Page 21 of Deceptive Vows

I never expected her to still be alive after I’d been out of action for three months with the truth of who took her locked away in my head. I still hoped to find her though.

The time spent looking for her, however, was to no avail. We just discovered what we already knew. That she was dead but worse had happened to her.

By the time those bastards Raul sold her to were finished with her, we didn’t even have her remains to bury. She was sold as a sex slave, raped, and killed. Then they burned her.

I was never going to find anything.

That revelation is what hit me only days ago, so my next move was to kill Raul and usurp his empire.

“Did you get the girl?” Father asks.

“I did. I plan to marry her next weekend. The cartel heads will all be here to witness it. I have left Sebastian in Mexico, along with the only remaining lieutenant to tie things up.”

It turns out the old man was useful, after all. I kept him alive at first because I thought he’d be able to tell me who Raul was working with. Although I never knew his name, I’d seen him several times before and knew he was like a lapdog to Raul.

Last night, after I finished with the princess, I tortured him, too, and only decided to keep him alive because he was the last one left who would know the cartel dealings. He will tell me everything I need to know about the cartel and be the liaison between the other heads.

“Wonderful.”

“And when do we get to meet the future Mrs. Dmitriyev?” Ivan gives me a stiff smile.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Bring her to dinner on Sunday,” Father cuts in.

We always have dinner together as a family on the first Sunday of every month. This Sunday is that day. That gives me one week.

“Of course.” I dip my head.

That dinner is going to be interesting. Fuck knows what kind of state I’ll be in by then after being around Adriana. In the short space of time I’ve spent around her, I’ve flit continuously from being so hard I want to fuck her to being so angry her father was Raul that I want to kill her.

“Then we’ll get to see if the rumors of her beauty are true,” Ivan adds, cutting into my thoughts.

The devious flicker of mischief in his eyes speaks of his interest in her, which is a problem because he’s not getting her.

She’s mine. I’m not going to allow him to play his little fucked up games to take her from me and screw with my plans.

“The rumors were very true, brother,” I answer, giving him back the same stiff smile. “Her beauty surpasses the goddess Aphrodite herself.”

“Good for you.”

Yes, motherfucker. It is.

I’d say exactly that to him if our father weren’t present. Father doesn’t like the tension between us. Or the competition.

Everything has always been a competition between Ivan and me. He is my rival in every sense. Even now as I stand here, the competition is on as to who gets to be the next Pakhan of the Baranov. Him or me.

Ivan is the Sovientrik, and he got that title fair and square. He’s been in the game longer than I have, and when the position came up, it was a given he’d get it. It was also a given that he’d be the next Pakhan.

Until our father changed the rules.

Like most of the brotherhoods in our alliance, in the Baranov the oldest son of the current leader becomes the next Pakhan when he retires or dies. It’s only in circumstances where there are no heirs that the current leader chooses the next from the other members of the Brotherhood. If that happens, the Sovientrik usually gets the position because he’s the closest to the Pakhan in leadership.

This is the first time that a leader has changed things up and practically created a competition between his sons.

A competition Ivan hates because now that he’s thirty-eight and I’m twenty-eight, and we’re both already part of the leadership, we’re both on equal footing to get the lead. He’s no longer entitled to a God damn thing.

Being the leader of the Baranov is not something I’m going to allow him to take, either, if what I’m doing is pushing me ahead of him. I singlehandedly brought down the Alvarez Cartel, and I own it. That’s going to bode well for me.