Page 3 of Keeping My Enemies Closer: Pt. 1

“Extreme would be killing your brother,” she countered.“So, how badly do you want or not want to be next in line for Pakhan?”

I grinned again.

Aurora really was something else.

“I’ll call a pretend meeting with Father,” I told her.“What time is your appointment?”

“Two o’clock,” she answered.“And before Viktor tries to bullshit you, it’s a routine check-up.Nothing special, and my mother is planning on going with me.”

“I’ll do my best, but no promises,” I told her.“Everyone’s aware of just how your pregnancy has my brother by the balls.”

“I can only hope that my children don’t inherit your Korolev’s crazy,” she grumbled.

“Because you Marchettis aren’t just as crazy?”I shot back.“Don’t forget, I’ve met your family.”

“Just get him away from me,” she said, refusing to be called a liar by denying the claim.“If you don’t, I will not be responsible for what happens next.”

That got me chuckling again.“I’m on it, Aurora.I promise.”

“Thank you, Kasimir,” she replied sincerely.“I really do appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” I said before hanging up, then heading into the bedroom to get dressed for the day and for my pretend meeting later this afternoon.

Chapter 2

Zoya~

My feet hurt, but I really wasn’t in a position to complain.After applying to a dozen places, I’d been fortune enough to finally get hired as a waitress at a local diner, and with my options limited the way that they were, I couldn’t afford to start feeling ungrateful.

Only a year ago, my life had been fine, relatively speaking.I’d had a good-paying job, lived in a decent neighborhood, and had even been saving up to put a really significant down payment on my own home.Apart from my love life being a little dull, I’d had no real complaints.My job as a bank teller had even educated me on things such as stocks and money-market accounts, and I’d been living a very comfortable life.

Then everything had changed.

Though I couldn’t speak for my father’s side of the family, on my mother’s side, I’d had her, Darya Orlova, my uncle, Armen Orlova, and both of my grandparents who were living back in Russia, the United States too ‘unstructured’ for them.Russians were normally bathed in tradition since birth, and so my grandparents hadn’t adapted that well to all the freedoms that came with living in such a different country, so when my mother had married my father, they had moved back to Russia, and I couldn’t tell you the last time that I’d spoken with them.It’d been over a year, for sure.

As for my father, Mark Kuzmin, according to my mother, theirs had been a whirlwind romance that had fizzled out rather quickly.He’d been working as ashestyorkafor the Korolev family, and my mother had found that exciting and glamorous.However, the joke had been on her.My father had been a simple associate to the Korolev Bratva, and he hadn’t even been a good one.According to my mother, he hadn’t really committed to the bratva way of life, and so when they had cut him loose, instead of getting a real job to support his family, he’d left us to fend for ourselves.Twenty-five-years later, I still had no idea where the man was or if he was even still alive.