AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I learned a few things from spending time with the two. First, they weren’t that important, or they would have had their own chauffeur to begin with.
Second, they were both terrible at math.
Third, the friend was truly not important, but Ivan was the kind of useless that matters to the Wolves.
Family.
The Wolves have a very specific hierarchy. When the father, Vladimir, died, his sons took over the organization. Viktor Volkov, as the eldest, became Pakhan. The boss. And Aleksei, his brother, was left with the only thing Viktor did not want to deal with; kidnapping, selling, and abusing women. Human trafficking seemed to be a line Viktor did not want to cross himself. He didn’t stop the flow of money, though. He just tried to clean his conscience by giving it to someone else.
Just below Viktor and Aleksei are Viktor’s right-hand man, Mikhail; Viktor’s accountant, Stanislav; and the man I like to call Viktor’s little bitch, Aaron Williams. Others call him the messenger.
I know that now, but I didn’t back then.
No, what I learned in that car was even more important than the people I will never get a chance to see.
Ivan is Vladimir’s bastard son. A third, younger brother, who was not allowed to have an important part of the business because he was the result of Vladimir Volkov sampling products of his sex trafficking ring. A first, apparently, and something too important for him to throw away. So, he killed the mom, kept the kid, and gave him some random shit to do in his organization. Nothing too important, nothing that would make him a target or get him killed, but something that would keep him close.
Ivan’s job was to bring drugs to different areas owned by the Wolves and deliver it to their dealers. They wanted to start a serious business on the North Shore. To take advantage of the desperate people here who don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and need drugs to make them feel alive. And guess who else wanted that territory too?
The Bianco family of the Cosa Nostra.
Or Nathan White, to be precise.
But on the North Shore, dealers either belong to NSC…or to me. Back then, to my father.
The Kings were in a bad situation, but Ivan and his friends didn’t need to know that. All they had to know was that they had a smart woman with influence driving their car. A direct link to North Shore dealers. And that a deal between the Wolves and the Kings could only bring them more money.
We’d ask for them to be our direct supplier of pure, uncut quality, that we would take care of cutting and selling. We would do any dirty work for them, make people disappear if they gave us police protection that would allow us to get rid of some NSC enemies without repercussions.
That’s the kind of deal I wanted. Needed.
I even added a bonus to my offer.
I’ll get rid of Nathan White. The Bianco family won’t be in your way.
In the end, my luck wasn’t that I am a math genius who explained to them the kind of money they could make off the back of my crew if they let me offer a deal to Viktor Volkov. It wasn’t that I am smart, and they were so dumb they could barely handle the current job they had let alone explain to Viktor what I had to offer.
No. In the end, my luck was that Ivan thought I was beautiful. In his own naïve mind of a person who never really asked to be part of this, in his rose-colored version of the world, he saw in me a woman he genuinely fell for.
Ivan wasn’t built to be part of an organization as deadly as the Wolves. He’s just a kid whose mom was killed by her rapist.
Ivan should have been a teacher, or a nurse. Someone who’s given the chance to care for people. Because I know how much he cared for me back then. I know he brought my deal to his half-brother, Viktor, not because he understood it, but because he wanted to make me happy.
Like the cold-hearted bitch I am, I used that to my advantage.
I would have never dared asking him to take it to Vladimir. His father, the head of the Wolves, was inaccessible. But Viktor? I managed.
I got my crew a fucking deal with the Bratva Wolves. I put the man who was in my way in prison. Almost two years later, Aleksei, Ivan’s other half-brother died. That brought him closer to me. Even if he wasn’t on good terms with him, in his heart, he didn’t feel as close to the Wolves as he did when he was alive.
Then it was my dad’s turn to lose his life to our criminal wars.
I didn’t even shed a tear, but Ivan feels a lot of things. My dad’s death brought him even closer to me because he wanted me to feel loved despite losing a member of my family. I wish he understood that my father never dished out love. Only punches. To me, he was the only man still standing between me and being the head of our gang.
And now, here we are. Four years after my deal. Four years with Ivan by my side. Four years of the North Shore Kings ruling our town like royalty.
And I’m about to lose it all because NSC has decided to fight back.
I squint when the harsh bathroom light hits me.
