The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,9
and she’s fallen down the stairs to the cloakroom about ten times.”
“Okay, and you’re saying Cassie isn’t like this?”
“Yeah, exactly. Well, you saw her clothes, right? She never dresses like that. Normally she wears black trousers and a top or something equally boring. She’s not hot like her friends,” he says.
I beg to differ. I can’t imagine anyone hotter, even with her newly dull hair, lackluster skin, and sad eyes.
“She always gets half a lager, how sad is that, and sips at it. My guys have fucked a few of her friends, but no one has ever fucked Cassie. Not that any of us have tried. She’s weird. I think I remember her hot friend, Vanessa, telling me Cassie is a huge nerd. So yeah, don’t let this morning put you off keeping her if she’s got skills. She’s not normally this way. Although, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“You do know that in England you aren’t allowed to fire someone for wearing a slutty dress and getting wasted on the weekend, right?”
I laugh and turn right into the office car park. “Yeah, thanks for the reminder. Just wanted a bit of background on her. You helped, thank you. And, Michael.”
“Yes?”
“Sorry I doubted you. It looked suspicious, at first.”
“It’s okay. I’m not stupid, Konstantin. I know not to fuck this up with the Italians, and I won’t.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose as the car idles outside my office. This isn’t what I wanted for Michael, but he’s got to learn responsibility some time, and I suppose this will teach him it quickly, if nothing else. I promised Yulia, my wife, I would look after him, bring him up right, away from our seedy world. I did everything I could to make that happen and failed anyway.
“I’ve got to go. I’m at work.”
He says goodbye, and we hang up the call. I stare at my phone for a long time. Memories flood back, as unwelcome as heartburn and just as acidic. The moment I found out from Vasily, one of my henchmen, that Michael’s mother, my wife, and childhood friend, Yulia had been murdered. Not only murdered but violated too, in the worst way.
The one thing I promised her, the one thing I can still do for her, is protect Michael. Should I stop this? Put a halt to the wedding? I could take on the Italians if it came to that. Hell, I could probably do it without needing my Russian friends for back up. The clout I have with the wealth I’ve made in this country, never mind the connections, would protect me and Michael if needs be. I don’t know what to do for the best.
Him being part of their family will provide Michael with added protection if things get too hot between myself and my enemies.
After a long time away from the front line, war is once more brewing. Once a soldier, always a soldier, and I never back down from a fight.
Popov won’t know what hit him, the fat fuck. He dared to get involved in the harm done against my wife, one of my family, and he’s still alive, strutting around like cock of the fucking walk. No way. I’m going to dismantle his organization, and then I’m going to kill him. No one does to me what he did.
When Popov helped my father kill Yulia, he took something uniquely precious away from me, and I’m not a man to back down from that kind of thing.
She was the one bright spot growing up. As things fell apart, first with my shitty, weak father leaving when I was thirteen, and then with my mother getting sick, Yulia was there.
She was also there when my sister died, and I lost my last remaining family. She was there for me when I fought in terrible wars, writing to me consistently. Without her and Andrius, a fellow brother-in-arms, I doubt I’d have got through some of my time in Chechnya.
We married for convenience, for her, because she needed a father for Michael and a cover for the fact she liked women. Me, because I needed a wife at that time to get ahead in the conservative business world, shooting up in post-Soviet Moscow.
She and I worked, until my jealous, pathetic father decided he wanted revenge. Why? Because I wouldn’t share my hard-earned wealth and power with the man who walked out on me, my mother, and baby sister. He had such a sense of entitlement, the old cunt.
Most Bratva are honorable.