His words hit like a bucket of ice water. He’s right. We can’t afford to lose any more votes.
“Whose vote?” I ask, running through the list in my head of names I assumed were locked in for me.
“Andrey Nowak.”
I shut my eyes, letting the whiskey burn down my throat.
Nowak was supposed to be mine. He hates the old guard. Hates the way they skim from the organization’s profits. And yet he voted against me.
I can already guess who convinced him to switch sides, and I wonder what dirt my dear mother has found on him.
“In a month,” Vasili says, “there’s a party at Adamecki’s place. You’re going. You shake Nowak’s hand, flash that smile he likes so much, and you get that goddamn vote, Damien. Or we’re screwed. Big time.”
I just nod and turn toward the window.
“Maybe you should get married,” he says over his shoulder as he turns away.
I nearly choke on my drink. “Me?”
“Nowak’s a family man. So are ten other members. Marriage screams responsibility. You’re thirty-four, and everyone expects the head of the Polish mafia to have a family. You know what their values are.”
My jaw tightens. I want to argue, but deep down, I know he’s right.
A wife, maybe even kids, would buy me the votes I’m missing. Votes I won’t get otherwise because I’m too much of a “wild card” in their eyes.
The Polish mafia does things differently. Every five years, there’s a vote. A council of twelve members from the most powerful families in the country, all directly tied to the organization, meet in a secret location and choose who will call the shots for the next term.
It’s their way of keeping things “fair.”
I won the last election. But this time? I can smell betrayal in the air.
It started with whispers in Warsaw. Rumors that I was in bed with the Russians instead of protecting our own interests.
And nothing terrifies the old guard more than the unknown.
For years, we survived off crumbs left by other criminal empires. Before I took power, the old regime wanted to expand into organ trafficking. And when I “stole” the election, there were people who only saw the numbers in the loss column, not the moral filth of the plan.
They called me reckless. They said I’d run the organization into the ground.
But we’re still here, stronger than ever. Our profits have multiplied tenfold under my watch.
And that’s exactly why I’m a problem for the ones still clinging to the shadows in the old country.
Especially for one person in particular.
When I left Warsaw all those years ago, I swore the only reason I’d ever go back would be to slamhercasket shut before I buriedher. It’s been seventeen years now, and I still can’t step foot in Poland as long as she’s breathing.
It's a small price to pay for my sister Berna's safety—a deal with the Devil sealed in my blood, one that Sarin brokered the night he pulled me from her claws.
My freedom in exchange for distance.
My dear mother has forgotten what it means to create a monster. Forgotten the teeth I've sharpened over the years as her most flawless blade. Forgotten the promise I made that she would die by my hand.
And now she wants her throne back.
But before I would see her sit there again, I'm ready to burn the whole damn organization to the ground. Take her secrets, the ones she's hoarded for decades, and scatter them like ashes.
Because Marzena Kaminski may have given me life.
