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Chapter 1 - Zeke
“Safe to say, we have a problem.” Semyon Kumarin spoke with low bass notes that threatened to rattle the windows behind him, but Zeke Kumarin’s patience was wearing thin.
He had spent a good forty minutes standing before his father’s oversized desk, listening to Semyon speak without getting to the point. The desk was positioned in the backroom of Semyon’s enormous study, where the scent of sweet tea permeated the air, along with blooming jasmine. Semyon kept a vine growing out of a huge pot, its twisting branches framing the arched doorway. The smell of them made Zeke’s stomach tighten.
He had no fond memories of this space.
Father and son were alone except for one other man—Semyon’s closest, a hitman by the name of Red. His black leather jacket was worn indoors as well as outdoors no matter the temperature. It helped him conceal the massive Smith and Wesson revolver he always carried. Zeke didn’t want to view his presence as a subtle threat from his father, but there was no denying that was why Red was there. His father had many faults, but subtlety wasn’t one of them.
“Are you going to tell me what the problem is, or spend another forty minutes outlining why you think I have a duty to help you?” Zeke asked, tone clipped.
His father didn’t like it, his countenance darkening.
Zeke didn’t miss a single beat. His father’s mood swings had stopped affecting him when he—at eighteen—had watched Semyon take his anger out on an unsuspecting henchman whose only crime had been trying too hard to prove himself worthy of the position he’d been granted. Zeke lost all respect for Semyon that day, and there was no indication that he’d regain it any time soon.
All he wanted was to hear why he’d been summoned so that he could get the hell out of his father’s house. He hadn’t spent more than an hour within its walls since he walked out of it a decade ago, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to break that streak now.
“You have a duty tome,” Semyon underlined his deeply felt sentiments. “You have a duty to this family. Don’t say you don’t. You’ll break your mother’s heart.”
Zeke huffed, refusing to back down, even though his father so crudely pushed the button that he knew to be most effective; the one connected to the reason Zeke hadn’t moved across the country after med school. The button created by his loyalty to his mother, the woman who raised him, in her own quiet way, to want more for himself than what his father could ever hope to inspire.
Zeke knew that if he showed even a moment’s hesitation, Semyon would snatch at it. No one could argue his case quite like Semyon Kumarin, and yet Zeke wasn’t swayed. His whole life, it had been the same song sung to different tunes. He wasn’t about to join in a singalong. He didn’t want any part in it.
“The bid for territory has escalated beyond our control,” Semyon stated. “If we don’t stop it now, there will be a battle between the three families. You understand? Guns in the streets, a free-for-all, grab what you canwar. We don’t want it any more than they do, so we’ve formed an alliance. We’ve made a pact with the Aslanovs. It will serve to slow things down, to bring about a truce.”
“Sounds like this pact will be a good thing. I still don’t see what it has to do with me,” Zeke said, not wanting to acknowledge the misgivings already settling like something cold in his stomach.
His father was looking too pleased with himself, too sure that he had Zeke right where he wanted him. This couldn’t be headed anywhere good.
“You have been promised a mate,” Semyon stated.
He said the words as though they were discussing the weather, as if Zeke would simply nod and agree that, yes, the skies were overcast, but surely there were no clouds that didn’t also promise sunshine. Zeke found the whole thing preposterously in character for his father. The casual way with which he dictated the lives of others. Zeke let out a soft sigh, shaking his head. His eyes rested on the dark-green gaze of Semyon as steadily as they’d been since he first took the spot before his father’s desk. Zeke had known, in the very deepest part of his gut, that answering the summons had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have let his curiosity get the better of him, shouldn’t have been enticed by the importance lent to the situation from his father contacting him in person. Shouldn’t have allowed himself to get roped into his father’s drama despite his better judgment.
Especially knowing that the man opposite him, seated like a king on an ill-fitting throne, had a knack for finding new ways of gaining back the authority he once had held in Zeke’s life.
“You have to have known that my answer would be no. I have no intention of bonding myself to anyone, especially a stranger, and especially not as part of some pact.”
“She’s not a stranger to you. You grew up together. You spent half your childhood running around in that big garden of theirs, for crying out loud,” Semyon protested, looking, for lack of a better word, shocked at his son’s declining of the offer. Zeke was surprised at it, unable to fathom that Semyon had actually convinced himself Zeke would bow down to duty without a second’s pause. “None of the Aslanovs are strangers to you,” Semyon plowed on. “You’re almost thirty years old and haven’t even tried looking for a mate. You think I don’t know these things, but I have eyes. You’re all work, work, work, and for what? Here I come to you with a solution that will kill two birds with one stone—you get a mate who will care for you, cook for you, look after you,andyou get to save innocent lives while doing it. Isn’t that all you want? To save people?”
Zeke kept himself from rolling his eyes. His father turning the attention to Zeke’s drive to do some good in the community was all too predictable.
“Father,” he said firmly. “I can’t do this for you. I won’t.”
Semyon’s gaze hardened, and he delivered the death blow, saying, “Not even to ensure your sister doesn’t have to be married off in your stead?”
Zeke’s heart sank at the expression on his father’s face. There wasn’t a trace of hesitation there. Zeke tried to protest, saying, “You can’t mean that.”
But he knew his father meant it. It wasn’t even a threat, it was a fact.
“This truce will ensure prosperity,” Semyon insisted. “The three families have been competing, pushing into one another’s territories, having petty squabbles for too long. We’re tired of it. All of us are. Once the Kumarins and Aslanovs are united through your mating bond, we will grow our business within the territories we have already claimed. No more time wasted on trying to regain city parts we feel have been stolen from us, no more eyeing the grass on the other side of the fence and thinking ‘doesn’t it look greener?’—no more of any of that. You understand? Peace for all. And you will help secure it.”
Zeke’s mind was going a mile a minute. His father was good at making his case, but if Zeke had learned anything from him it was to talk his way out of a dire situation. There had to be some angle that would absolve him of the looming responsibility.
“A truce sounds like good business,” he finally remarked.
“It will be.”
“So why don’t you strike this truce between the three ruling heads, rather than through a pact that is clearly excluding the Kuznetsovs? I have to say, heading down this road without them along for the ride seems like a red cape in front of a bull to me, and I’m—”
