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Chapter1

MATVEI

Branding isnotthe same level of pain as a tat, and I don’t know why I ever let Rodion convince me otherwise.

But this isn’t just my brand. It’s my vow to swear my soul to the Bratva, my promise to give every ounce of my being to my Bratva kin.

I sit on a stool, molars locked, my feet hooked under the rungs so I don’t topple off. Fucking hell.

“How’s that pain, bro?” Rodion, my younger cousin and best friend, stands a few feet away, strategically out of my reach, his arms crossed on his chest.

“Feels like ink,” I mock. I glare at him. “I’m gonna kick your fucking ass.”

It doesn’t feel like ink. It feels like penance.

Rafail, the head of the Kopolov family Bratva and my oldest cousin, shakes his head. “He’s due,” he mutters.

Vadka presses his lips together, a look of concentration on his face. I look away as he presses the brand into my back. I close my eyes and try to mentally transport the fuck out of here, but it doesn’t work. The pain is too raw, too vivid. My throat burns from swallowing a scream, the sickening stench of seared flesh filling the room. Someone makes a retching sound.

“What’d he tell you?” Vadka says, doing a piss-ass job of hiding his amusement.

I exhale through my nose. “Said it felt like a tat.”

Vadka snorts but keeps his hand still. “You should definitely kick his ass for that, butyou’rethe dumbass who believed him. How is a prickling needle the same as a hot iron scarring your flesh?”

If a tat is a paper cut, a brand is severing a limb.

Jesus.

The pain makes sweat dot my brow. I have to take my mind off this.

So instead… I think of Anissa.

The woman who betrayed my family. The woman who’smine.

Anissa fucking Laurent.

The runaway. The ghost. The girl who managed to slip the noose off her neck and vanish into thin air like a goddamn myth. But my mind is a vault of every detail I’ve gathered over the years I’ve tracked her.

Sister to Polina Kopolova, mypakhan’s wife.Both of them pawns in a brutal game of life and death, and neither knew of the other’s existence. Anissa still doesn’t.

She’s sometimes blonde, sometimes auburn, sometimes short or dyed black. Her eyes are a striking blue but cold. Always analyzing. Watching. She looks at the world as if it’s a threat to her.

Iwant to be the one who makes her look that way.

Her mouth—full lips that smirk like she knows every secret you’ve ever kept, smug because she’s clever enough to wipe out full identities. And just above those pouty lips, she has a birthmark I’m obsessed with. I imagine resting my finger there when I finally have her pinned beneath me.

“The next part is the hardest.Breathe,”Vadka reminds me when he lifts the larger brand, so hot I can see steam rising from it in the cool basement air.

“Fuck,” Rodion says, paling. Maybe he’s the one making the sound like he’s about to vomit. I imagine the satisfying feeling of my fist connecting with his jaw.

I close my eyes and breathe through my nose. The problem is, it isn’t just the pain, but the way the smell of burnt flesh brings back the worst memory of my life, the one I try to bury.

I remember the way the walls of The Cottage basement absorbed the sounds of my brother’s screams, the cement floor slick with his blood. I stood, my arms crossed on my chest as cold decision settled in my veins. My brother betrayed us. I had to watch him die. My younger brother, the one I had protected and half raised, the one who I’d give my own life for, committed the unforgivable sin of betrayal. He traded his blood for a pocket full of promises from our enemies.

And now, I’m hunting down the girl who made betrayal look easy.

She ran from mypakhan,made a mockery of our family, and then joined forces with our enemies. Made the whole world think we were weak.