Forced Mafia Bride (Yezhov Bratva #2)

Chapter 10 – Nikolai

“We both know that these things are easier to put on paper. Executing the task? Now, that’s where the real work starts. It took lots of effort. Thanks, man.”

“I know. I still don’t want it.”

Anatoly grinned at the blond and threw a side glance at me over his shoulder. “Saints like this are pretty hard to find now, Niko. We should keep him.” The folded brown envelope bounced on and off his chest as he turned to pick a filled tumbler off the table. “At least accept the drink.”

“I’m not thirsty either.”

“Definitely a saint.” Anatoly chuckled and threw the envelope on the table, collapsing on the sofa to help himself with the Vodka in the glass.

I rubbed my knee, crossing one leg over the other, and raised a brow at him. He didn’t budge, maintained a poker face, with his arms clasped behind his back and his legs spread only slightly apart. He looked like a soldier in the army, dressed in a suit and reporting for duty, not a thing out of place.

“Just take it, Aiden. You deserve it for all your hard work. Don’t think of it as payment but a rare expression of gratitude. You’ve earned it.”

“The boss insists,” Anatoly chipped in, rubbing the tattoo over his middle finger. “You can’t refuse the boss.”

Aiden ignored him, holding his focus on me. “Sir, you know I didn’t do it for the money. I never do it for the money. If there’s anyone here who should show expressions of gratitude, it is me. So, no, I humbly refuse your reward.”

Anatoly scoffed and grumbled. “A martyr then.”

I relaxed on the couch, staring at him with a smug smile and new respect.

It had been five years, five years since the reckless shootout at one of my clubs in L.A. No deep investigations were needed to know who was behind it. One of the Gallagher brothers, specifically Ronan. He had orchestrated it, his big plan for vengeance. Like the coward he was, he didn’t show up in person but sent his men to infiltrate. The plan was as simple as it was stupid. They were expected to gun down as many civilians as they could inside in order to pin their deaths on me and force the closure of my establishment. Needless to say, Ronan and his men did not succeed. His informant supplied a misinformation. The club was closed that night, and we were ready for their ambush.

There was a bloodbath, leaving most of his men dead and injured. A few survived but fled and left one badly injured man on our doorstep. They didn’t care that we could have finished him off. None of them looked back. To save themselves, they were willing to sacrifice him.

I saved that man that night. I spared his life, instructed my men to nurse his wounds, and gained an addition to my workforce when he recovered and vowed to serve me for the rest of his life.

That man was Aiden O’Connor, and he kept his word.

When Rosalyn offered to be an inside man, to supply confidential information from her brother, it was almost laughable. I had Aiden, and what he supplied was enough. For five years, he had proven to be reliable, accurate, and useful.

“No use forcing him. He’s not going to take it.”

“Thank you, sir.” He nodded, appearing more comfortable. “Your attack today has certainly angered Ronan enough to make him want to do something even more crazy. At the same time, I am uncertain because their relationship is strained. He may or may not act.”

“But I humiliated him.”

A ghostly smile passed Aiden’s mouth. “You did cause a scene.”

I shrugged. “We can’t rule out anything. You already know what to do; keep your eyes and ears open. I want every bit of information that you consider useful.”

“Yes, sir.”

I, better than anyone else, knew the level of difficulty it took to find and retain loyal men. If he wasn’t so hell-bent on crashing Ronan’s reign from the inside, I would have taken Anatoly’s advice and shaped him into one of my men.

I nodded. “Thank you, Aiden.”

He made a curt bow and turned on his heels to leave but halted abruptly. He took me in with a guarded expression. “Is she okay?”

It was quiet, so quiet that I almost missed it. It wasn’t the question or the way he’d asked it. It was why he did it, the subtle way he blinked, gulped, and rubbed his arm behind his back. He was nervous. Why was he nervous?

I smiled, adjusting on the sofa. “Interesting. The Irish princess has an admirer.”

He panicked. Aiden O’Connor panicked. The gallant, undaunted exterior was off, and standing before me now was the quivering, wounded combatant, wide-eyed, frightened, and vulnerable. He unwound his arm from his back and stared at the floor, shaking his head.

“N-no, sir. I don’t…I can’t.” He cleared his throat, swallowed down his anxiety, and resumed his composure. “I’m not an admirer, sir. Not like that, anyway.”

I narrowed my eyes, unsure of the strange feeling zapping through my entire body. It was wild, consuming, and unwielded. My curiosity peaked, and I asked point-blank. “So, you don’t like her?”

His response took longer than a minute, and when it landed, I still didn’t believe him.

“I don’t, sir,” he stuttered, his denial coming a fraction too slow to be convincing. “Rosalyn is like a sister to me.”

I raised a brow, intrigued at his nervousness. Before I could press him further, we heard light footsteps descend, and I beamed at him, gesturing toward the stairs.

Perfectly timed

“Well, then, what do you know? Seems like you’re lucky. You’ll get to see her before you go. Here your sister comes.”

Chapter 11 – Rosalyn

I woke up with a start, my eyes fluttering open to the darkened room. I barely slept for hours. My mind raced with thoughts that deprived me of rest. The weight of my actions bore down on me like a physical force, crushing my breath and making it hard to breathe. Every inhale felt like a struggle, like I was trying to suck air through a narrow straw, my lungs burning from the effort.

It wasn’t the look on Ronan’s face that haunted me. Damn Ronan. I hated him from my core. No, it was Father’s eyes, his words, his legacy. All haunted me now. I had done the unthinkable, the unforgivable. I had betrayed everything he built, everything he stood for. If he saw me now….

I threw off the soft beige covers and got out of bed, pacing back and forth in the spacious room. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease, of danger lurking around the corner. Nikolai’s words when he showed up at the church unannounced, his actions that veered off the original plan, they all screamed of a plan, a scheme that I was now a part of. The way he took me, with intention, such control…it was clear he had something else on his mind. Something more.

I trusted a monster.

I stopped pacing, my heart racing in apprehension. What did he want from me? What did he plan to do next? I had no idea, but I knew one thing: I had to be careful. I had to protect myself.

A rapt knock came on the door, startling me, and my hand flew to my chest as I counted my steps toward the door. I raised my guard up and pushed the knob down, taking a step back, preparing myself for anything but seeing Hannah’s face.

And just like that, seeing her melted my walls, pumped the tears out from my chest, and made me crumble like a potato sack. But she was quick, gathering me into her arms before I hit the floor. I was a sobbing mess, but she didn’t mind. She swept my hair away from my face and offered comforting rubs down on my back, and I thought I heard her sniffle.

Weird, because I could count the number of times I’d seen Hannah cry.

Then, her presence in the room, in Nikolai’s house, hit me, and in shock, I pulled away, searching her face to know if she was real and not a figment of my imagination.

“Hannah?”

A sad smile appeared on her face, and she patted my hand gently before letting go. “I’m really here, Rosalyn. No, you’re not dreaming.”

I didn’t understand. “But how?”

“Come on,” she sighed and pointed at the door. “Let’s go downstairs. A lot will become clearer.”

Still draped in the hideous wedding dress, I bundled up the sides, hoisting the fabric from the ground, and followed Hannah to the living room.

It was quiet when we landed on the last step. Hannah planted herself beside me, quickly assuming her guarding position, though I was too busy scanning the men in the room.

There were three of them. I quickly recognized the two seated on the dark sofas—the master and his servant: Nikolai himself and the man with the terrifying aura and dark eyes who knocked Tristan out.

Nikolai flashed a crooked, taunting smile that made me sick to my stomach. But it wasn’t his irritating ego that froze the breath going through my lungs. Standing at the center of the room in a Givenchy tailored suit with stormy blue eyes and a firm frown I recognized all too well was….

“A-Aiden?”

My nails dug into my dress, and blood thrummed through my eardrums as I struggled to make sense of this… why one of Ronan’s most trusted and faithful men was here, in the presence of the Russians, completely unfazed that they could pull out a gun in the blink of an eye and off his head.

“What are you doing here?” I asked but, at the same time, wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

A tiny voice at the back of my head told me I would have trouble digesting his answer. And when he opened his mouth, that tiny voice was right.

“I helped them bring you here.”

A turbulent of strong emotion crashed against the walls of my heart and threatened to drag me under. Was it disappointment, anger, betrayal, or relief ? I couldn’t tell, although the tidal waves seemed like all of them.

“You helped them bring…?”

“Don’t be slow, princess. Aiden works for me, and by doing that, he has to continue working for your brother.” When I glared at Nikolai, he cocked his head to the side and bounced the heel of his shiny leather shoes on the carpet. “What?”

I ignored the handsome backstabber and faced Aiden. Looking at him made me want to cry. He’d always appeared so innocent yet fierce. I couldn’t say it was unusual to peg this type of atrocity to a man like him. On the contrary, men like him, Nikolai, Ronan…they lived for these kinds of tousle. But, deep down, in the recesses of my heart were…. I may or may not have had the smallest crush on him while growing up. I thought he was one of the good ones.

“So, you’re…a spy?”

“About a week ago, you were willing to be my inside woman.”

From the periphery, I caught Hannah’s subtle grimace while not even the slight crease crossed Aiden’s face. Gritting my teeth, I shot daggers at the Russian with the arrogant brow raised on his forehead.

“Can you stop butting into our conversation? This does not concern you.”

A twitch of amusement settled on his lips when he reached forward to fill his tumbler with what I assumed to be Vodka in a transparent square-like bottle. This was certainly fun for him, watching me squirm uncomfortably in this miserable wedding dress.

“Oh, but it does concern me. Stop deluding yourself and look around; you’re in my house.”

“Not by my choice.”

“But your brother thought it would be safer to keep you with me than—”

I frowned. “My brother…?”

“Ah.” He chuckled and nodded toward Aiden. “You are like a sister to him, are you not?”

This time, however, a shade of red dusted the paleness on Aiden’s cheeks. Slowly, he ducked his eyes away from mine and cleared his throat. I didn’t understand the hidden signals in the air, but I was sure of two things:

One. It stung.

The reason was uncertain, but Nikolai's confirmation that Aiden thought of me as a sister was heartwarming and heartbreaking .

Two. The full reason for his presence in this house was not concluded.

I needed answers, and I needed them fast.

“Aiden, talk to me. Tell me, what is going on? Why are you here? Why are you working for him? Does he have something on you? Is it blackmail?”

Nikolai scoffed, and the other man chuckled.

Aiden remained quiet. His jaw flexed, and his gaze hardened by the second, as if the current reality of things strengthened his resolve. His shoulders slacked when he exhaled, and finally, he looked up at me again, his eyes letting me in for the first time since I could remember.

Honesty. Vulnerability. Care.

“Mr. Yezhov saved my life. No one else cared. Not your brother, not the men I thought were my brothers. The full story is irrelevant, but you should know that I owe him my life. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. We are not saints, but your brother’s methods are….” He shook his head, his eyes going back to stone. “I don’t agree. I am sorry you had to find out this way, Rosalyn. My intentions have been nothing but genuine.”

If my reality was different, this would have been wrong—justifying Aiden’s actions, understanding him. I believed him. I always did. Somehow, long before Hannah showed up, he was there to pick me up when my brothers pushed me. He was there to hold my hand and teach me how to ride a bike when Sean wanted to use that as punishment.

Aiden was always there.

I would have thrown a fit, or a punch maybe , that the one man I trusted betrayed my family. But I couldn’t because reality was almost as nightmarish as my brother’s methods, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that I wasn’t the only one sick of him.

I twisted to the side, my fingers closing around her wrist with soft, questioning pressure. “That’s Aiden’s story, not yours. Were you a part of this from the beginning?”

She shook her head and patted the top of my hand. I released her. “No, I wasn’t. After….” Her eyes touched Nikolai’s briefly, and she swallowed. She couldn’t say his name. “After he took you, your brother was livid, and, for the first time, I was scared of what he’d do to me.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time Ronan started a shooting spree. When Ronan was angry, the best advice was to steer clear. Very far away from him because all points were possible shooting ranges.

“Aiden told me that he helped him gain access to the church and I…I mean, what kind of friend would I be if I left you all alone?”

The meaning of her words sank with an impact that left me with partial relief. “So, you’re staying here. With me.”

“Yes.” She smiled and swiftly wiped away the crystal tears lining her lashes. Hannah was not the mushy-feeling type. As quickly as the tears came, she was going to get rid of them with an even quicker speed.

I smiled back, but gradually, that low flickering flame that felt like anger changed course from Aiden to the man who saved his life. With curled fists and without thinking, I marched up to him, ignoring the stabbing pain from my tiny toe in the cursed heels.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Aiden. It’s not your fault that he is who he is. However, the one person I don’t trust is him ,” I said, looking past my reflection in the depths of Nikolai’s eyes and glaring at the hard lines on his face. “I understand it better now, why my proposal was worth nothing to you. You already had Aiden working for you on the inside, and given his close rank working with Ronan, the information you get from him is priceless, huh? But to what end?”

A sudden mask of pretense marred the grin on his lips, and he put a hand on his chest, feigning a pout like a falsely accused victim. “Are you insinuating something?”

“Yes. Yes, you’re darn right I am!” I stamped my shoes, digging the pointy stilettos deeper into the rug, and pointed a finger at him. “You had an opportunity, a good one. Ronan was right there, defenseless. You could have shot him, strangled him, done whatever the fuck you pleased with him. But you came for me and left him on his knees, for what? Just to humiliate him? Was that your genius plan?”

The pitiful doe-eyes melted away, and his granite features were as sharp as ever. Refilling his tumbler, he swirled the content and gave a dismissing wave of his hand before swallowing a huge gulp.

“Humiliation is only the beginning, princess.” He dropped the tumbler and rested his calloused hands on the taut planes of his stomach, visible beneath the dark button-down. “You will be my bride.”

The falling silence was sudden, deafening . My heart thundered against my chest, pounding like drums in my ears. I took steps back, almost stumbling on my shoes, away from him, from the nightmare I had in split seconds— because it had to be a nightmare. I must have heard wrong. I didn’t escape from one misfortunate wedding ceremony to fall face-first into another one.

Over my shoulders, Hannah and Aiden both looked like they’d seen a ghost, and the man on the sofa…he was going through his phone like they’d only announced lunch.

“You are joking.” But I knew he wasn’t. Men like Nikolai didn’t bluff. I blinked back tears as fast as Hannah would have. “Ha. Ha. Nice try. Your sense of humor is over the roof. Too bad, no one’s laughing.”

Nikolai was on his feet in seconds, taking majestic strides with a hand in the pocket of his dress pants. The tease was gone from his eyes, blown out like a gust of wind on a candle flame.

He cleared the space between us and tipped my chin up so I faced him squarely. “Welcome to the real world, where you learn that everything comes with a price. Providing an escape from Tristan was a service that, sadly for you, attracts a fee, which you have no option but to pay.”

I grated my teeth hard enough to keep the burning tears from spilling. “Never. This is…this is just a bad dream. I’m going to sleep and wake up and realize—”

“That tomorrow is Sunday. Perfect day to plan a wedding, is it not?” He released my chin with an eye roll, gallantly returning to his seat. “You will marry me, Rosalyn. Believe it or not.”