Page 2 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

One Year Earlier

V ictor

My wife is outside in the garden talking with the gardener, looking quite happy and content.

Freya Harris. My wife.

I thought I had finally escaped Ivan Volkov’s wretched plans. He did have me engaged to a slut a few years ago, the same woman I took to Slavik’s territory, but something changed.

After Slavik and Aurora, Ivan changed course. The women that had been a bunch of entitled bitches had not made the final cut. Since then, one by one, us Brigadiers had slowly fallen to the whims of our Pakhan, our boss, Ivan Volkov.

I don’t know why Ivan changed his mind. To a point I understood why he’d chosen the wives he had for all of his men.

Aurora had been part of the Italian mafia, those connections alone had proven invaluable, and of course, it also helped that Ivan now had all those territories, which had been divided between his Brigadiers.

Then there was Adelaide, the sweeter daughter of a millionaire empire.

Again, that shit show had also played out, bringing Ivan the victor in that battle.

This played into Charlotte, one of the most hated and abused daughters I ever saw of the Evil Savages MC, which was now controlled by Rage, and of course, aligned with Ivan Volkov.

After that, Niamh, the Irish mafia princess, who inherited her fortune, which if my memory serves, was given to Ivan Volkov.

Now as I look toward my wife, I wonder what she brings to the table. We’ve been married for a month at this point, and I’d been successful in avoiding her, and it wasn’t hard to do.

Freya wasn’t bad. She was nothing like the first woman I’d been forced to be engaged to.

This woman was young and inexperienced. She was a fucking virgin, and yes, her father made sure he got her checked as well.

Piece of shit that man was, although the world wouldn’t know it.

Harris Harris, yep, that was his fucking name.

His parents loved calling him that, and they said it was the name of their future empire.

They hadn’t been wrong. Harris Empires was one of the biggest in the world, with so many different umbrella corporations. Corporations involving beauty, entertainment, media, as well as real estate and software.

I had a feeling Ivan wanted this marriage between myself and Freya because of her connections to the empire.

Although, I already had my sources check, and so far, Harris didn’t love his daughter.

He certainly didn’t like her, and none of his empire would come to her.

At the moment, it wasn’t even equally divided between his two sons.

No one knew who would inherit the Harris empire.

I had a feeling with Ivan’s involvement, it might go to Freya.

Also, the world didn’t know that Harris had a cruel streak, and on the side loved to take female sex slaves. He paid a fortune for men to hunt down the women he wanted so he could use them as he saw fit.

The man had a list of problems longer than my fucking arm. He liked to hurt women. Rarely men. The guy was a fucking coward, and when I saw him dealing with Ivan, he was more than happy to just bow down and do what the fuck Ivan wanted.

From my first meeting with Harris, I fucking hated him.

He had nothing to say about his daughter when questioned.

It was like, to him, this was a done deal.

His daughter was a medically proven virgin, untouched by any man.

She was never found at parties. In fact, her picture was never in the paper, which I had a feeling Harris was responsible for. I thought he was just being cocky.

In fact, the reason Harris couldn’t answer a single fucking question about his daughter was because he didn’t know any of the fucking answers.

Freya was not what I imagined. To me, she was beautiful.

Her thick brown hair was curled, and it fell around her and always looked so silky to the touch.

She had not had any plastic surgery, although I was aware of her father wanting her to have some.

Her brown eyes portrayed a kindness her father’s didn’t possess, and to Harris, his daughter was fucking boring.

One of the rooms upstairs in my home now housed not one, but two sewing machines, something called an overlocker, and there was a ton of fabric as well.

I hadn’t been prepared for her hobby. So, I had no choice but to make that shit up with my bare hands.

I expected Freya to hate it, but she had thrown her arms around my neck, hugged me tightly, and said thank you.

I don’t recall a woman ever saying thank you for something I made.

I made most of the furniture in my home.

It was a little hobby of mine and what I liked to do to calm down.

Some people liked to shoot at shit, me, I liked to make stuff.

I’ve done a lot of killing in my lifetime, and I’m not looking to add to it.

I had seen she’d decorated the outside of the sewing room with a single quilt that had words, Sewing Room , on it.

The fabric was pretty, that I couldn’t deny.

She had very colorful tastes. Her other hobby was makeup.

We currently had separate rooms, mainly because I refused to give any part of myself to this woman.

I would not fall like the other Brigadiers.

I do not love my wife. Other than our wedding night, I hadn’t fucked her either.

Our wedding night had been a disaster. Never had I made a woman cry from having sex. I’m used to having women beg at my feet. I’ve also never been with a virgin, so it was all fucking new for me.

Which is why it surprised me that Freya hugged me and thanked me for making her sewing room.

It hadn’t been hard for me to do. I felt so fucking bad for making her cry and bleed, that making her something seemed like the right thing to do.

Freya didn’t have a lot of jewelry either.

I noticed that while helping to lug all of her shit into my home.

My cell phone started to ring, and I had already turned away from the garden and made my way upstairs.

I didn’t go to my room, but instead made a detour, turning to the right, and going toward one of the designated rooms for my wife.

The first was her sewing room. She had attempted to use those stick-on hooks to hang her quilt from, but I changed that, installing a knife hook that wouldn’t slowly dislodge from the door.

It also made it permanent. There was no way Ivan was going to let me kill my wife.

My wife was with me for life. There was no getting away from her, even if I wanted to.

Opening the door, I stepped into the room, and I wasn’t surprised to see her space completely clean.

Freya also liked to clean. My chef, Umberto, complained that she would offer to wash dishes, or attempt to clean up.

I had staff who cleaned. She didn’t have to lift a finger.

All she had to do was stay out of my fucking way and be quiet.

“What?” I asked, answering the call.

I had already seen it was Ivan, and although I had a deep respect and would do anything for him, I was still pissed that he made me marry a woman I didn’t love or want.

“Someone is a little testy this fine lunchtime,” Ivan said.

I hadn’t had lunch. Usually, I was out keeping an eye on Ivan’s vested interests. I ran this territory, but it all belonged to Ivan. He just paid me to do my job, and I was damn good at it.

My territory thrived. I did have some problems after the last few years.

Between Ivan faking his death and one of our Brigadiers being a traitor, leaving his territory exposed, as well as the cartel threat, MCs, and soldiers who thought they had a chance at taking over and running stuff.

It had been a shit show for a long time.

Finally, I had everything under control. No uprising, no problem cartels. The MCs have backed the fuck off, or been outright killed.

We were all back on top. Probably because Ivan refused to fucking stop.

I had seen stubborn assholes, but no one rivaled Ivan Volkov.

That man knew what he wanted, and he went for it.

Either that, or he didn’t have a fucking clue what he wanted and it just sort of came to him.

Either way, I was more than happy to work for him.

Ivan was many things. He was cruel, manipulative, intelligent, deadly.

He was everything anyone would want in a leader, but all of those negatives were often directed at our enemies.

He was not cruel to those that followed him.

Those who became his were taken care of.

Those that threatened or opposed him, well, none of them were alive to tell.

They were all fucking dead. I’d helped to put several of them in the ground.

Running fingers through my hair, I tried to assess if there was anything else Freya needed. One entire wall was covered in neatly folded fabric, but as I looked at her collection, I saw some of her online orders had arrived, and although it was neatly folded, I knew she needed more shelves.

“I’m fine,” I said, leaving the room and heading toward the back door from the library. Freya was out the front and although she was no gardener, she loved to spend a lot of time outside.

Rafael, my gardener, didn’t mind her at all.

I asked him if he wanted me to stop her from disturbing him, but he liked her.

Rafael was a sixty-year-old man with grey hair, but he kept himself in shape.

A happily married man, who’d been with his woman forty years, and often liked to say the key to a good marriage is letting the woman think she is in charge.

I like Rafael. He was loyal. And he’d helped save my ass a few times, especially when shit had us spread quite thin. He’d been there to slit the man’s throat who dared to sneak into my home. We’d cleaned up together, and in an odd kind of way, he was more of a father to me than my own ever was.