Page 82 of Bratva Sacrifice

It’s easy to shut people up, when you’re the right kind of threatening. I’ve seen him do it. And even though I know I’m unlikely to find anything, I still find myself searching the internet for any hint of information that might lead me to him.

So it’s a nasty shock one afternoon when there’s suddenly about three hundred news articles from various news outlets, all reporting the very same thing.

Alexei Morozov, alleged Russian mafia kingpin, found dead in Moscow.

It’s such a blunt headline. Dry and vague. Even his mafia ties are only alleged, because nothing has ever been proven conclusively. Details are sparse; a few lines that repeat across the various news articles I find. Even in death, Alexei guards his privacy. Tactfully, there are no images. I don’t know if I could have handled them anyway. The speculation is that he was overthrown from within—a typical method of consolidating power amongst the Russian mafia, which doesn’t function with the same familial hierarchy as do other mafia outfits. You secure the alliances you need, and then you revolt. It’s all very feudal, very middle ages. The king is dead; long live the king.

Though the news doesn’t speculate on who his successor might be—Alexei is still very much an enigmatic, if powerful, figure, and the inner workings of his empire are shrouded in still more mystery—I can only assume it must have been Anatoli.

I feel like a widow. And I feel like a fraud. Catherine Miller doesn’t have the right to mourn. She was born only because Catalina died, and Catalina died only because she was too weak to live.

But I find out swiftly in the fraught moments after I make this grim discovery that Catherine is not so very different from Catalina after all. She was born with all of Catalina’s regrets. She inherited Catalina’s fears and weaknesses and love.

I don’t know if an obsession like this can truly be called love. I don’t know if my head has silenced my heart or vice versa. All I know is grief.

And I let it consume me.

∞∞∞

I’m dreaming. I know I am. I have to be.

I don’t know what woke me. It’s so dark, and the only sound is the faint splash of the tide in the distance, a sort of white noise that my brain just glosses over now. But the shadows collect, merge, and form a shape there in the darkness of my living room. It’s a shape I know well. The moon carves hollows into the stern, austere lines of a face I know better than my own.

My heart gives a vicious pulse in my chest. My eyes are still burning from an evening spent mired in grief on my couch. My head swims with the dregs of drunkenness. A wine bottle rests upon the coffee table, tipped on its side. I probably owe this impossible vision to too much merlot. I close my eyes against the cruelty of my imagination.

Warm fingers touch my face, a thumb swiping across my cheek.

“No more of this, koshechka.” It’s an order, from a man accustomed to giving them. And it sounds so much like him. My heart wants so badly to believe what my mind knows can’t be possible.

“Alyosha.” It’s the faintest whisper, as if piercing the silence might fracture the illusion I desperately want to remain. But it’s been so long since I’ve said the pet name, and I want to hear it again. To see him again.

“Nyet.” Just that one word, and it sounds so…relieved. That warm hand slides beneath my head, fingers tangling in my hair greedily. “Alexei Morozov is dead. You must remember this.” There’s the whisk of warm breath across my forehead, lips caressing my temple. “Aleksandr,” he says. “Aleksandr Sokolov.”

Something close to a whimper emerges from my lips. Russian is a language full of nicknames and pet names, and they shift and change in ways impossible for a non-native speaker to predict. Koshechka means something close to ‘little kitten.’ Alyosha is just a familiar form of Alexei. I don’t know any others. No one else says them to him. No one else is permitted.

“Aleksandr,” I repeat.

A rough laugh burns near my ear. “No, koshechka. Others would call me Sasha, or maybe Shura. You—you call me Sashulya.”

Arms slide around me, beneath me. I’m still drunk; I can feel the room spinning even as my head lands upon the curve of his shoulder and I breathe in the familiar scent of him. Warm, spicy. The icy heart of me is cracking, melting. I curl up against him as he lifts me from the couch and carries me toward the stairs. I don’t ask how he knows where my bedroom is. It’s not important.

“Sashulya,” I murmur against his throat. And I feel safe. Protected. At least for the few moments I’m in his arms before he sets me down upon my bed, pulls me out of my rumpled clothing, and attempts to toss the covers over me.

I don’t want to lose him even for a moment. My hands grasp at him as if he might disappear, knocking away blankets to reach for him.

“Under the covers, koshechka. It’s cool tonight.”

“Don’t boss me around.”

In another place—another world—those words might have earned me a patronizing sigh, a remark on my smart mouth. Maybe even a threat I know he never intended to follow through with.

Now it’s met with a low chuckle. He fights his clothes and my hands both, tearing off his shirt and stripping himself of his shoes, socks, pants, boxers. And then at last he’s sliding into bed beside me, and the sheets warm with the heat of his body. He’s like a furnace. He always was. My cold bed is warm again. And yet he gently rebuffs me when I try to pull him over me.

“No, koshechka,” he says, and I find myself turned, legs trapped by the weight of one of his. His lips find the nape of my neck and place a kiss there. “Not tonight.”

I give a little wriggle, and my ass presses against his groin. It’s not for lack of interest, that much is clear. The evidence of that throbs against me. “Why?”

“You are drunk.” But his arm finds my waist, and his palm slides up my belly, covering one breast. Kneading gently.