A Slave For The Don…

Tariq.

The black car glided through the gates of the Sorokin estate, past the guards, and out onto the roads of Moscow.

I leaned my head against the glass as one name rang clearly in my head.

Yelena.

There was something strange about that name, but the girl who bore it intrigued me even more.

I could see her eyes, green and sharp in my memory as she spoke to me.

She dared to tell me what I could do and not do. Yelena asked whether I even knew her. And as if that wasn’t stupid enough, she had lifted her chin and looked at me as though I were a problem she needed to avoid.

A smirk tugged at the corner of my lips.

No one dared to look at me that way. Absolutely no one.

Men would beg to come even an inch closer to me and beg for their lives when they offended me. Women would flock around me, desiring to have their names tied to me, or their bodies. Not one woman in fifteen years had stepped back from my touch as though it might burn her.

“Boss,” Ruslan, my right-hand man, called quietly. “The thief is still in the cellar. He still hasn’t talked.”

My jaw clenched.

Gleb, one of my newly initiated men, had sold my shipment routes to a rival godfather, and I did not leave such debts unpaid. I had been in the dungeon with him before the meeting with Viktor and had left him for my men to deal with. Yet he was proving to be quite stubborn.

Annoyance prickled at my jaw, and I closed my eyes. “I’ll handle him myself.”

The estate was dark when we arrived. I walked past the guards and down the dungeon stairs, where the air smelled of damp stone and the metallic stench of blood.

Gleb was exactly where I had left him, bound to the chair under the dim light. He looked worse than he had hours ago. His lip was split, his shirt black with sweat, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

“Welcome back,” he croaked, his teeth and lips filled with blood as he bared them at me. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“I never forget.” I took off my jacket, folded it, and handed it to Ruslan. Then I rolled my sleeves slowly.

“Now,” I said, pinning him down with a cold stare. “Where were we?”

“I told you and these fuckers already. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You sold my shipment routes to those men. You exchanged messages with them and gave them very precise instructions I’d shared among you. So when I say you know exactly where my ledgers are, I know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t—”

I drew the wire from my pocket.

It was thin, almost invisible, and silver, like a strand of hair. I had used it so many times that it no longer felt like a weapon. It felt like a pen.

Gleb’s brows furrowed, then his eyes widened, fear visible in them as I took his left hand and spread his fingers gently across the arm of the chair.

“You can stop this,” I said. “Right now. All you have to do is speak.”

“Go to hell—”

I looped the wire once around his smallest finger and pulled.

He screamed. The sound bounced off the stone walls and rattled in my teeth. For a long moment, there was only the ugly sound of his bones and flesh giving way.

When I let go, a small, pale shape fell onto the floor. I looked at it for a moment and found that my mind was somewhere else.

Don’t touch the left.

I had not heard her say it. I had seen it in the way her whole body had jerked when my hand drifted toward the hair covering one side of her face.

What was she hiding?

“Where,” I said, softly, “are the records?”

Gleb sobbed. “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

“I am the one who is going to kill you.”

He wept as I took the next finger.

By the third, he was babbling prayers and screaming his lungs out. By the fourth finger, his voice had gone hoarse, and I realized I was still thinking of her. The warmth of her skin. The scent of her hair, faintly scented with soap and something sweet, like jam. The way she had said, “Do you even know me?” with such raw, ridiculous indignation, as if the world owed her an introduction.

I had been gentle with her. It had cost me nothing, and I knew why. Because a girl like that, wounded and proud, would never fall for a monster. But she might trust a man who was kind.

She would hate me, I thought. When she learned the truth, she would hate me. But I didn’t give one fuck.

I wound the wire around his ankle.

“I have all night,” I said. “I’m told it takes ten minutes to lose a foot if you’re patient.”

I drew it tight. Only a little.

Gleb shrieked, and warmth sprayed across my wrists and the front of my shirt. I looked down at my cuffs, now soaked through, and my lips curled with disdain.

“Ruslan,” I sighed. “I am stained.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Do you know how difficult it is to remove blood from Milanese wool?” I flicked a red drop off my sleeve. “Remind me to bill his family.”

“Stop,” Gleb screamed. “Please. Please. I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s in the study. Behind the portrait. The old man’s, the one with the dog.” He gasped for air. “Arkady keeps it. The accountant. He copies everything. Everything is in that book, Don. He wanted proof in case anyone blackmails him. Now that you know, please let me go… I…”

“Thank you,” I said.

Then I stepped back, and Ruslan did what had to be done, mercifully quickly. The dungeon went quiet minutes later.

I washed my hands in the corner basin, watching the water turn from red to pink to clear, when Ruslan appeared behind me.

“Don, Sorokin called about ten minutes ago. He wants to meet in the morning.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It spread across my face slowly, like warmth after a long cold.

Every disaster that had crashed down on Viktor Sorokin in the past two years had begun with me. The seized shipments, the ports that suddenly refused his ships, and the banks that discovered a sudden interest in his debts. I had been the beginning of his downfall, and I had been too fucking patient about it.

Viktor Sorokin had been too proud for too long. He was like a peacock, sitting on his little mountain, certain that no one could climb it.

My fingers clenched around the sink as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my expression hard with determination.

I wanted him to crawl back down into the hole where he belonged.

My father used to say that a man was only as strong as the name he carried, and he had carried the family name “Gotti” with such pride that it killed him.

I was fifteen when they brought my father home in a closed box. A “road accident,” the police said, but I knew better. I had seen the way my father’s partners avoided our door in the months before, along with the sudden problems we had with our shipments. That was only the beginning of our downfall.

We lost everything because somebody more powerful than my father had sworn to destroy him, and that person had succeeded.

They killed my father in cold blood, and it took me years to learn the name of the man who had signed the order.

Viktor Sorokin.

My brother, Rustam, had gone after him alone at eighteen, armed with a pistol and driven by a sense of justice. And what did they do?

They broke his spine on a loading dock and left him for the rats. He survived, but in the worst way imaginable. The doctors said it was a miracle, but Rusta says it was only spite.

He has not walked ever since.

With sweat, blood, and all the anger I had inside me, I worked my ass off, rising from a nobody to a don and eventually becoming one of the seven godfathers of Moscow. I rebuilt everything that my father had lost a hundredfold, and I buried the Gotti name for Volkov.

We left our old house and everything that could lead a man like Viktor to our door.

I learned my father’s trade. I learned how to be gentle because gentle men are underestimated. I learned how to be cruel because cruel men are obeyed. I climbed from the gutters of the docks to a Don’s chair, and from there to the throne.

And all that time, I smiled at Viktor Sorokin across a dozen negotiating tables, and he never once looked at my face or recognized me.

I had wrecked his ports and I had choked his shipments. I watched him lose weight, sleep, and his temper until, at last, he picked up the telephone and began to grovel at my feet, not knowing that I was his specially ordained monster.

And his offer will be his ruin.

I had not planned for the girl. That was the truth. I had planned to refuse Viktor’s offer, take his shipping rights, and leave him hungry for more. I had planned to dismantle him piece by piece. To take his money first, then his friends and that silly pride of his, before taking his life as my trophy.

Then Yelena walked in.

And right then, everything became clear.

Yelena Sorokin had handed me the exact key I needed to ruin a man like her father.

I would marry her.

I would sit at his table, eat his bread, lend him my resources, and call him father-in-law. I would walk his daughter through every ballroom in Moscow on my arm, and then I would make him bow. And when I had stripped him of every last thing, I would let him watch his precious little daughter reduced to nothing beneath my feet.

His daughter’s innocence would be the ultimate price of a revenge that had been long in the making.

I wanted him to feel it! All of it!

Every single thing I’d felt when he destroyed my entire family.

The helplessness.

And the girl?

My hands stopped under the tap.

She would be my collateral.

“Don.” Ruslan’s voice cut through the dark. “Your mother sent a message. She’s coming to Moscow tomorrow.”

My throat tightened.

~

My mother arrived at dawn, tall and elegant as ever, her back straight in a gray coat. She had come with nothing but her handbag, accompanied by a fleet of guards.

She cupped my face in both hands, the way she had when I was a boy, but I couldn’t help noticing how thin and cold her fingers were.

“You’ve lost weight, Tariq.”

“I’m busy, Mama.”

“You are always busy.” She studied me, and I felt the old unease prickle along my spine. “Which is why I have come. I have found you a bride, Tariq.”

“She is from a good family, and I have already spoken to her mother.” She patted my arm, pleased with herself. “A man cannot take care of domestic affairs or handle things alone.”

I sighed. “Don’t worry, Mama.” I took her hand and smiled. “I’ve already found one. She’s a girl from a family I think you will like.”

My heart clenched at the lie. My mother knew the family. But there was no doubt she would hate Yelena if she found out who her father really was and what he had done to us.

“What do you mean?” My mother frowned, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Who is she? Which family is she from? You know a marriage must strengthen our position. Is she from a great house? Do they have power and influence?”

“Enough. More than enough.” I smiled.

“Tariq,” Mother called worriedly.

“You will be so happy when you see who she is. Don’t worry about it.” I glanced at my wristwatch. “I am getting married soon, Mama, here on the estate. I want you to be present so you can meet her.”

Surprise flickered in her eyes. “Soon? How soon?”

“Very soon.” I winked.

She searched my face. “I’m curious to meet this girl who has made you so suddenly interested in marriage after all the years I've spent trying to convince you to take a wife.”

My smile widened.

My gut had told me that Viktor would break.

I’d heard about him and how much he loved and cared for his daughter. He had kept her as close as a jewel in a vault and had never once bargained with his daughter’s name. Yet suddenly he was willing to hand her to a man like me.

All because he could not bear to fall. I fought the urge to chuckle. Desperation was one hell of a driving force.

Ruslan appeared in the doorway.

“Boss. They’re here early.”

My eyes narrowed. Viktor had not even waited twenty-four hours.

I led my mother out and found the entire Sorokin family waiting.

Viktor was standing rigidly in his suit, his smile too fucking wide. Next to him stood his wife, a tall woman in a silk dress, her expression tense and restless despite her attempt to hide her distress with a smile. Between them stood the girl, looking very pale and straight.

Yelena wore a cream dress, and she looked even more beautiful and delicate than she had the day before. Her face was as flawless as a porcelain doll’s. But her hands betrayed her. They were clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles were pale and bloodless. When she stopped before me, I could hear the faint, ragged rhythm of her breath.

She had been crying. Her makeup could hide the swelling, but her eyes were red.

“Don Tariq,” said Viktor. “We have come as you asked.”

“Mr. Sorokin. Madame.” I acknowledged them with a slight nod. Then, to the girl, “Yelena.”

She flinched at the name, so slightly I almost missed it.

“Your daughter has had a night to consider my proposal.” I stepped forward. “I would like to hear it from her own mouth. Does she agree to become my bride?”

Silence fell over the room.

Viktor turned and looked down at his daughter, and I knew there was nothing of a father in that look. It was a warning, a silent order that said… you know what happens if you refuse.

The girl swallowed.

I watched her throat move. I watched her lift her eyes to mine, and for one long moment I saw everything inside them.

I saw the fury she tried so desperately to contain, the fear, the shame, and the stubbornness beneath.

“Yes,” she breathed. Her voice cracked on the word, but it did not break as she met my gaze. “I accept. I will be your bride.”

I glanced at Yelena, to Viktor, then to his wife. My mouth curved.

There they were, the Sorokins.

Right in my trap.