Sweet Ferocity: A Dark Mafia Romance (Ruthless Obsession Book 5) Read online

  I nodded as I buttoned the jumpsuit closed. “Where?”

  “Boss says you can use his office.”

  I nodded again as I followed the guard out of the exercise yard. Prison was no different than regular society, just more violent. Just as in the real world, money bought privileges and obscene amounts of money, as I had, bought access to the prison chief’s personal office.

  Right before entering the office, I used the guard’s sleeve to wipe the rest of the blood off my face. He sneered but did nothing. I opened the door.

  Sitting in the high-backed leather chair of the prison chief was Egor Novikoff.

  “Out of my chair,” I ordered as I rounded the desk.

  The two bodyguards he had brought with him stepped forward. The old man waved them off and dutifully switched to one of the more uncomfortable wooden chairs across from the desk.

  I sat in the desk chair and reached across the desk to flip open the polished cigar box that rested on the corner. Selecting one, I bit off the end and reached into my pocket for my solid silver lighter. Holding the flame just below the tobacco so as not to burn it, I slowly lit the cigar, uncaring of the impatient looks Egor was sending me. When the cigar end glowed a bright orange, I leaned back in the leather chair and placed my muddy boots on the desk.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, Egor?”

  “I need your help.”

  I shrugged. “Not interested.”

  “I’ll pay. Big.”

  I took a long drag off my cigar. “Doubt you’ll pay more than what this oligarch is paying me to watch over his son while he enjoys our mother country’s hospitality.”

  One of the perks of being a mafia mercenary was I owed loyalty only to myself. Each of the syndicates had used my services at one point or another, but I didn’t come cheap. A simple assignment would cost millions of American dollars, and nothing was beyond my skill set: assassinations, theft, arms deals. Hell, I’d even helped train a small military force for one bratva.

  Currently, I was acting as a bodyguard for some weak pansy son of an oil oligarch who’d pissed off a Russian general by sleeping with his wife. The boy had been sent to Krasnoyarsk Prison Camp. It had taken me months to track him down since the Russians weren’t exactly known for their spotless record keeping. Especially when a certain general wanted someone to disappear in the system. Now his father was using his influence and several hefty bribes to get his son out. In fact, the boy was due to leave here tonight. Technically, that made me free to take Egor up on his offer. Trouble was, I didn’t like the guy, never had.

  I shook my head as I tapped the ash end of my cigar onto a pile of official papers. “Get those useless sons of yours to help you.” I smiled. “Oh, that’s right. They got themselves shot.”

  A friend of mine, Mikhail Volkov, had taken them out last year for daring to kidnap the little sister of the powerful Gregor Ivanov.

  I shrugged again. “Well, play a stupid game, win a stupid prize, no?”

  Egor’s shoulders hunched as he gripped the head of his cane more tightly. The man was broken. The only things keeping him alive among the syndicate families were his money and his connections, but they wouldn’t take you far in the Russian world. Money only counted for so much if it wasn’t backed by brute force and power.

  Egor leaned forward, sliding a photograph across the top of the desk. “It’s my daughter, Katia. She’s missing.”

  I picked up the photo. The woman was beautiful. Her gaze seemed to pierce the camera lens. Her eyes were definitely her best feature, a stunning bright crystal blue with flecks of dark cobalt blue. They were complemented by her fair skin and glossy mink-brown hair. I frowned. “What do you mean missing?”

  Egor shook his head and waved his hand in the air with frustration. “She takes after her bitch of a mother. Insisted on going off on her own to some college in Virginia. I think she found out I was planning on bringing her to Russia to marry and took off.”

  Katia must be the daughter from Egor’s disastrous second marriage. The sons were from the first. His first wife was a sallow, beaten-down woman who died giving birth to the twins. The second had more fire in her belly, if memory served. She ran away from Egor when the daughter was still a child. It was an embarrassment for Egor as the head of the powerful Novikoff family and one of the first knocks that would lead to their current straits. Without his sons as heirs, the Novikoff legacy was in danger. It left Egor and his interests vulnerable. He must be trying to marry off his errant daughter to shore up his power.

  I pocketed the photo. “So who’s the lucky groom?”

  “Pavel Petrov.”

  I grimaced. Pavel Petrov was seventy if he was a day. His sons were a nuisance to friends of mine, Vaska Lukovich and Dimitri Kosgov and their arms operations in Chicago. No wonder the chit ran away. I took out the photo and looked at it a second time. “Five million US dollars. First half wired into my usual account.”

  “Five million!” scoffed Egor.

  The miserly bastard was worth a hundred times that amount and stood to gain tens of millions from the marriage of his family into the Petrov syndicate. I snuffed out my cigar on the wooden surface of the desk and rose. “Good luck finding her.”

  My hand rested on the doorknob to leave.

  Egor rose as well, leaning heavily on his cane. “Wait. Fine. Five million.”

  I crossed to the desk and grabbed a pen. I wrote down the twenty-one-character alphanumeric code to my Swiss bank account on the edge of a piece of paper. I tore it off and handed it to him. “Half now. Half when I find her.”

  Egor nodded. “Agreed, but you have to bring her back to Moscow.”

  I gave him a curt nod and turned to leave.

  Egor stopped me. “When do you start? Time and discretion are needed. The Petrovs do not know she is missing yet and I don’t want them to find out.”

  “I’ll leave tonight.”

  I strolled out of my cell around midnight. None of the cell doors were ever locked. What was the point? Escape was useless. You’d die in the frozen tundra climate only feet away from the gate. My client’s son had already been picked up by his father hours earlier. My departure was a little trickier. It wasn’t like the Russian prison system allowed for guests as bodyguards. I’d had to get myself thrown in here under a pretense.

  Boldly walking straight up to the main gate, I stalked forward even as the nervous guard cried out a word of warning and fired several rounds into the dirt at my feet. Reaching him, I grabbed the gun and punched him in the face, knocking him out. As the alarm went out over the guard towers, I fired the semi-automatic rifle at each tower, hitting the support beams. The roofs of the two nearest towers collapsed, trapping the guards.

  Tossing the rifle aside, I kicked the gate open and strolled out into the open field just as a helicopter landed.

  I pulled open the side door and slid inside.

  “Where to?” shouted the pilot over the din of the helicopter engine and rotor blades.

  I pulled out the photo of the beautiful Katia and grinned. “America.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Luka

  Worthington University, Virginia

  I reached across the counter and grabbed the security guard by his polyester tie. I dragged him over the top of the counter until he fell in a heap at my booted feet, then leaned down and growled, “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear? I want a key to Katie Antonova’s room.”

  The young man held up his hands, palms out. “Okay! Okay! Fuck, they don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

  I had learned that my clever Katia had enrolled at Worthington University as a photography and business major under her mother’s maiden name. She also apparently went by the more American-sounding Katie.

  The man circled back around the counter and pulled out a plastic card the size of a standard credit card. He typed something on his keyboard and then shoved the card into a device. He pulled it out. “Here. She’s in the Morrison Building, Room 312.”


  I tossed a few hundreds on the counter then took the card. As I turned to leave, he called out, “For a few hundred more, I can give you what they found.”

  I frowned as I turned. “What do you mean? What they found?”

  The guy shrugged and motioned for me to join him behind the counter. I circled around and followed him into a cramped file room off to the right. He lifted a box off the top of a filing cabinet. The words ’Student Records 2018’ had been crossed off and in a Sharpie marker was the name ’Antonova.’ I reached for the box. The man swung it to the side, slightly out of my reach. “Two hundred bucks.”

  I smirked and reached into my pocket, pulling out the bills. I tossed them onto the floor. The man shoved the box at me as he dropped to his knees to pick up the money. I carried the box to the front room and lifted off the lid. Inside were a blue camouflage purse and a digital camera with bits of grass and mud stuck to it. Underneath those items was a pink binder.

  I turned to the guard. “What is this stuff?”

  He didn’t look up from counting his money. “They found it outside the Arts & Culture building the day she disappeared a week ago.”

  I reached into her purse. Her wallet was inside with her student ID, driver’s license, and money. There was also a set of car keys. A sick feeling twisted inside of my stomach. “Were the cops called?”

  The guy shrugged. “Don’t think so. University didn’t want the bad press.”

  I clenched my teeth, reminding myself this man was just a flunky, otherwise I’d punch his teeth down his throat for the cavalier attitude he had about a woman disappearing off the campus.

  Carrying the box through the quad, I located her dorm building. Using the key, I entered her room. From the one bed, it was obvious she didn’t have a roommate I could question. I slid open the closet door. All of her clothes were on hangers in neat little rows. A roughed-up looking metallic pink suitcase rested on the floor of the closet. On her bureau were various items of makeup, a hair dryer, and a brush. The sick feeling in my stomach intensified.

  This woman hadn’t left.

  She had been kidnapped.

  Fucking Egor Novikoff.

  That cheap piece of shit.

  He probably hadn’t even bothered to have a guard on his daughter even after her brothers were killed after that feud with the Ivanovs. Not that the Ivanovs would be responsible for this. It wasn’t Gregor’s style to use a woman as a pawn in a territory war. Unfortunately there were countless other syndicates including the Russians, Iranians, Italians, and a host of other nationalities that wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of an unguarded Russian mafia princess to use as leverage.

  I spilled the contents of the box onto the bed. After looking through the rest of the items in her purse, I turned my attention to the digital camera. Despite the mud and slight damage to the body, the camera clicked on. I stared down at the lit LED screen as I scrolled through the images on the memory card. The first few were indistinguishable and blurry.

  It was the fifth shot that captured my attention.

  It was the side of a feminine face, a shoulder, and a male face behind her. He was Japanese with a long, pale face.

  The next image was the man’s forearm wrapped around her throat, his hand holding a cloth to her face. This time the camera lens caught Katia’s eyes. The bright spark was gone from her gaze as they stretched open wide with fear. On the wrist of her attacker I could just make out a fuzzy image of something that looked like it might be a tattoo. Using the camera’s controls, I highlighted the section and enhanced the pixels. A distinctive snake tattoo came into focus.

  Only one syndicate used that tattoo. The yakuza. Specifically, the Inagawa-kai who were the smaller of the three main factions, but hungry for more power. I’d had run-ins with them before. All bloody and ugly.

  I scrolled through the remaining images. There were several of trees, statues, a close-up of an old woman’s face as she prepared lunch in probably the college cafeteria, and then Katia again. Similar to the image I still carried with me, she was staring boldly into the camera lens. This time she was holding her hair back in the wind. Her bright blue eyes were filled with intelligence and wonder.

  The reality of the situation hit me like a punch to the gut.

  Katia was in the hands of the yakuza and had been for at least a week.

  They obviously hadn’t taken her for a ransom or Egor would have been contacted, which meant they had a far darker purpose. If she was still alive, there was a very good chance she was praying for death.

  I stared down at the photo and tried to imagine those gorgeous eyes sightless and blank in death.

  I held the camera so tightly something cracked inside the plastic and metal body.

  I inhaled deeply through my nostrils as blood coursed through my veins.

  The hunt was on.

  I would find Katia, dead or alive, and make the animals who took her pay.

  This was no longer about the money.

  This was about honor.

  No one took one of our women, no matter what family she was from, and got away with it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Katie

  Chicago, Illinois

  A startled scream woke me out of a fitful sleep. I clutched my stomach to stave off the painful cramps from lack of food.

  A female voice called out from the darkness. “Hello? Is someone there?”

  I was too tired and worn out to be surprised. Besides, I knew I wasn’t their best leverage option. I doubted if my piece of shit father would pay a single cent for my safe return. It made sense they would grab another woman. I knew this had to be some kind of mafia territory power play with me and this other woman as the pawns.

  I groaned as I tried to moisten my mouth to speak. It had been at least a few days since I last spoke to my attackers. I moved to sit up. The chain around my ankle rattled.

  Finally, I rasped out, “Hello?”

  “My name is Carinna. Who are you?”

  Carinna? That was odd. Carinna wasn’t a typical Russian name, but then again I refused to use my Russian name, Katia, so it didn’t mean she wasn’t connected to one of the Russian families. I opened and closed my mouth several times, trying to work my jaw and moisten my tongue before responding, “Katie. My name is Katie.”

  Carinna asked, “How long have you been here, Katie?”

  I shifted again, my muscles crying out in pain. “What day is it?”

  Carinna gestured with her head. “If that’s sunlight and not streetlights, I think it might be Thursday morning.”

  The stupid chain rattled again as I shifted to my other hip. “They brought me here, I think, two nights ago. I’ve been trying to listen for the sound of the birds in the morning to keep track of the days. I don’t know where here is, but they kidnapped me, I think, about a week ago, in Virginia.”

  Carinna answered, “We’re in Chicago. Or at least I was in Chicago. I’m not sure how far we traveled after I blacked out.”

  Chicago? I tried to force my sleep-deprived brain to think. Who was in Chicago? It was hard to focus after several days of little sleep and even less food and water. My captors had moved me several times, always in the trunk of a car. Sometimes we drove for hours and hours at a time with no break. So far, they had refused to speak to me, but I had figured out who they were. I hadn’t grown up around criminals without learning the significance of their tattoos. The men all had brightly colored tattoos of snakes around their wrists. Yakuza.

  I shifted closer and reached through the darkness to place my hand on her leg. I then pressed my water bottle into her hand. “Here. Drink.”

  “I can’t take this from you. What if—”

  “I insist. Whatever their plans, they don’t want us dead. They don’t feed me often, but they do at least give me some food and enough water to stay alive. Drink. You’ll need your strength. Are you injured?”

  “I think I dislocated my shoulder. Do you know who took us?”

&nbs
p; “The yakuza.”

  “The what?”

  “The yakuza. They are a powerful Japanese crime syndicate.”

  “What would the yakuza want with me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what they want with you, but I’m pretty sure I’m in this mess because of my family.”

  “Who is your family?”

  “The Novikoffs.”

  “Is that Russian?”

  I briefly forgot that not everyone lived in a seedy world filled with arms deals and organized crime. There were normal people who thought those things only existed on television in overblown crime dramas. I sighed. “As Russian as they come.”

  Carinna patted my leg. “Don’t worry. My boyfriend, Maxim, will find us. He’s Russian too.”

  I sat up. “Maxim? Maxim Konatantinovich Miloslavsky? He’s in Chicago?”

  If Maxim was in Chicago that meant he might be looking for me. After the first few days of being held captive, I had lost hope of my father sending help. Honestly, I had begun to think they had contacted him with a ransom demand and the cheap old bastard had refused to pay. Since I was a daughter and not a son, he had never thought I mattered much. I certainly couldn’t see him paying for my safe return. He hadn’t given a damn about me growing up. There was no reason to think he would start now. But knowing Maxim was in Chicago gave me hope. Maxim worked closely with the Ivanovs and also with Dimitri Kosgov and his partner, Vaska Rostov. Perhaps help was on the way. There was hope for a rescue after all.

  Carinna paused before answering, “Yes. You know Maxim?”

  For the first time in a week, I smiled. “Yes, I know Maxim. I was there when he got his piercing.”

  It was one of the few court-ordered visits I had paid to my father over the summer when I turned eighteen. I was going to piss him off by getting my nose and nipples pierced. Maxim found out and followed me to the tattoo and piercing parlor along with Damien, Gregor Ivanov’s brother. When I got nervous, Maxim stepped in and offered to go first.