Page 14 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

“You little fool! You absolute nitwit! Just like your mother, you have no control over your pussy!” he spat.

All the color drained from her face at his reference to her mother. “My mother?”

“That bitch got what was coming to her,” he raged. “Just like you, she couldn’t keep it in her pants. You deserve a bullet in the face for this, Mira, but I won’t waste my bullets. Get out of my sight, you disgust me.”

Mira felt as if the ground beneath her feet was giving way. She felt as if all she had known about life was suddenly being turned upside down until her very world seemed to stand on its own head.

Through a very dry throat, she managed to force out the words, “Did you kill my mother?”

Her father started to respond, then he clamped his mouth shut and looked away from her, his entire frame taut with anger. Mira looked around and discovered that somewhere in the midst of the whole drama, his lover had slinked away without a word.

Without thinking, Mira grabbed her father by the lapels and gave him a rough shake. “Answer me, you heartless bastard. Did you kill my mother?”

“Go to your room,” he barked.

Two female guards materialized and yanked Mira off her father as effortlessly as though she weighed little more than a feather.

“Leave me alone!” Mira yelled, struggling against their grip as she strained toward her father, her fingers desperately clawing at the air as though she wanted to scratch his eyes out. “Tell me, Oleg, what did you do to my mother?” she yelled, using his first name as disrespectfully as she could.

She’d be damned if she ever called him Father again. He had killed her mother. He had robbed her of a mother’s love in childhood. He had…

Her thoughts trailed off as blackness swam before her eyes.

While struggling against the straining hold of the two women who were bearing her off to her rooms, Mira was also trying to reconcile in her mind the earth-shattering revelation that she had never had a mother’s love because of her own father. As they turned into the corridors leading to her room, Mira succumbed to the darkness and slid into a dead faint.

Chapter 10 - Mikhail

The photos Mikhail’s private spies had sent him did not bring him any joy or comfort. Whoever Mira was, she was definitely associated with Dostoevsky in some way, Mikhail concluded as he glared down at the bright, colored pictures in front of him.

In one of the shots, a carefree Mira could be seen exiting what he knew to be Dostoevsky’s villa, on the arms of a girl who had to be her friend. She was at least four years younger in the picture, and they were giggling over nothing as girls sometimes did.

In another of the shots, taken the very night he’d fucked her in fact, Mira could be seen sneaking into the same villa late at night, her expression guilty as she looked furtively toward the general angle of the camera.

He rose to his feet, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he contemplated what he had learned. He wasn’t a man who believed in coincidences. If Mira was seen leaving Dostoevsky’s villa twice, she had to be connected to him somehow.

He didn’t truly believe she was Dostoevsky’s lover because, otherwise, she wouldn’t have been a virgin. But now that she isn’t a virgin anymore, all bets are off, his subconscious whispered to him.

Anger rose inside of him, fierce and hot at the thought of another man putting his hands on Mira; worst of all Dostoevsky. Before he could think better of it, he swept a figurine off his desk and watched it clatter to the ground with an audible sound that brought his men running. When they found him safe and sound, they quietly withdrew, sensing at once that he needed to be alone.

He needed to find Mira and make her pay for betraying him by being in league with his enemy. Why had she come to his club? To meet with him and lure him?

A timid knock sounded at the door just then, and Mikhail lifted his head as he watched the door open to admit Williams Faraday, his father’s attorney and the man who had been handling the Bratva’s legal affairs for as long as he could remember.

Williams was a small, balding man with the face of a pigeon and the stealth of an alligator. You almost never saw him coming until he struck, which was perhaps what made him such a great attorney.

Whenever any of Mikhail’s men were foolish enough to get themselves into trouble with the law, it was Williams who came to their rescue. Whenever some overzealous police officers took it into their heads to try to raid the Bratva, Williams got the hint early enough to warn him and his men. If there was anyone on earth Mikhail trusted, it was Williams; the man was like an elderly uncle. He’d been loyal to Mikhail’s father, and then loyal to Mikhail ever since his reign began.

He gave the man a warm smile, dropping his anger in an instant as he went to sit behind his desk and motioned for the lawyer to take a seat as well.

“Did we have an appointment I forgot about?” Mikhail asked politely, knowing they didn’t have any prior appointment. He had been blessed with a mind like a steel trap; he never forgot anything.

“No, Mikhail. But you needed to see these, pronto,” he said, extending some legal-looking documents to Mikhail.

Mikhail took the documents with a frown. Williams sounded worried, which was not a usual occurrence. “What are these?” he demanded after scanning the first few lines and seeing his father’s name and his own name mentioned a couple of times.

Williams shrugged. “Your father’s gift to you and your brothers, but you’re responsible for it as long as you’re a Pakhan.”

Mikhail grinned as he gave the papers another confused glance. “Don’t tell me the old man hid some stash of gold off somewhere.”

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