"What are you doing?" I hiss
My boyfriend is right between my legs, his head popping out from under the covers.
Rolling away, his hand shoots across the bed and to the bedside table. He fiddles with the wire connecting the lamp to the wall before a yellow light illuminates the room.
"You were having a nightmare," he rushes out. "I was trying to...you know..." he waves his hand toward me "make it better."
"By fucking me against my will?" I grunt, throwing the covers away from me and turning my back to him as I sit on the side of the bed.
I still haven't released the gun The letters tattooed on my knuckles are taut from how tightly I'm holding it. They're scarred, disappearing slowly over time because of the street fights and teaching people not to fuck with me.
"I'm pretty sure being fucked against your will is the only thing that makes you wet at this point," he mutters from his corner of the bed.
With a huff, I run my free hand over my face. I don't know what I hate more. That he tried to test that theory, that he knows me well enough to come to that conclusion, or that he's right.
My mouth opens, intent on saying something helpful but my brain has clearly given up on my relationship. "Don't do this again, Ivan. I might not stop myself from shooting you next time."
I finally put the gun back under my pillow, but I give up on going back to bed. I look at the time on my phone. Six thirty-three a.m.
"I'm gonna call my mom," I mumble to myself. maybe a little for him too. So he doesn't feel like me leaving the bed because I don't want to be next to him.
Ivan and I have been together for four years, and I always wonder how I've let it last that long. I should really let him go. We don't share the same feelings. I can't even have sex with him anymore without having that voice in the back of my head that screams "I hate it!"
I met Ivan when I was looking for the Bratva Wolves. The organization seems to have always had two goals in mind: money and discretion. Meeting a Wolf is about as likely as finding a rare diamond in a mine. It's about as dangerous too.
Who would be crazy enough to go looking for the organisation that goes with one motto:
A Wolf's face is the last thing that one sees.
Me. But I wasn't crazy. I was desperate.
I did many things in my life that should have resulted in my death. And yet here I am still standing, unbreakable and unbeatable. And dating a Wolf.
Every night, for two months, I waited outside Vue Club on the South Bank of Silver Falls. The side of the city where North Shore trash like me doesn't belong.
The place seems like a normal club on the upper levels, but the underground structure hosts a BDSM club where some Wolves meet. A place where they do business discreetly while enjoying themselves.
I had no chance of geting in. T knew that And even if l did, I knew no important player really went to that place.
But any Wolf would do. I just needed to find one.
Until Ivan and his friend stumbled out drunk one night. Drunk enough that the friend had forgotten to button up his shirt after their night of enjoying women, and his tattoo of the seven phases of the moon—the Wolves tattoo—showed beautifully under the streetlamps. They walked to their car, and I took my chance.
"You shouldn't drink and drive," I said carefully.
It took a minute while I waited for their lewd 'compliments' about my body to stop. But then they realized I was right.
It was my luck that they were too far gone to clock how strange it was to have a random woman offer them chauffeur service. I drove them back to a mansion they were staying at in the neighboring town called Stoneview. Where the one percent lives.
Where the Wolves do business with politicians and CEOs. The kind of business I would never even dream of.
They offered me to come in. I refused. The next night, I was waiting at the back of the club again. I drove them back home.
On the third, I told them I was looking for a job and they needed to compensate me for my services. They did. In a matter of weeks, I was part of a dangerous gang by day, and Bratva chauffeur by night.
And guess what kind of private place the Wolves talk business in?
Their car.
I learned a few things from spending time with the two. First, they weren't that important, or they would have had their own chauffeur to begin with.
Second, they were both terrible at math.
Third, the friend was truly not important, but Ivan was the kind of useless that matters to the Wolves.
Family.
The Wolves have a very specific hierarchy. When the father, Vladimir, died, his sons took over the organization. Viktor, as the eldest became the Pakhan. The boss. And Aleksei, his brother, was left with the only thing Viktor did not want to deal with; kidnapping, selling, and abusing women. Human trafficking seemed to be a line Viktor did not want to cross himself.
He didn't stop the flow of money, though. He just tried to clean his conscience by giving it to someone else.
Just below Viktor and Aleksei are Viktor's right-hand man, Mikhail; Viktor's accountant, Stanislav; and the man I like to call Viktor's little bitch, Aaron Williams. Others call him the messenger.
I know that now, but I didn't back then.
No, what I learned in that car was even more important than the people I will never get a chance to see.
Ivan is Vladimir's bastard son. A third, younger brother, who was not allowed to have an important part of the business because he was the result of Vladimir Volkov sampling products of his sex trafficking ring. A first, apparently, and something too important for him to throw away. So, he killed the mom, kept the kid, and gave him some random shit to do in his organization. Nothing too important, nothing that would make him a target or get him killed, but something that would keep him close.
Ivan's job was to bring drugs to different areas owned by the Wolves and deliver it to their dealers. They wanted to start a serious business on the North Shore. To take advantage of the desperate people here who don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and need drugs to make them feel alive. And guess who else wanted that territory too?
The Bianco family of the Cosa Nostra.
Or Nathan White, to be precise.
But on the North Shore, dealers either belong to NSC...or to me. Back then, to my father.
The Kings were in a bad situation, but Ivan and his friends didn't need to know that. All they had to know was that they had a smart woman with influence driving their car. A direct link to North Shore dealers. And that a deal between the Wolves and the Kings could only bring them more money. We'd ask for them to be our direct supplier of pure, uncut quality, that we would take care of cutting and selling. We would do any dirty work for them, make people disappear if they gave us police protection that would allow us to get rid of some NSC enemies without repercussions.
That's the kind of deal I wanted. Needed.
I even added a bonus to my offer.
I'll get rid of Nathan White. The Bianco family won't be in your way.
In the end, my luck wasn't that I am a math genius who explained to them the kind of money they could make off the back of my crew if they let me offer a deal to Viktor Volkov. It wasn't that I am smart, and they were so dumb they could barely handle the current job they had let alone explain to Viktor what I had to offer.
No. In the end, my luck was that Ivan thought I was beautiful. In his own naïve mind of a person who never really asked to be part of this, in his rose-colored version of the world, he saw in me a woman he genuinely fell for.
Ivan wasn't built to be part of an organization as deadly as the Wolves. He's just a kid whose mom was killed by her rapist. Ivan should have been a teacher, or a nurse. Someone who's given the chance to care for people. Because I know how much he cared for me back then. I know he brought my deal to his half-brother, Viktor, not because he understood it, but
because he wanted to make me happy.
Like the cold-hearted bitch I am, I used that to my advantage.
I would have never dared asking him to take it to Vladimir. His father, the head of the Wolves, was inaccessible. But Viktor? I managed.
I got my crew a fucking deal with the Bratva Wolves. I put the man who was in my way in prison. Almost two years later, Aleksei, Ivan's other half-brother died. That brought him closer to me. Even if he wasn't on good terms with him, in his heart, he didn't feel as close to the Wolves as he did when he was alive.
Then it was my dad's turn to lose his life to our criminal wars.
I didn't even shed a tear, but Ivan feels a lot of things. My dad's death brought him even closer to me because he wanted me to feel loved despite losing a member of my family.
I wish he understood that my father never dished out love. Only punches.
To me, he was the only man still standing between me and being the head of our gang.
And now, here we are. Four years after my deal. Four years with Ivan by my side. Four years of the North Shore Kings ruling our town like royalty.
And I'm about to lose it all because NSC has decided to fight back.
I squint when the harsh bathroom light hits me.
Every day that passes, it becomes harder to look at myself in the mirror. I dislike the woman I've become.
I know my traits have hardened over time. There's a constant scowl on my face, eyebrows as black as my hair always pinched to show not to fuck with me. It's usually enhanced by heavy makeup and by the 'HELL' tattooed along my temple.
I open the vanity above the sink without a second look at my face. Since Ivan last talked with the Wolves and told me I had officially lost their protection or any business with them, there's a constant headache banging at the back of my head.
Like someone is hammering just above my neck and screaming in my head.
Bang. Over a hundred people rely on you.
Bang. They won't be able to feed their families.
Bang. Your closest friends are unsafe.
Bang. Your crew will run out of money.
Bang. People will die.
I huff for the second time in less than five minutes of being awake.
My entire life is a shitshow.
Popping two pills in my mouth, I swallow them before getting in the shower.