Betraying The Bratva King

I'm Coming For You

Liev looked up from his computer screen as his best friend Garold and his wife Samira entered his office without knocking.

“I am certain I have put bullets in heads for less,” he said pointedly as he rapped two knuckles on his desktop. “Knocking requires such little effort and yet you both seem incapable.”

“Samira is back from her trip to America.”

“I can see this. She is your wife. I get why you are excited but how does this affect me? I don’t even like her.” He quirked a blonde eyebrow high in his forehead.

“Rude,” Samira grunted at him as she flung herself into a chair without invitation. “Especially since I have news for you.”

“News for me?” he made a face. “The last time you had news for me Samira, I had to send your husband to clean up a mess.”

“You will like this news,” she smirked recalling how she had gotten into trouble in the past and acted as if this new information was going to redeem her.

He sighed and rubbed his temples and finally turned away from his computer to face them both. He waved his fingers at them, “out with it. I have s**t to do and you’re disturbing my work.”

“I found your girl.”

Of all the things he expected Samira to say, this was not it. He felt his chest tighten. “Explain.”

“I was coming back from California and my connection flight was in Maryland. A bunch of teenagers and their chaperones were on the plane. I didn’t care because I was flying first class and I put up my partition and I was happy in my little bubble of peace.” She shrugged, “however, at the luggage carousel, I got a look at one of the women chaperones and she struck me as familiar. I walked up to her and looked her right in the face. She is the girl.”

“You are certain?”

She held out her phone, “she is older than the photo on the desk in your office at the house but yes. I am confident.”

Liev took the phone and looked at the photo Samira had taken. His fists clenched around the phone. “Where was this taken?”

“The Charles de Gaulle airport.”

“Who is the man in this photo?” he looked to Garold.

“I have no idea,” Garold shrugged uncomfortably. “Samira took a car straight here and showed me the photo. I agree it’s the same as the photo in your office. I know the face. I memorized it while I searched the damn planet for it. As soon as she showed it to me, I brought her up here.”

He passed the phone back to Samira, “get out of my office and come back when you have more specific details.”

“We might not know his name, but I have her name,” Samira said suddenly. “The kids she was traveling with called her Ms. Rose.”

“Briar Rose?” Liev leaned back in his chair and rested his folded hands against his flat stomach. “You’re certain?”

“Yes and,” she made a face, “she had them all singing.”

“She was gifted musically.”

“You said this before, but it seems instead of working in a club as you suspected she would, she is a choir director or something to this effect.” Garold opined not looking up from his own phone.

He frowned at his friend and then turned back to Samira, “from Maryland, the kids got on the plane?”

“Yes. We all boarded at the same time. They were all singing so I kept my distance but when we landed and were getting bags, I immediately saw her face and it struck me I knew her. I couldn’t place her until she told me she was American.”

“You spoke with her?” Liev’s eyes narrowed on her. “Why?”

“At first, I thought she was simply someone familiar and it bothered me when I couldn’t immediately place her. Then when she was walking away from the group to grab a trolley, I followed her and it was when she turned back, it clicked. I immediately called Garold, and he told me to get my ass here instead of home.”

He handed the phone back, “where is she staying?”

“A hotel in the city where several other high school students are also staying. There is an international high school choir competition taking place in the city.” Garold looked up from his phone where it was evident, he was gathering intel. “It seems Briar Rose is the co-director of the Maryland Elite Senior Choir who are state champions and came in second overall in the USA national championships earning the choir a spot in the international championship.”

“She works with high school kids.” He would never have guessed it. He had been certain she would have been working in a night club either singing sultry bluesy music or acting as a DJ making the eclectic mixes of music she had played with when she had been at his house. “You’re telling me she’s been hiding out in Maryland of all places, being a choir director.”

“How do you want to manage this?”

“Get me all the details you can find on her. All of them. I want a file on my desk in an hour.” He told Garold. He looked to Samira, “and take your wife shopping on my behalf.”

“I have a name.”

“I know but it is like saying Beetlejuice. If I say it too much you are around, and I can’t get rid of you.” He gave a smirk as she flipped him off. “You know, any other person in the world would die for such insubordination.”

“Yes, but I am the wife of your best friend and by default one of your closest friends.”

He frowned at her and shook his head, “you are only alive because you are the mother of my goddaughter. I could give a f**k you’re his wife.”

“Hey!” She slapped her hands atop his desk, and he chuckled.

“Leave Samira. I have work to do.”

“As if you’re going to work. You’re going to sit here now and plot out all kinds of revenge on your little runaway.”

“Samira,” he scowled as he turned his attention back to his computer screen. “Are you seriously foolish enough to believe I don’t already have an entire ten-year worth of misery ready to inflict on her?”

Samira mimicked his scowl, “you have been dreaming of it all along?”

“Day and night.”

“She broke your heart.”

“She did no such thing.”

“She bruised your ego and broke your heart.”

“You assume I have one.”

“I know you have both.” Samira shot back.

“Enough,” Garold cut into their banter. “Boss, I will take my wife home now. I’ll send you the details you are waiting on within the hour.”

He unclenched his fists off his keyboard and shot a grateful glance at his closest friend. When Garold dragged her protesting out of the room hissing under his breath, she was taking liberties where she should not, he sighed. Garold was a man he’d known since he was a small boy in Saint Petersburg, and he could read him well, but Samira was not as equipped. She had missed the cue, but Garold hadn’t, and he’d pulled her out before he had to clean up his own wife’s blood.

Liev considered Garold was a smart man. He had always been a ruthless man. Being the leader of the most powerful bratva in the world meant he was cold, controlling and possessed little patience for silliness. He had never been one to get emotional or emotionally involved. The one time in his life he had allowed himself to be soft, it had been with her.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. She had been his sin and his savior all at once. She was eighteen approaching nineteen when he’d met her. He had been in his early thirties and for the first time in his life, he’d gotten himself trapped.

He had first seen Briar Patch, or Rose as it appeared now, while he’d been arrived at the club in New York. His manager had hired the girl to work the pole, but it was her sister who had been sitting at the bar chatting him up. He had been watching Briar every night for a month all the while her sister was the one observing him, watching him, and making him her mark. He’d let his guard down by obsessively stalking a woman too young to be working a pole with the experience she had but with eyes which told him fate had dealt her more hardships in her life than any person should. He had wanted to take her home and keep her safe. His planning on how to rescue his muse had ended with him being drugged.

He had had his men take him back to his hotel after he had had a drink and realizing someone had slipped something into it. The next morning, he had woken up next to Sully Patch with the worst feeling of panic he’d ever had in his life.

Liev Orlov never lost control and a bottled blonde con artist had managed to slip him a drug which had made him horny, high, and out of control. She had taken advantage. He’d thrown her out of the hotel under an escort telling her to never show her face again. Not a month later she had been back with a pregnancy test.

As furious as he had been at how blatantly she had duped him, he had realized in taking the sneaky b***h, he was going to get her sister. The girl he’d been lusting after was within his grasp. All he needed to do was ensure his child was not born a bastard, then divorce Sully, seduce Briar, and live happily ever after.

What he hadn’t counted on was Sully playing the long game. He hadn’t thought she would manipulate Briar like she had, and he certainly hadn’t thought, for as cold as she was, she would go as far as to make the girl lose her virginity to him. The surveillance footage of Sully encouraging her to seduce him at the pool for a payday had played on repeat in his head for a full week before he decided to go with it. He was going to let her think she was the aggressor when really, she was there at his whims. He wanted Briar but she was going to make her play first.

Then it happened and it went to hell in a handbasket. When all of Sully’s yelling and screaming that morning had gotten too much, he’d been grateful when he’d had an emergency call from one of his enforcers. He had gone to his office to take the call and while moving to sit in his seat he’d found the printed letter from Briar. He had not counted on her feeling guilt. She loved him and wanted him to know how sorry she was she’d duped him.

He had read it and immediately worried for her. He’d ordered Sully’s execution before even leaving the office but then as he’d sat there and contemplated the call he’d taken from his enforcer; he came up with a better plan. He couldn’t kill the sister of his soon to be fiancée because Briar would have been upset. No, he opted set her up to take the fall in a murder of an undercover agent and to remind men who thought they were too big for their britches they were expendable.

One of his men in London had decided he was going to try to take over Liev’s local operations, but he’d been foolish. He misjudged the loyalty of the men. From the moment he had started to think he was in control; his men had reported his actions to Liev. He had given his man an option, take the fall or die and watch his grandmother, mother and sisters die with him. He also told him to take Sully down with him. Liev’s reputation and the support of all Liev’s men, the double-crossing fool had begged for him to spare his family.

Sully had taken more convincing but once he told her he had an entire team waiting at JFK to capture Briar and bring her back to be his s*x slave and make her earn the ten million dollars Sully was trying to extort from him, she had agreed. He also made sure she knew if she f****d up, she was dead. He told her to put her acting skills to good use and if she wanted Briar safe versus raped and murdered, she had better sell it. She had still argued but he had shot the gardener and his driver in front of her without blinking, she’d immediately realized what she had gotten herself into. She had fallen on her knees and begged him to spare their lives, hers, and Briar’s. She had put on a three-month performance followed by a criminal trial which was quite sensational.

He had gotten rid of three birds with one stone, an undercover agent, an ex-wife, and a double-crossing son of a b***h. He’d had the man who crossed him killed a week into his sentencing. Sully was bunkmates with a woman who was making her life a living hell while Liev financed the inmate’s family.

He had of course had the marriage annulled with ease since he’d never consummated the marriage. What he hadn’t counted on was Briar not returning to New York. More than once, she had told him she loved the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. She loved the city, the bright lights, and the noise. When he and his team had torn the city apart and realized she had not touched down, he had searched cities comparative in size. He had even expected her to show up when Sully’s highly publicised trial was going on, but she had never had.

All he had wanted was to tell her he forgave her and make her come home with him. She was his. The longer she stayed away, the angrier he got with her. She would have to pay for not coming back to him.

He stood up from the desk and moved to look out the window. He usually wasn’t in Paris. He hated the city. It was too busy with nosy tourists and too confined. Garold and his wife made their home base France as it was where Samira’s family resided, and they assisted with their only daughter. However, he was only in the city because he had unfinished business and while he was here, he was making the best of an irritating situation.

Fate. He believed it was fate which brought him back here the same time his girl was back. He stared down at the city below him and grimaced. He was so close he could taste it.

“I’m coming for you Briar. I hope you know you’re going to make up for the ten years you stole from me.” He put his hands to the window and spoke the hat into the quiet of his home office. Soon.