Romeo The Mafia Casanova

Four days later

Sevastyan took a noticeable pause before he stepped over the threshold of his childhood home. Fifteen years didn’t seem hardly long enough between visits. Standing there, his hand on the door’s lever, he broke a promise he made himself to never return. Muscles clenched with banked fury. The people gathered to mourn his brother’s passing didn’t deserve his deep, primal rage so he bottled that shit up tight and kept moving.

With a flick of his hand, Sevastyan waved off his father’s guards dressed in thousand-dollar suits and looking every bit as dangerous as the tattoos on their hands and throats suggested.

A hard hand on his shoulder brought him to a quick stop. He flashed the offender a lethal glare.

“Get your digits off me or lose them. That simple.”

“Sorry, Mr. Volkov.” Bushy black brows pinched together over the guard’s brow and reminded Sevastyan that by this time tomorrow this man’s life would be solely in his hands.

“You’d do well to remember who you’ll be serving.” He shook the hand on his shoulder off and straightened his jacket.

Black eyes meet his. “Orders are orders until they are not.”

Sevastyan could appreciate the man’s loyalty as fucked up as it was.

He canted his head, giving the man permission to do his job.

A quick pat-down lifted him of two guns. “He’s waiting for you.”

He brushed past the hired muscle and zeroed in on the massive mahogany door at the far end of the hallway.

Hand on the handles he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

Like any monster, Sevastyan could sense another dark soul nearby. Only this one shared blood with him. Without seeing he knew where he would find the older Volkov. He was there. Always there. Tucked away behind his closed door reeking of impatience and smugness that clogged Sevastyan’s senses with every inhalation.

Sevastyan pushed through the doors and didn’t bother closing them. They swung open smashing into the back walls.

“Get the fuck out,” he snarled at two guards grabbing for their concealed weapons. They’d be the first to take an early grave once he took control. His men would have dropped an intruder before he could get a toe in the door. These fuckers were jokes.

He turned his attention to the far end of the home office. A room where blood ran as freely as vodka.

“I’m here. Say your piece and be fast. After my brother is put into the ground, I no longer care what you say or think. You can go back to pretending I’m dead.” The sharp edge of his words sliced through the shadowed room. “But know this, old man, the Volkov family will be free of your reign.”

Nikolas Volkov didn’t peel his eyes away from the dancing flames in the fireplace. He sat hunched, a shell of the man Sevastyan remembered. His father remained glued to his seat, swirling remnants of a tumbler full of vodka in one hand, a cigar in the other.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

But Sevastyan didn’t let the aging bastard’s appearance fool him. Remorse for what happened between them or his brother’s death didn’t fit his old man’s character. The head of the Volkov empire didn’t know what love meant, which negated the emotions needed to feel the loss of family. All he cared about was power. The control he once had, now slipping with age. Control his brother shouldered. All for the approval of some who despised him for what he wasn’t-him.

Now his brother was dead and their father appeared weakened to any Volkov enemy. Which meant he needed his youngest son’s help.

It was the only reason he could think of as to why his father issued a summons.

His attention finally roamed to where Sevastyan stood in the middle of the office and Sevastyan rubbed his stubbled jaw, meeting his father’s worn gaze.

“I found Mikhail’s burned body on my doorstep with a nice little note.” Sevastyan tore the piece of singed paper from his coat pocket and threw it on the desk between them. “Seems you both got in over your head with someone and he is out for blood. He already killed one son. Tell me what you two were into so I can take care of the problem.”

He pointed at the paper. “Is that dollars or Euros you owe? Twelve point eight million dollars is a nice price tag, but even bigger if it’s European money we’re talking about. Says he’ll be by to collect. If not, he’s left a nice little promise to come for more blood.”

His father lifted a heavy shoulder. “Does not matter. There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your problem. It’s not why I called you here.”

Sevastyan slammed a fist onto the polished wood sending papers and a lamp clattering to the floor. “Fuck you. This man has pledged to kill every last Volkov. Last I checked, that is me and you, Father. Since I don’t want to live looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, you need to tell me what asshole you two screwed over.”

Sevastyan should have been prepared for the stone-cold expression of the man staring back at him, but his old man didn’t even flinch at Sevastyan’s cold, callous tone.

Ire tasked the little restraint he had to keep from lunging across the furniture and ripping the other man’s throat out. Up until now, he’d done a good job at keeping himself in check but seeing his father’s face forced his rage to the surface.

He took a slow steadying breath that filled his gut and let it out.

He spread his arms out, palms up. “Why did you summon me?” he asked coldly, feeling slightly less murderous. “My brother meant less to you than garbage. Never smart enough, brave enough.” He was only stating the facts they both knew.

“He wasn’t you.”

“And you hated him for that. Did he die because of it too? Did you let him make deals that would get him killed?” Sevastyan growled. “Did your greed push him into an early grave? Answer me, God damn you!”

Sevastyan’s scowl of anger clung to him like a three-day-old stench. His chest tightened just being in the same room as the man he despised for far too damn long.

“My greed? Shut up, boy. I won’t have my blood talk to me like I’m some underling soldier. I control you. Not the other way around.” His father’s voice grew heavy and slurred with time. ‘R’s rolled and ‘e’s softened with a rich Russian accent decades of living in the United States couldn’t take away.

He threw his hands up and stormed across the office. He poured a few fingers worth of vodka and downed it, chasing it with a second. He cursed his bloodline. His family name. It meant something growing up, but now it only stood for blood and death.

In a family like theirs, the older brother was supposed to step into the father’s shoes. Take over for the family when the father grew too old to carry the burden of heading an underworld empire.

It’s the way it worked. He understood that. Accepted it. But as a young boy, his father saw it differently, demanding he be the one to take over the Volkov family when the time came. As a child, he didn’t understand what his father saw in him, but as a full-grown man, Sevastyan understood. A darkness in him spoke to the darkness in the man who fathered him. And his father planned on capitalizing on it.

Only he never got a chance.

When his mother died everything changed.

The day she went into the ground he swore off any allegiance to his bloodline and willingly turned into the black sheep of the family.

His father had Mikhail after all. The oldest.

And look how that ended. Sevastyan poured another drink and hammered it back in the same fashion hoping it helped dull the edges of anger slicing into him.

Being on the outside cost him though. Sevastyan couldn’t protect the one person who needed him the most. His worst nightmare had come to life and he’d failed to prevent it. That made him as guilty as their father and he would make damn sure he didn’t shoulder this burden alone.

They’d all failed his older brother. Some more than others.

A cry of horror rang out across Chicago when the Volkov family showed up, fought for territory, and won. He’d been young then. Eight years old. Impressionable. A goddamn fool boy who thought considered his father a hero.

Then he grew up and understood the blood shed to obtain the power his father craved stained anyone it touched and blackened a man’s soul.

His soul. His name.

And he wanted nothing to do with it then, but time had a way of taking everything you loved about life and burying it.