Page 120 of Bratva Jewels Box Set

DIAMOND

PROLOGUE

MAXIM

Four Years Earlier

I’m standing on the beach in the Hamptons, looking out at the swirling gray sea thousands of miles away from my home. My heart has been ripped out of my chest as the stormy sea crashes against the shore, mimicking my melancholy.

How can she be dead?

I only spoke to her this morning. I don’t understand how this all happened. Elena was excited to be getting out of Manhattan for the weekend, away from school and the grueling hours spent training to be a ballerina. She and her childhood best friend, Anna, had been invited to an end-of-summer party in the Hamptons. She had told me how excited she was going to the party put on by a Manhattan influencer she has become friends with, and was giddy with excitement over meeting a heap of celebrities that were going to the event. It worried me her excitement over that life, a world away from our home in Sochi, a town that overlooks the Black Sea.

Sergei, my co-worker, mentor, and Anna’s father, stands beside me. “I don’t believe it, Maxim.” He shakes his head. “Nothing makes sense. Why would they have gotten into the surf when they don’t know how to swim? I don’t believe my little girl is gone. I won’t accept it. They never found their bodies. Until they do, I have hope.”

A flash of lightning streaks across the sky. I keep staring at the storm rolling in. Witnesses said they saw the girls go into the water but never saw them come out. I wish I had faith like Sergei does, but the police, coast guard—everyone—has been out combing the sea until it became too treacherous. It’s like they just vanished into thin air.

What happened, Elena?

1

MAXIM

“Please, please don’t kill me,” Dmitri, the man I’m here to scare, begs. He knows who I am. Everyone in the Bratva knows who I am. They call meThe Shadow of Deathbecause there’s no way you’ll be seeing the light again after I’ve finished with you.

“You fucked up.” I push the end of my gun into his temple. The man is shaking like a leaf. It’s pretty disgusting really, he’s supposed to be some big deal in the Bratva, but he looks like he’s seconds away from pissing himself.

“I know, I know. But it wasn’t me, it was my cousin. This is all on him,” Dmitri pleads.

My bosses have informed me of the headaches Dmitri and his cousin Nikolai have caused for the organization. They are not pleased at all with them. Lucky for Nikolai, he’s already dead. Apparently, his ex opened him up like a bad tin of tuna just before Interpol turned up to bust him.

“Blaming the dead, come on now, Dmitri. That’s low, even for you.” Unfortunately, my job today is not to put a bullet between his eyes like I want to because Dmitri is annoying as fuck. “Now, what the hell should I do with you?” I taunt him.

“Please, I will give you anything you want. You want girls? I can get them to you—young girls.”

I pistol-whip his face for that comment. I’m no fucking pedophile.

“The fact you just offered me underage girls is enough for me to end you.”

Dmitri gulps and tries to swallow, his eye bleeding from where I hit him.

“But today is your lucky day. They don’t want you dead, yet,” I say, emphasizing the wordyet,and his body relaxes for a moment. “But your time is limited. Because of the stunt your fucking cousin pulled selling the jewels and not telling anyone, they believe you are the only person alive who knows the whereabouts of these jewels.” I sneer, stepping away and standing in front of him.

He looks up at me, his right eye closing over where I hit him.

“You have six months to find every single jewel, or I will kill you. So, if I was you, I wouldn’t fuck around, time’s a-ticking,” I say, tapping my watch.

He stands up shakily. “I need your help then.”

His statement makes me laugh, and I turn and look at Sergei, who just shrugs, a bemused look on his face.

“And why the fuck would I help you?”

“I already know where two of the jewels are.”

“How is this my problem?”

“I can’t go anywhere near them—they know my face. You could steal them, or at least one of them. Keep her safe while I find the others.”