Malevolent King

MALEVOLENT KING A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE MADE OF MAYHEM DUET BOOK ONE MILA KANE Copyright © 2023 by Mila Kane All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS Welcome to Mila’s world Author’s Note 1. Nikolai 2. Sofia 3. Sofia 4. Nikolai 5. Sofia 6. Nikolai 7. Sofia 8. Sofia 9. Nikolai 10. Sofia 11. Nikolai 12. Nikolai 13. Sofia 14. Sofia 15. Nikolai 16. Sofia 17. Sofia 18. Nikolai 19. Sofia 20. Nikolai 21. Sofia 22. Nikolai 23. Sofia 24. Nikolai 25. Sofia Epilogue Mila Kane Also by Mila Kane WELCOME TO MILA’S WORLD Join my newsletter for deleted scenes, polls, and character inspiration at Mila Kane. AUTHOR’S NOTE Welcome to Mila Kane’s New York. It’s not the city you know, and here the Kings and Queens of the Underworld reign supreme. Along with life or death, love, darkness, and mayhem rules this corner of the book world. If that’s your thing, read on. If you’re not sure, check out my website for a full list of TWs. 1 NIKOLAI The day my father died, I learned two new things. First, my half-brother, and rival for the title of pakhan in the bratva I’d dedicated my life to, knew me better than I’d thought. Second, getting out of the trunk of a car with your hands tied is a bitch, but it’s not impossible. My entire life, I’d been competing with my older brother for survival in the brutal world I’d been born into. A chess game a decade in the making, each moving our pieces across the board, trying to stay alive. Kill or be killed was the only certainty in my life for a long time, and that didn’t make for happy families. The plan that had finally ended my father was too clever and unexpected for him to anticipate. For the first time in my life, my brother had moved a chess piece in a direction I’d never seen coming. I’d been taken by the De Sanctis family, or rather, handed over. Fucked over, you mean. I wriggled my hand, testing the bonds, and chuckled. It was fucking funny. I had to give it to Kirill, he’d blindsided me at the end. Cornered me into a perfect check, but the game wasn’t over yet, and I was born to play it. Few people impressed me, and after years, my brother had topped the list. I’d buy him a drink before I killed him. But this wasn’t the time for revenge fantasies. It was the time to figure out how the fuck to escape before Antonio De Sanctis, the don of the outfit, got me locked up and sitting pretty at his compound or a warehouse somewhere. Being a prisoner to show the might and power of a fading, irrelevant man wasn’t how I’d planned to celebrate my father’s death. They’d secured my wrists with zip ties. Maybe Antonio wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Zip ties were hard to cut through and not easily picked like metal cuffs. The De Sanctis fuckers had also tied them incredibly tight. Luckily for me, they didn’t know my little trick. They also hadn’t checked me carefully for weapons, and it would prove fatal to whoever had the bad luck of opening the trunk. Breathing steadily, I focused on my body, positioning myself as well as possible, given the limited space. The ache in my right shoulder was a constant companion and a side effect of my trick. I leaned into the pain now, pushing my shoulder away from me and twisting. The agony increased, then a faint pop echoed through my head. Pain beat at me as I carefully maneuvered my arms under myself inch by agonizing inch until my hands were in front of me. My dislocated shoulder howled at me. I stuffed the pain inside the locked box where I put all the other horrors of my life. Joint laxity wasn’t an unusual condition. However, the ability to embrace the pain of a full shoulder dislocation was rare. The problem wasn’t the loose joints, it was my fucked-up brain. I’d learned young that I could do anything to survive. Next, I reached for my steel-capped and lethal boots. The idiots hadn’t even taken them. I’d stomped brains out with these very boots. And that wasn’t their only benefit. Press the inner arch just right, and a blade shoots out of the toe. Cutting the zip tie wasn’t pretty, but it was done by the time the car stopped. I suspected I’d been brought to New Jersey, the De Sanctis seat of power. When taken by a rival family, they liked to get you secluded and into an easily defended place as quickly as possible. To use a truly American phrase, this wasn’t my first rodeo. However, it was the first time my brother had willingly handed me over. As my hands came free, wrists stinging from multiple slices of the careless knife, my mind lingered over the sight of my father dying. My mother had been fond of old Russian superstitions. After we were ripped from Moscow by my father and badly transplanted into America, it was all she’d had to hold on to of her homeland. That, and me. Not much. Not enough to stop her from hanging herself from the shower rail in the bathroom of our secluded house on my fifteenth birthday. One of her favorite phrases proved itself correct last night. “Don’t dig a hole for someone else. You might fall in yourself.” How right Irina had been. As I’d held her lifeless body that day, the last day of my childhood, I’d planned how and when to dig a hole for my father. Last night, when he’d fallen, I’d fallen right in after him. On