Page 13 of Bratva’s Vow (Bratva’s Undoing #2)

CHAPTER NINE

MAXIM

S ergei drove in silence, jaw tight, the faint flicker of the dash casting his profile in a hard glow. Two other vehicles tailed us. One up close, the other hanging back at a cautious distance. My men. Armed. Watchful. Ready.

We were heading into the kind of meeting that didn’t call for suits and speeches. This was the kind that smelled of gasoline and gunpowder.

The location was a gravel clearing near the docks. An abandoned construction site that had never quite turned into anything. Concrete slabs, rusted scaffolding, half-sunken shipping containers, and towering cranes that loomed like metal skeletons over a man-made graveyard.

Arkady was already there. Of course he was. He liked to arrive early to wait. Made him feel like he had the upper hand.

What he didn’t know was that a man who waited had already chosen to follow and could never lead .

I stepped out of the car and adjusted my blazer, the chill biting under my collar. Gravel crunched beneath my boots as I walked forward, Sergei flanking me to the left while Darius and Dezi hung back near the cars, on alert.

Arkady leaned against the hood of a matte black SUV, surrounded by three of his men who stood with the bored, dangerous ease of people used to violence.

“Maxim.” He pushed off the car and extended a hand. “You look… expensive.”

Like a supervillain. Wren’s description. My lips twitched, and I had to fight back my smile.

“I do my best.” I clasped his hand in a firm grip. “No sense dying in cheap shoes.”

He barked a laugh. “That’s fair. I take it business is good, then?”

“Business is always good as long as you’re above ground and still breathing.”

A luxury to men like us.

“You have news about the crypto wallets?” Arkady asked as we walked side by side across the lot, away from the cars and the bodyguards.

“You’ll have it by the weekend,” I said. “The wallets are secure. My guys are transferring the goods onto new hardware to be sure. Clean, untraceable.”

“Good,” he said, hands in his coat pockets. “I’ve waited long enough.”

I didn’t rise to the bait. Arkady liked to poke. He liked to rattle the bars to see if the lion inside would bite.

“You’ll get what’s yours. You always do.”

He hummed in approval, but his eyes—flat, wolfish—didn’t soften. “Heard you’ve had a bit of trouble lately. With the chief of police.”

I didn’t react. Didn’t blink. “I’m dealing with it. ”

“Sure you are. But you know how rumors spread. Especially when things go… sideways.”

“I’ve got it under control.”

“Good, because if you need help, I’m always willing to offer some of my men.”

“That’s quite generous of you, Arkady, but I’m good.”

“Don’t mention it. Men like us need to have each other’s backs.”

I stopped walking. So did he. The wind hissed through the unfinished steel framework above us, making it groan like the bones of something ancient.

He turned to face me fully. “Heard something else too.”

“Seems like you’ve been hearing a lot lately.”

“Well, this one’s quite interesting.” His voice was casual. “Heard you’ve got a boy toy living with you now.”

Inside, my blood turned to ice. Nothing showed on my face.

I’d trained too long for that. But his words detonated behind my ribs like a timed charge.

My pulse thudded hard, as if my heart was deciding whether to stop or explode.

I’d spent years mastering silence, control, the art of revealing nothing, but that nameless flicker of Wren on Arkady’s lips scraped against every nerve.

This was the one thing I couldn’t afford.

The one soft thing I had no armor for.

Arkady smirked. “Imagine my surprise when Boris sent me a message about that boy. Then poof. Radio silence. Both he and his brother disappeared. Didn’t take me long to put two and two together.”

The air between us dropped ten degrees.

“I thought it was odd at first. Why you’d throw extra security on a civilian. Maxim Morozov, merciless. Cares about nothing else but power. Until this boy. So I watched, and sure enough, the script that followed was intriguing. ”

My jaw flexed.

“You treat him like gold. Like he’s irreplaceable. He’s got more eyes on him than you do. Makes a man curious what’s so special about him.”

I didn’t realize I’d moved until my hand was around his throat.

Arkady didn’t flinch. His men didn’t step in. Both his and mine were at a standoff.

“Do you want to fuck with me?” I growled, my face inches from his. “Do you think that’s a smart idea?”

He held my gaze, eyes glinting with something sharp and dangerous. But he didn’t reach for his weapon.

“Relax, Morozov, I don’t want to hurt the boy. Though you just confirmed everything I suspected. Believe me, I have no interest in where you get your dick wet. As long as you keep priorities in order. Can’t have any more of that airport fuckup to inconvenience me.”

My hand stayed on his throat a second longer. Then I let go and stepped back, adjusting my blazer like nothing had happened.

“If I were you, Arkady, I’d forget you ever said anything tonight that wasn’t about the crypto wallets. Sometimes the deadliest thing you can do is to know too much.”

We stood in tense silence for a moment longer.

Then he offered a quick nod and turned, signaling to his men.

“I look forward to what’s mine on Saturday, Morozov.

A word of caution, though. Not everyone in our world is as accepting as I am.

You don’t flaunt the thing you’d kill for unless you’re ready to kill for it every day. ”

“I’ve buried for far less.” I let the warning drift in the air as Arkady walked back to his car and got in.

I waited until he was gone, the tail lights of his car fading into the distance, before I let the tremor ripple through my body. A cold knot formed in my stomach .

I felt sick.

“Everything okay?” Sergei said.

“Arkady’s up to something.”

Sergei frowned, staring after Arkady’s entourage. “What do you want to do about it? Have them followed?”

“Yes. And take out the men he brought with him tonight. All of them.”

Sergei hesitated. “You sure? Arkady’s meant to be an ally.”

“He stopped being that the moment he mentioned Wren.”

He’d crossed a line. Not carelessly—deliberately. Testing me. Provoking me. If this was the game he wanted to play, I would play it well.

“I want him to understand the price of talking out of turn. Of knowing too much. I want him to watch his men die and know that could’ve been him. That should’ve been him, but I showed him mercy.”

From the look on Sergei’s face, he didn’t agree with me, but he knew by now Wren meant too much to me for me to be bothered by what he thought.

He spoke into his comm unit, and one of the cars that had followed us drove away.

I climbed into the back seat of the car, and Sergei slammed the door shut. I clenched and unclenched my fist.

“Home?” Sergei asked.

“Yes.”

The meeting with Arkady hadn’t lasted long, but our location was forty-five minutes from my house. A long enough drive for me to convince Wren I’d had a quick business dinner, then returned home to spend the evening with him.

Arkady.

That son of a bitch had me under surveillance. I had to teach him a lesson.

When I walked through the front door of the house almost an hour later, it was dark.

Quiet. Except for the low hum of the television.

I followed the sound into the living room, where Wren lay fast asleep on the couch, a half-eaten large pepperoni pizza on the coffee table.

My stomach tightened. Had he disobeyed me and called for delivery?

I picked up his new phone from the floor next to the couch. I’d deliberately dropped his older one so he would have no more excuse to not use the more updated version. What Wren didn’t know was that I’d also programmed my fingerprint to unlock the device.

A quick scan of his phone set my mind at ease. He hadn’t ordered in, but he’d called Nik. Just like I’d told him to do. As long as he kept following my instructions, I could keep him safe from men like Arkady, couldn’t I?

I brushed my finger across his smooth cheek, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

As long as there’s breath in my body, I won’t let anything happen to you.

I scooped Wren up in my arms. He stirred but didn’t wake.

Just sighed and leaned into me like he knew he was safe.

I tucked him close to my chest and carried him up the stairs to our bedroom.

Gently I laid him down but didn’t let go right away.

I toed off my shoes, which was hard to do because of the laces, but eventually, they fell to the floor with a thud.

I curled around him, still dressed in my expensive clothes, and held him too tightly.

Could I keep him safe?

Wren snuggled farther into my embrace, and I breathed in deeply, burying my nose in his hair. Wren always smelled good. A blend of sweetness and spice that was uniquely him. It was soothing, a calming presence amid the chaos that was my life.

As I lay there in our bed, staring at the moonlit silhouette of Wren’s peaceful face, every inch of him unconscious and vulnerable beneath me, I promised myself one thing. They could take everything I had, they could take my life even, but they wouldn’t lay one finger on him. No one could hurt him.

For the first time since I fought for the position, I wished I’d never become a Pakhan.