Page 1 of Dance of Defiance

1

ROMAN

I’ve always foundpower in strength. In sheer will. In maintaining complete control over everything around me.

Tough it out. Be brutal. Be unmerciful.

Be a man.

Some people say “brute strength doesn’t solve everything” or “brains are better than brawn”. But not one of those people ever had their back against the wall with a gun to their head. When you’re looking annihilation in the eye, there’s no time to “think things through” or “weigh the options”.

At that point, it’s sink or swim. Do or do not.

Live or die.

Brute strength has served me well for most of my years. It's part of the way of life that’s been hammered into me, being brought up in the Bratva.

Not just brought up in it, either. Brought up toleadit, as the crown prince to the Nikitin throne—heir to Pavel Nikitin himself.

In this world—my world—control, strength, brutality, and the will to crush your enemies is the difference between life and death.

Tough it out. Be brutal. Be unmerciful.

Be a fucking man.

Tonight, that brute strength allowed me to knock out the guard who wandered too far from the others, drag him into a storage closet, tie and gag him, and steal his mask and uniform.

I glance down at myself. Fuck. I deliberately chose a guard who looked roughly my size. But the all-black suit I’ve just changed into is maybe half a size too small. And the mask…

Shit.

Apparently, the guy I just took down is a smoker, and the inside of his maskreekslike an ashtray.

“You know those things’ll kill you, right?” I grunt at the unconscious guard. I drop to my haunches and double check his binds and gag.

The chloroform I gave him should keep him out for the next thirty minutes. And then when he wakes up he’ll be too weak to do anything but grunt and maybe writhe around on the floor for another half hour after that.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be long gone by then.

I straighten my foul-smelling mask and my too-tight suit, then step out of the storage closet and into one of the opulenthallways of the cliffside mansion. A quick glance to either side, then I slip the metal flask out of my pocket and take a small swig.

Absolute control. Sheer will. Power in strength. Booze doesn't hurt, either.

The vodka burns my throat as I slip the flask into my breast pocket. Then I turn and make my way down the hallway, fitting the earpiece I lifted from my new knocked-out friend into my ear. The security channel crackles to life.

“Perimeter, check in. The Marquis and his guest will enter the main hall momentarily. Coms clear, go.”

I listen as various gruff male voices start to echo back: “perimeter one, all clear”, “perimeter two, all clear”. When there’s a pause after six that stretches a little too long, I clear my throat.

“Perimeter seven, all clear”, I mutter quietly.

Eight through ten check in as I continue down the hallway. I freeze as another man in a featureless mask dressed in an all-black suit—both exactly like mine—walks by. He nods wordlessly. I nod back.

If there’s a secret, unspoken code with any of this, I’mfucked. Actually, there are about a hundred different ways this could go sideways that would result in me being utterly and royally screwed. Luckily, the other guard just keeps making his rounds through the sprawling mansion-slash-lodge as I head down the hall to the main attraction of the evening.

Or, rather, whatwillbe the main attraction.

Blackbriar Hall sits perched high on the edge of a cliff in the Adirondack Mountains, six hours north of New York City. It wasoriginally built by the Vanderbilts, or the Carnegies, or some other gazillionaire family from the turn of the century. They used it as a “weekend getaway camp”.