05

ALEKSANDR

“You killed my soldier?” Dmitiri thunders, turning disbelieving eyes on me.

Lifting my eyes from the table, I fix him with a scathing look that has him grinding his teeth. “Watch your fucking tone when you speak to me.”

“That man was one of my best soldiers,” he hisses, practically breathing fire as he paces in front of me. “There’s a reason I had him fill in for me yesterday for fucks sake. And what do you do? You go and kill him.”

“He put his hands on a woman.”

At the reminder, my insides twist with that familiar darkness, and once again, I regret acting in my rage and killing him so quickly.

Fuck the quick death I gave to him. He’d deserved to be tortured in more ways than his muscle-for-brains would have been able to comprehend. I’d have made a walking corpse of him, plucked out his organs one after the other and made him eat his fucking dick and fingers. By the time I’d be done with him, he would have been begging for mercy. For death.

To think that he’d dared to touch her, the most exquisite creature I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying my undeserving eyes on…

Dmitri gapes. “That’s why you killed him?”

To be frank, I already decided I was going to kill the fucker the second he leaned over and whispered in my ear that he’d like to fuck her, while she stood right fucking there, asking for my digits.

Him putting his hands on her had merely been an excuse. He’d been foolishly bold and it had cost him his life.

“Did you run a nail through your fucking eardrums?” I snap. “I said he was going to fucking rape her.”

On the list of things I loathe with every fiber of my being, repeating myself is well in the top three and it’s not number fucking three.

The soldier standing near the door shifts on his feet, growing increasingly anxious as the hostility in the room skyrockets.

“Can’t fucking believe this, man,” Dmitri scoffs under his breath, fishing a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lighting one. He takes a long drag and blows the smoke into the air. “Hold on, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you killed one of my best soldiers because he was getting handsy with some whore?”

I pride myself on being a man with an extremely tight leash on control. The chances of making me lose my cool are akin to the chances of one piercing the skin of a badger with a rusty blade.

Control is always within my grasp. Always.

Yet hearing my son refer to the dark angel from last night as a whore almost makes me lose it.

“She was an innocent young woman.” I bite out the words through clenched teeth, a warning in my tone for him to let this go. If he keeps this up, he’ll just piss me the fuck off and I would really fucking hate to give my son a black eye, no matter how much of an asshole he is.

“You need to get off your high horse, dad. If we killed a soldier every single time they got forceful with a woman, do you think we’d have any soldiers left?” He laughs as though he finds the situation funny and I have the sinking feeling that he’s high again. “You call me trigger happy but then you come here and you do the exact same thing you’ve been accusing me of doing.”

He dares compare himself to me?

He dares speak to me in this manner? Like I’m one of his little friends?

My blood simmers with anger, the thirst for blood thrumming under my skin, begging for an outlet.

This is what Dmitri fails to realize. That the need for blood--for violence--is practically embedded into the DNA of every man in this brotherhood. We simply learn to control it.

“If you’ve given me rapists for soldiers, then let me know so I can add a fucking overhaul to my damn to-do list.” Staring at him, I shake my head, disappointed in the man he’s grown to become. “I raised you better than this, Dima.”

He snorts, dropping the cigarette on the floor and stomping on it. “You raised me to be a ruthless leader. That’s exactly what I am.”

He’s a disgrace is what he is.

The reason I’m here in the US and not in Russia in the first fucking place is because he’s been doing a horrible job of holding fort here and if I don’t intervene, he’s going to run my businesses and eventually, the entire organisation into the fucking ground.

Oh, and my irresponsible son is getting married. That’s the second reason I’m here.

He said something about the wedding taking place next month. Or was it next week?

Either way, I’ll be there to play my part and let the family know that they will no longer be conducting business with Dmitri. Instead, they’ll be working directly with me, seeing as they are one of our biggest partners over here.

As for the girl, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel sorry for her.

My thoughts are interrupted when the soldier standing at the door faces us, lowering his hand from the comms unit in his ear. “Boss, we’ve got Moretti outside requesting entry.”

Moretti? As in the Italian family Dmitri’s marrying into?

The look of surprise on his face lets me know he also wasn’t aware of this meeting.

I jerk my chin in a nod. “Let him in.”

The soldier relays the information into his earpiece and pauses before turning once more to face me. “There’s a girl with him. The Moretti girl.”

Well, then.

“Seems like I’ll be meeting your wife sooner than we planned, Dima.”

Dmitri scoffs and kicks the butt of the cigarette, sending it skidding across the floor to an unnoticeable corner. “What the fuck do they want?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Waving in approval at the soldier who’s still waiting for my response, I lean back in my chair.

The double doors fall open and a tall, broad man walks in. On his heels is a woman whose head barely reaches his shoulder and she steals my attention off the man in front of her.

Her hips sway from side to side as she walks in, her nose in the air as she keeps her head held high.

My pulse kicks up in my neck and I have to lean forward. I’ve never been a religious man but I find myself praying in that moment that the woman walking toward us is not who I think she is.

I stare down at my hands in disbelief. They’re trembling. My hands never fucking tremble.

Squeezing them into fists, I will them to stop shaking, then I glance up again, hoping I’m dead wrong.

Except it turns out I’m not.

With long curly black hair, shocking green eyes, a face that looks like it had been sculpted by the finest hands and a curvy body made to be worshiped, I couldn’t forget her even if I tried.

It’s the angel from last night.