Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
I wanted the men responsible for what happened to my family dead, not their wives. Not their children. The sins of the father did not pass down to the son. Not in my world.
“No,” I said, a little too quickly. Mateo raised an eyebrow, ready to question me.
Wrong response.
Too emotional.
What would my father do? He would kill her. But if he didn’t, what excuse would he use?
“Leave her,” I said, not letting him speak. “Let her be a warning. It’s good to have witnesses, so the Ivanovs know what happened.”
Mateo nodded, approving of what he considered a strategic move. It still made me sick to my stomach, and I hoped that girl, whoever she was, survived the crash.
Then there was the matter of the man who chased after us. Another miscalculation. Another strategic failure I couldn’t afford. Another fuckup.
I thought again of how he moved like a weapon. Cold. Programmed. Unstoppable. He’d focused his fury and rage more intensely than anyone I’d ever seen.
I didn’t recognize him as one of the Ivanovs.
They never hired guards that weren’t family in one way or another.
Every person working for or with the Ivanovs was Russian. This man wasn’t.
He was something else, someone else.
I pushed the thoughts away and looked back over at my prisoner. Pavel Ivanov. The only one who didn’t live at the compound, thus making him the easiest target. He lay unconscious on the cement floor.
Abducting him was just the first part of my revenge. His family had taken so much from me, so much, and I intended to pay it back with interest.
I didn’t need their money. That wasn’t what this was about. In truth, I really wasn’t sure whether my determination to destroy the Ivanovs came from a place of wanting revenge as much as a need to protect my reputation.
“Tie him up. He will wake soon, and I don’t need to lose more men to an attack by him,” I said to one of the other men.
“He is outnumbered. What could he do? I will tie him when he wakes,” he responded in a heavy Colombian accent, not even bothering to look up from cleaning his nails with the tip of his knife.
Idiots. Never underestimate an Ivanov. Even an injured one.
“Did I ask for your opinion?” I took a step toward him, my hand on the hilt of the dagger at my thigh.
Lip curled, he kicked off the wall, the knife in his hand clattering to the metal table as he reluctantly went to obey me.
I stared at the knife. Black carbon handle and stainless steel blade. It looked like the one I used the first time I took a life.
Like all Russian women, I was underestimated. No one thought I would kill my husband, but I did.
Now I was reclaiming my inheritance. Once the world found out what I did—how I got my retribution—my family name would be restored to its former glory. A name of strength, fear, and vengeance.
No one would talk about how the Ivanovs eliminated my brothers or how it drove my father to madness. They would talk about me. The daughter who was so ruthless she took back her family’s honor, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.
Flying that mission myself was a calculated risk. One that had to be taken. It was one thing to order my men to abduct an Ivanov, but to go myself? To put myself in harm’s way? That took it to an entirely different level.
It was a gamble, but it also showed my strength and my willingness to get my hands dirty just like any other man under my command. I was not above taking deadly chances.
Calculating risks, showing my strength firsthand and channeling my rage into every action taken against my enemy were the only things my piece-of-shit father, Egor Novikoff, taught me.
No, that wasn’t true. He also taught me how to be truly cruel. How to ensure my enemies feared me.
That was why he was now rotting in a Siberian asylum. With just enough medications to keep him lucid, but suffering.
My father may have inadvertently taught me how to make my enemies cower, and how to never underestimate them. But he underestimated me.
The blood staining my hands was his fault. He had thought me weak because I was a daughter and not a son. A girl, meant to be traded or sold to strengthen his empire.
He had always held me below my idiot brothers. It didn’t matter that I was more cunning than they were. That they didn’t have the same strategic mind as me, let alone the same common sense to rule our bratva empire.
No, they were all about instant gratification, and throwing their dicks around like it made them important.
I wasn’t surprised when they were gunned down by an Ivanov sniper.
Once those two idiots got themselves killed, it changed things. My once cruel father became even more brutal. There was no more pretense of civility.