Page 1 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

1

BASTIAN

For a month I’ve been interviewing women to find the one who’ll carry my heir, and the woman across from me makes number eleven.

She’s spent the last ten minutes telling me how healthy she is and how discreet she’d be, but I stopped listening almost immediately.

I knew she wasn’t the one before she even sat down, and nothing she’s told me in the past thirty minutes has changed my mind.

“Thank you for coming in,” I tell her, and I close the folder with her photograph and her records and slide it to the edge of the table. “My associate will be in touch if we decide to go forward.”

She knows what that means. I see it in the way her chest deflates and her shoulders droop. She lifts her coat off the back of the chair and puts it on, then she offers her hand which I shake.

My eyes follow her as she walks out, leaving me wondering if I’m ever going to find the right woman or if this is futile.

After hundreds of applications, I selected the candidates I believe have the best shot at matching my needs.

Unfortunately, I may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, because all I’m getting in these interviews are rejects.

Akim’s in the corner, folded into a large leather chair.

He’s watched the whole interview through half-lowered eyes, and now he turns his phone face-down on his knee and looks at me.

“You sent her out fast.” He cocks his head at an angle as he eyes me. The way he looks at me is very telling—that smug look that says “I told you so” without using the words. He thinks my focus should be on my empire, but planning for the future is good for business. Someone has to take over when I’m not here.

“There was nothing to keep her for.”

“You’re wasting your time.” He talks to me plainly and without any fear in it, which is rare in the men who work for me and part of why I keep him close. “You’ve been at this a month, Boss. The organization doesn’t need an heir to keep running. It’d pass to a capable man and go on. You know that as well as I do.”

I do know it, better than he could ever imagine. Akim is young, and he’s passed every test I ever threw at him.

For all intents and purposes, he’s the man who could run it all. If I died tonight without a son, the Dravenko Bratva would be his within a week, and not one of my men would say a word against it. They all know the respect I have for this man.

Moscow and my empire beyond would be in good hands.

But it still sits wrong to me. When an empire goes to a man who isn’t blood, it isn’t an empire anymore—it’s a prize to be won, and a prize draws challengers.

Challengers turn into a war.

My father understood that. He built everything so it would come down to me and to my sons after me. I won’t let that line of succession fall to someone else if I can help it.

“I’ll find the right woman,” I tell Akim. Then I square the stack of folders on the table and line up their edges. “Send in the last one.” With only one more today, I’m losing hope, but I won’t quit yet.

He leans over and says a few words into the intercom, and a moment later the door opens again.

The woman who comes in is young, a lot younger than the rest of them, and she crosses the room quietly and sits down across from me before I’ve finished getting to my feet.

She leaves me caught halfway out of my chair as Akim makes a quiet sound from deep in his chest.

Maybe it’s a rumble of acknowledgement because he sees what I see, or maybe it’s protest or warning.

Her photograph didn’t do her justice. Her hair’s black, falling past her shoulders, and her grey eyes hold mine without the nervous flinch I’ve gotten used to from previous women.

Her coat’s old, mended at one cuff with thread a shade darker than the rest of it. She’s twenty, going by the file, and she’s beautiful. Which is dangerous.

I’ve spent the majority of my time in this position of pakhan with one conviction—that women are a weakness in this world and to make myself vulnerable by giving my enemies an in-road can never be tolerated.

It’s a lesson that came with pain so blinding it almost destroyed me. One I never have to be taught twice.