Page 11 of Mafia Maiden


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My eyes were wide with fear, and I tried to compose myself. My father had never looked at me with such disgust before, and for a moment, I wondered if he would kill me. I knew that Stephan was likely already dead, and if he wasn’t, he soon would be. My father might have overlooked a youthful hookup, but he was not going to be embarrassed. Not even by me.

Unfortunately for him, we were much alike in that way, and despite my fear, I was not going to sit by and allow him to treat me this way.

“I don’t see why Leo was so worried about what I was doing and with whom. Shit, I did not know that he even existed until afterwards.”

My father’s nostrils flared, and I knew that he wanted to kill me. The only thing that was stopping him was that I was more valuable to him alive than dead.

“You better hope that you have not ruined your chances with Leo by being a whore.”

This made me laugh. I couldn’t help it. The very thought of pushing Leo away because he could not stop himself from sticking his nose in my business was delightful. “Maybe you should start looking for another successor,” I said.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you? That’s what you have always wanted, isn’t it.”

I felt stunned. I did not know that my father knew so explicitly what I wanted.

“Do not look so shocked, Katarina.” There was a smug smile on his face. It was one that I had seen him give other people, but never me. “Despite what you might think, I know you very well. Better than you think. I know that you are not happy with me right now.”

I trembled with rage as he continued talking.

“And I do not care. You are going to marry Leo. He will run the Bratva, and you will run his home. You may be my daughter, but that does not put you above my order. You are going to do what I say.”

“Or what?”

My father’s eyes, which were so much like my own, looked at me with a hardness that I did not expect from him. “Or I will cut you off.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he said, voice low. “I will leave you without any money or resources. That penthouse apartment you enjoy. Gone. College tuition. Dried up.”

As much as I hated it, tears began to well in my eyes. “All because I was sleeping with the driver?” I asked, hardly able to believe this.

I loved my father, and I’d always thought that I was the apple of his eye. My mother had fled from him when I was a baby, and he never remarried. Whenever anyone asked, he assured them that I was enough. “Why would you need another child, when you’ve already achieved perfection,” he’d say to me with a wink.

Now, it was almost as though I were looking at a stranger. My father was not the man that I recognized. Standing before me was the Pakhan of the New York City Bratva. One of the most powerful men there was.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why won’t you name me as your successor?”

His eyes hardened even further. His lips thinned into a small line, and I knew that the question had irritated him. Probably because he did not like that I would even ask it.

“I would never leave the Bratva to a woman,” he said. His tone was devoid of any emotion.

“I am more capable than any man. Certainly, more than this Leo Petrov.”

“You’ve not even met the man.”

I snorted. “They are all the same,” I said with a wave of my hand. “They are more interested in fucking and spending money than they are ensuring that the Bratva remains in power. New York is changing. The Soviets are changing. The old ways won’t work. We can’t just keep killing Blanchis in the street. People are going to start asking questions. There’s a war on street gangs, on drugs…”

“Stop it.” My father’s voice boomed across the empty hallway, and I was surprised that no one had come looking for one of us.

But I could not stop it. I might not have much love for the men of the Bratva, but they were family, and as the daughter of the Pakhan, I saw it as my job to protect them. Men like Leo Petrov would continue to do things the old way because it had benefited them for so long, and that was a fatal mistake.

“I suppose that I only have myself to blame for all of this,” my father released a heavy sigh as he spoke. “For years, your grandmother told me that I was too lenient with you. She was right.”

I snorted. “Lenient because you let me go to school? That’s ridiculous. This isn’t the 1940s,” I reminded. “Women can do anything that men can do.”

My father shook his head. “That was my mistake. I allowed you to believe that you would one day take over for me.”

A sour taste filled my mouth at his words. “But that was never the path for you.”

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