how I will remember him."The entire Bratva attended. The church was packed with men in dark suits, their faces grim. Men who had killed without hesitation stood silent, paying respects to one o
Last Updated: 2026-03-03
Chapter: Chapter 163Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-ThreeIrinaI collapsed beside them, clutching Nikolai with one arm and reaching for Alexei with the other. Sobs tore through my body as I touched his face, still warm, already gone. My fingers trembled as they traced the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheek, memorizing the contours of his face one last time.The man who had saved me. The father of my child. The man who had held me captive, who had hurt me, who had tortured me. But also the man who had changed. Who had tried to be better. Who had thrown himself in front of a bullet to protect me.The man I had learned, against all reason and resistance, to love."Alexei," I whispered, my voi
Last Updated: 2026-03-01
Chapter: Chapter 162Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-TwoDimitriThe Romano struck at dawn. Armed men stormed the compound in coordinated waves, breaking through defenses that were spread thin across fractured territories. Most of my elite guards were stationed at my wing. Most of Alexei's men were protecting the western district. The compound itself was undermanned and exposed.Alarms screamed through the mansion. Gunfire erupted like thunder. The sound was deafening, a constant roar that shook the walls and rattled the windows. I grabbed my gun from the nightstand, checked the clip, and ran.The hallways were chaos. Men were shouting, running, dying. I saw bodies on the floor, some ours, some theirs. Blood was everywhere, splattered on the walls, pooling on the marble floors. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air, mixing with the metallic scent of blood."Irina!" I shouted. "Nikolai!" But my vo
Last Updated: 2026-02-28
Chapter: Chapter 161Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-OneIrinaI watched Dimitri sleep beside me. He looked peaceful for the first time in days. Nikolai was sleeping between us, safe and warm. This was all I wanted. Just peace. Just safety. Just my family together.Dimitri had explained everything to me. The call with Don Romano. The meeting planned for tomorrow. The promise of negotiation. I wanted to believe it was real. Wanted to believe that our nightmare was finally over. But something felt wrong. I could not explain it. Just a feeling in my gut that things were not as they seemed."What are you thinking about?" Dimitri whispered. I had not realized he was awake."Nothing," I lied."Liar," he said softly. "I can tell when something is bothering you."I sighed. "I am scared. Scared that this peace will not last. Scared that Don Romano is lying. Scared that tomorrow everything will fall apart.""I am scared too," Dimitri said. "But what choice did we have? It was either make a deal or keep running foreve
Last Updated: 2026-02-27
Chapter: Chapter 160Chapter One Hundred and SixtyDimitri"Why would they want to speak with you?" the voice on the phone asked."Because I have something they want," I said. "Information about their operations. Secrets that could destroy them. And I am willing to trade it for peace."There was a long pause on the other end."Hold," the voice said.We waited in tense silence. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. This could go very wrong very quickly.Finally, a new voice came on the line. Older. Deeper. More authoritative."Mr. Volkov," the voice said. "My name is Don Romano. I am the head of the Romano family. And I must say, I am surprised to hear from you.""I want to make a deal," I said."What kind of deal?" Don Romano asked."I have files," I explained. "Documents and videos left by my father. Information about your operations. Your enemies. Your secrets. I will give them to you. All of them. In exchange for a guarantee that you will leave my family alone."Don Romano laughed.
Last Updated: 2026-02-26
Chapter: Chapter 59CHAPTER 59: THE PURIST LEADERThe northeast reaches take three hours by road.We leave before dawn with six wolves, Ronan driving, Kael in the passenger seat spending the entire journey in a specific kind of silence I have learned to recognize — not the comfortable silence of someone at peace but the effortful silence of someone managing something they have not yet decided how to say.I let him have it for two hours.Then: "Tell me about Felix."He looks at the road ahead for a moment. Then out the window at the dark territory moving past."We trained together," he says. "Before the war. Same cohort. He was not a fighter — not built for it, not interested in it. He was an archivist by nature. The one who remembered everything. Dates. Bloodlines. Territory histories going back eight generations." A pause. "Every pack has someone like that. Someone
Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Chapter: Chapter 58CHAPTER 58: THE HOSTSLila meets us at dawn.Not at the safe house — neutral ground, her suggestion, a small tea room in the market district that opens early for the overnight wolves coming off shift. Public enough to feel safe. Quiet enough to talk.She is already there when we arrive. Sitting with her hands around a cup she has not drunk from, watching the door. When she sees Kael her expression does something complicated that she manages quickly."You know who I am," Kael says, sitting across from her."I know what you were to Darius. What he accused you of." She meets his eyes directly. "I know the charges were fabricated. I helped fabricate one of the supporting documents. I was twenty-three and I did not understand yet what I was participating in." A pause. "I am telling you this first before anything else because you deserve to know it and because I am done carrying things
Last Updated: 2026-07-09
Chapter: Chapter 57CHAPTER 57: THE GRIEQueen Alara has a good morning.I know this before I open her door because Draven is not in the corridor outside it, which means there is no medical concern requiring his proximity, which means she woke on her own terms and is managing.She is sitting in the chair by the window when I come in. She has her hair pinned up — not the loose silver of her first days out of that room, but proper, deliberate. She is wearing the robe Nessa found for her, deep blue, the color she said she missed most during the gray years of the estate.She looks like a queen.Not the crown-and-ceremony kind. The other kind. The kind that is simply what it is regardless of whether anyone is watching."You slept," she says."Eventually.""And Kael?""He slept when I slept, which means also eventually."She almost smiles. The almost-smile has become one of my preferred things about her face — the way it acknowledges humor without fully committing, the way it says: I find this world still occa
Last Updated: 2026-07-09
Chapter: Chapter 56CHAPTER 56: THE AFTERMATHVera is arrested at four in the morning.Hadwin coordinates it through proper council channels — not a raid, a formal apprehension with legal weight behind it, the kind that cannot be challenged or overturned on procedural grounds. Two council officers. A certified warrant. The specific bureaucratic solidity of a system being used correctly for once.She does not resist.Ronan tells me this when he returns, and it is the detail that stays with me — that Vera, who spent decades engineering elaborate control over everyone around her, who orchestrated my father's death and my mother's imprisonment and a ritual designed to use the crown as a vessel for something ancient and hungry — she simply walked to the vehicle when they came for her."What did she say?" I ask."Nothing," Ronan says. "She looked at the warrant. She put on her coat. She walked out."I think about the woman who sat across from me at the debate with twenty-six years of my mother's stolen blood a
Last Updated: 2026-07-03
Chapter: Chapter 55CHAPTER 55: THE BANISHMENTThe room is silent when my vision clears.Queen Alara has both hands pressed to her mouth. Draven is gripping the back of her wheelchair so hard his knuckles have gone white. Ronan has not moved from where he was standing — I can see him out of the corner of my vision, utterly still, watching me the way you watch something you are not certain has finished happening yet.Kael is the only one moving. He crosses the room in three steps and stops just short of the circle's edge, his hands raised slightly like he wants to reach for me but is not certain it is safe."Fina."I look at him. My own voice comes out strange to my ears — steadier than I expected, carrying a weight it did not have an hour ago."I am here," I say. "Still me."He crosses the last few feet and pulls me against him, and I feel his heart through
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 54CHAPTER 54: THE CORONATIONQueen Alara insists on being present.Draven argues against it for ten minutes before she simply tells him she has survived twenty-six years of things that should have killed her and she does not intend to watch her daughter undertake the most dangerous moment of her life from the far end of a telephone line. He stops arguing. He starts preparing a wheelchair instead.We do it at the safe house, in the largest room available, because moving the ritual anywhere else risks exposure and there is no time left to be careful about anything except the ritual itself.Queen Alara directs from her chair, her voice steadier than her body, walking Draven and Ronan through the preparation with the precision of someone who has had twenty-six years with nothing to do but remember exactly how this is supposed to be done.A circle, smaller than the Devourer's, drawn not
Last Updated: 2026-06-29