Page 1 of Stolen Bride
PROLOGUE
IRINA ORLOV
Thirty-two years of love. Gone in the flash of a car bomb.
Irina stares at the closed casket of her deceased husband, Konstantin Orlov. A single tear traces down her cheek. If she cannot leave this crowded room full of mourners soon, she will shatter. Her bones will break beneath the weight of loss.
She feels ancient. Unmoored. No longer sure of her place in the world.
Married when she was just a girl of nineteen to a man she barely knew and thought she hated, Kon made her the woman she is now—a woman who does not cower even in the face of unimaginable loss.
Thirty-two years ago, she was sent from Russia’s capital, speaking hardly any English when the wheels of her plane touched down in this dry, foreign place, to marry a stranger in an arranged match. Irina doesn’t feel fifty-three. Yet the proof is standing at her back, four tall,handsome men.
Her sons.
Beside her is a weeping young woman. Lilia, the youngest child, enrolled as a student at a prestigious law school all the way across the country, called home unexpectedly to mourn her father’s death. Wordlessly, she passes her sobbing daughter a small packet of tissues.
“Thank you, Mama,” she whispers, and resumes crying.
Eventually, her sons clear the room of well-wishers and business associates until only family stand before the casket, waiting for her to read out Kon’s final wishes. They had prepared for this moment together. Just in case. They believed they were as safe as they could be as prominent members of the Russian bratva. But violent death was a constant risk. Irina gazes at her sons’ faces. All four of them so much like Kon’s, her heart aches to look at them.
Her gaze stops at Maxim’s, the eldest. The confident, ruthless man whose birth tied her to the bratva forever. She smiles faintly for the first time in days. His mouth quirks up at one side in a knowing smirk. Smug. He thinks he’ll inherit today.
Possibly he will, eventually, but Kon left the issue of choosing his successor in her hands. He knew his sons well. Max’s overconfidence would be his downfall, she and Kon agreed. He needed to be challenged by his brothers, not simply handed control of the Orlov faction.
But now that her husband is dead, Irina has changed the rules of the game. More than anything else in theworld, Irina wants her boys to finally settle down and give her grandchildren. There is only one way to force them into carrying on the family line and securing the Orlov legacy.
Surely one of them will do his duty when so much is at stake.
An empire of corruption, gambling, and sin. Theirs to rule out here in this desert oasis of vice. The state of Nevada had successfully kicked out the mob decades ago—until Kon found new ways to run his casinos that skirted the laws. He diversified, too. With his brilliant twin sons’ help, the Orlov family learned how to expand their operations on the dark web through online gambling, crypto schemes, and money laundering.
But despite all of their care to erase their digital and physical tracks, disaster found them. Now, they have an unknown enemy. The Orlov empire needs strong leadership, and Irina intends to fill that role until one of her sons can prove that he is up to the task.
They were not going to like what she had to say. Max most of all.
“Your father left a letter for me to read to you. Lilia, open it please,” Irina says. Her daughter has finally run out of tears. She takes the envelope in her perfectly manicured hands, with her long blond hair curling nearly down to her waist. Dyed. She spends a fortune on maintaining that precise shade of unnaturally pale-gold.
“Read it,” Irina commands when Lilia’s brow furrows in confusion.
“All it says is, ‘Obey your mother.’ What does thatmean, Mama?” Poor girl. So confused by such simple, straightforward language. She is so very good at parsing complicated English legalese, but give her a simple order and suddenly she is as dense as a plank of wood. Irina watches the smirk melt off Max’s face. He straightens. His shoulders tense beneath his tailored black jacket. He knows.
“It means that your father wanted me to choose his successor,” Irina says serenely, watching her sons’ reactions. She doesn’t have to wait long.
“So pick. You know I’m the best choice,” Max says. “I’m the eldest. I’ve been directing our business strategy for eight years.”
“Yet your bride remains unwed.”
He scoffs and scrubs his face. “You’re holding that over my head? Alisa Morozov isn’t going anywhere.”
“Nor are either of you getting any younger. You ought to have tied the knot while your father was still around to bless the union he arranged for you. Now, he will not live to see it. If it ever happens.”
Irina didn’t think the Morozovs had orchestrated Kon’s death, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility.
“This means we have a chance,” Ilarion, who preferred the Americanized nickname Rion, elbows his identical twin. Conniving men. She was so proud of them.
“One of us does,” Luka, the more reserved twin, says. Only two minutes older than his doppelganger. Physically they are exactly alike, down the tiny birthmarks on their left earlobes, yet their personalities are very different. Rionhas an easygoing surface charm, in contrast to Luka’s focused energy. Either of them would be a good leader of the Orlov bratva faction. Together, they would make a formidable team. Yet Irina has never had the sense that Rion wishes to lead. This test will reveal his true ambitions.
And then there’s Nikolai, the youngest son who always feels overshadowed by his dominant older brothers. At twenty-six, he hasn’t found his stride yet in life. Irina sees so much potential in him. What could he become if he were nudged to take action without his brothers’ interference?
