Page 3 of Reign
The door at the far side opens, and Tatiana walks in. At twenty-one, my little sister already understands theater better than most men twice her age.
Long blond hair braided back off her face, sharp cheekbones, black tactical pants, a fitted long-sleeve shirt, and black stiletto boots. There’s a knife in a holster at each thigh, and another I know is at the base of her spine.
Tatiana Dragovich walks into a room looking like innocence and leaves it painted with somebody else’s insides. Men underestimate her once because she’s petite—they don’t get a second chance.
She looks at Pavel’s body for half a second, then lifts her gaze to me. “You started without me,” she pouts.
“He talked too much and pissed Kolya off,” Maksim says.
She clicks her tongue. “The fucker sold movement routes to Novosibirsk and tried to leverage Pappa’s old loyalties against you,” she says, then grins. “He didn’t know those men were loyal to you long before you took over as Pakhan.”
A smile finally touches my lips then. “Stupid moves by weaker men.”
Tatiana was never made to sit by windows and smile for alliances. Ruslan tried once, and he learned. She took to knives before heels, and to covert routes before ballroom manners. To the language of death before she ever learned how to fake sweetness.
She now runs our internal removals when the targets require precision rather than spectacle. Men twice her age lower their eyes when she walks by. Men three times her size stop laughing when they hear she’s been assigned to them.
If Arseniy was the shield and I am the blade, Tatiana is the venom they never expected.
“Do you want the body displayed or burned?” she asks.
“Displayed for an hour. Let the inner circle see what disloyalty costs, then burn him.”
Tatiana’s smile deepens. “Gladly,” she says, then turns and leaves as easily as she came, boots silent against the stone.
For a moment, I watch her as she leaves and think my father has every reason to fear his two youngest children.
I straighten my cuff and gesture to the corpse with two fingers, then walk out. Kai falls into step beside me, while Maksim peels off to oversee the display with the grim delight of a man given a favorite task.
Our predecessors had no idea what they did when they trained us. The monsters they created learned how to outgrow their leashes.
They used to call me a weapon. Something to be pointed outward; something to be controlled. Now they call me The Blade, and men say it the way other people whisper a prayer right before the end.
My boots echo through the corridor as we walk toward the main staircase that leads up to the operational level. Kai keeps pace without crowding me, matching my stride the way only someone around violence knows how.
My office sits in what used to be the abbot’s private chambers. I kept almost none of the old furniture. The room is large, all dark wood and old stone with tall windows overlooking the east grounds and the forest beyond. We replaced the stained glass with bulletproof windows.
Icons are gone, but shelves remain, now filled with ledgers, dossiers, maps, encrypted SAT phones, and enough blackmail to level governments. Monitors line one side of the wall where nothing escapes my eyes.
Nothing hangs behind my desk; there are no family portraits, no flag, no sentimental relics pretending to soften what I am.Men come in here, and there’s nowhere for their eyes to rest except on me.
Kai closes the door behind us, and I cross to the sideboard to pour vodka over my blood-smeared knuckles. I watch the pink rivulets run into the steel sink built into the marble, then pour two fingers into a glass and knock it back in one swallow.
Kai waits near the desk, hands loosely clasped behind him.
“Spit it out. I can tell you’ve got something on your mind,” I say.
He lifts a folder from my desk and holds it out to me. “The Five Families reached out.”
That earns my full attention, though nothing in my expression shifts. I take the folder from him and open it. Inside are the usual polished lies dressed up as diplomacy.
Formal request. Neutral language. A summit. Strategic discussion regarding a realignment of interest after recent instability in several sectors.
An invitation extended to Nikolaj Dragovich, Pakhan of the Dragovich Bratva, with assurances of respect, security, and mutual benefit.
The Five Families. The same sons of bitches who exiled my family are now begging us to realign.
The Italians love dressing up threats in silk and expensive wine—they always have. Give a wolf a tailored suit, and suddenly everyone calls the bite politics instead of what it really fucking is.
