Page 11 of Scarlet Vows (Yegorov Bratva #3)

Chapter Eight

ILYA

I’m glad Monday morning doesn’t begin at the Yegorov mansion for me.

Facing Alina isn’t something I’m in the mood for. She made it clear last night that the marriage, if indeed it goes through, is strictly business. I plan to completely respect that. It should make it easier, having something I knew confirmed.

But the text made me think of what Isaak said. Can she see how I feel? Can others? Is it obvious to others?

I don’t want it to be.

A crush, feelings, whatever the fuck you want to call it is something I’m never going to act on, so it may as well not be there.

I just don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.

But her text drove home a point I need to remember. I need to be very aware of how I act around her.

Especially if we’re doing this.

And I have a sinking feeling, which sometimes morphs too close to elation, that we are.

Alina’s always been a girl of her word. She’s never been wishy-washy .

Even in this, she’s stuck to her initial leap into speaking without thinking. She’s stuck to her saying she’s going to do this.

Her idea, not mine.

Her push, not mine.

Her absolute insistence, not mine.

I take a deep breath. We’re going to be living together in a week, on paper as man and wife, in life as friends helping friends. Roommates. Whatever you want to call it.

I’m aware anything I may feel needs to be buried so fucking deep that not even a skilled archaelogist will be able to dig it up.

With a sigh, I look at her text from this morning.

Alina

We need to meet to get the license before the wedding. Tomorrow?

Nope, she’s not backing down, and with her bending over and tying herself into pretzels for me, I can’t use Demyan or even her concerns as an excuse. She’ll treat them like rejection. Or worse. She’ll think her text last night was right.

We’re doing this.

“And it’s going to be fine, Ilya,” I mutter. “All of it.”

I look across the road at the gate that forms part of the fence surrounding the lush grounds of my mansion.

Even if I don’t come up with a bride, this is mine.

Last night after her texts, I finally opened the folio and read through it all.

If I don’t marry, this is mine, all the taxes and rates and upkeep to come out of my pocket, even if I choose not to live there. Another pakhan would, because although I’d own it, the stipulation in my charming grandfather’s will is I can’t sell it in my lifetime.

Of course, if I marry a bratva-connected bride and make it through twelve months of marriage, then I can do what the fuck I want.

The mansion is the albatross if I choose to walk.

No wonder my mother didn’t like the old asshole.

Aleksandr Belov isn’t exactly endearing himself to me.

One thing I was shocked to read last night was that he had his base both here and in Russia, but he lived and operated things from here.

Silently, covertly, with other bratva, maybe under other names. I won’t know until I go through everything.

But Jordan Smith’s papers and notes are very detailed and precise.

The mansion, the base for the Belov Bratva in the USA, is here, operating beyond those gates.

And they’re expecting me at some point soon.

So it may as well be now.

I send Alina a text.

Me

Going to look at my grandfather’s home and meet the bratva.

Alina

Let me know how it goes. U’ll be a star.

I smile and put everything away, apart from my ID and the pass that my grandfather included for me in his will.

Yes, so nice that the man went to all this trouble to prep for me taking control but never made an effort to meet me.

I drive up to the gates and hand over the pass and my ID.

The man blinks, makes a call, and lets me through.

I’m almost shocked he didn’t pat me down.

In any other circumstance, I’d be armed, but I’m not.

A confident leader, one who has a birthright, shouldn’t walk in with a tool of war against those who are to be under his command.

Demyan isn’t armed, unless there’s a reason, at his home. And now that there are children, our weapons are locked away.

While there are no children in this mansion, I decide to enter like I’m setting foot in my home.

It’s weird I’m able to take possession of this right away, but it’s that double-edged sword meant to lure me in with luxury and hang heavily around my neck if I choose to turn my back.

Asshole is too weak a word. Too American, but it will do.

I want to keep animosity from my expression here, just in case that leak in my emotional interior world encompasses everything.

The mansion is sprawling, much bigger than I thought it would be, as are the grounds.

This is beyond a step up from my modest duplex, because it is modest. The upstairs primary bedroom is essentially the entire floor. There’s the bathroom and the small study, but it isn’t huge.

My entire place is big enough. Bigger, really, than what I need.

But when I compare them? I’ve been living in a matchbox for the past five years.

I park outside, and I cross the paved driveway onto the porch that’s too majestic to be called something so homey.

The double doors are over-large, and I ring the bell.

All around me, on the picturesque grounds, from the shadows of the copses of trees, I can feel eyes on me. I passed two different guardhouses and something that looked like a guest cottage, but I’m guessing it’s for the staff or guards. They’re watching me, eyeing me, seeing what I’ll do.

I let Jordan know I’d be coming by here today, but I’ve no idea if she let them know. I’m guessing so since I wasn’t interrogated at the gate. Sure, I have the pass from my dead grandfather, but the guard didn’t seem shocked to see me.

A woman answers the door, pretty, slender, maybe in her early fifties? She looks kind, stoic, and has a certain kind of Russian persona I’ve met before. She’s a little like Magda, if Magda took a chill pill.

“I’m—”

“You look a little like him. You’re Ilya—Mr. Belov. I’m Svetlana. I’ve been with the family since I was a teen.”

Svetlana has the demeanor of a Russian, but she sounds purely American. I’m willing to bet she was either born here or came here as a baby or a small child. But it’s not really my place to ask.

I shake hands with her and follow her inside. There’s a guard inside, but he turns away as we pass. I ignore him, keen to keep a neutral air, and follow Svetlana.

She’s a delight to be around, sweet, and does all the talking. She gives me a tour of the mansion, pointing out the main hive of business, my grandfather’s study. She shows me all three floors and the views from the top floor of the stunning grounds.

Svetlana’s apparently been married for thirty years and has recently become a grandmother. She shows me pictures, and her granddaughter’s adorable with blonde curls and a cute smile.

In the kitchen, she makes me a coffee. “When are you moving in?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to.”

Svetlana frowns. “It might not be in the stipulations, but…”

She stops, biting her lip.

“You don’t need to censor yourself around me,” I say. “Go on. ”

She picks up the cleaning cloth and wipes down the gleaming counters. “You’ll never get the respect you deserve if you don’t. And your grandfather expected it. I’d suggest sooner rather than later.”

A place this big would mean more space between me and Alina. The heavy furniture and dark wood seem to eat light, whereas the modern kitchen is a dream of light and open space. Maybe Alina could redo the place.

Wives do that kind of thing. Don’t they?

“What about decorating?”

“You can do what you want. In fact, I’d recommend putting your touch on it, making it reflect the fact there’s a new pakhan.

” Her smile’s fleeting. “But if you can see it in yourself to move in tomorrow, or even today, then it would help cement yourself as the new pakhan. It’s like being the alpha wolf. ”

I laugh because she’s completely right.

Living here may not need to be forever, but I have to make my mark. “I’ll get set up today. Svetlana, can you arrange for the senior men of my bratva to meet me in my office in ten?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Ilya.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“When the men aren’t around, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

She hurries off, and I finish my coffee, scrolling to find a moving company. The layout has a big room on the second floor that’s been used for storage, but it’s clearly an old bedroom with its huge balcony and bathroom. Upstairs has a host of bedrooms, including my grandfather’s.

I arrange for a company to move some things this afternoon. Gym equipment, books, my bed, clothes. The rest I’ll sort later. I’ll rent my old place out or just hold it for a guesthouse.

Shit, I even toy with the idea of setting Alina up there. But she’ll insist on coming here, and she’ll be right.

I rinse my cup and set it in the dishwasher, feeling good now that the wheels are in motion.

I can meet the men and then be on my way.

But an hour later, I don’t feel as good as I did.

The meeting is met with unhelpful, resentful, stone-faced, silent men who look at me like I personally murdered their pakhan.

Many are Russian. Some American-born Russians, but they all have the same attitude.

Requests and questions are met with derision. Demands met with silence.

I find the books, but unless someone tells me who they deal with and in what exactly, then all I have are rumors and hours of picking apart everything.

They don’t even fucking look at me.

Annoyed and out of patience, I dismiss them, warning them if they don’t want to be under a new pakhan, their old pakhan’s heir, I’ll look over their resignation requests and decide what to do with them from there.

The implication is clear: I’ll decide if they live or die, if they stay in the US or head back to Russia.

“Melor?” I say to the last man, the only man who looked at me and had any air of acceptance about him, “can you stay back, please?”

He nods and closes the door. “Yes?”