Tyrant an mm mafia roman.., p.1
Tyrant: An MM Mafia Romance, page 1
TYRANT
RUTHLESS DADDIES 2
GIANNI HOLMES
CONTENTS
Tyrant
Content Warning
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Epilogue
Ruthless Daddies 2 Series
More Gianni Holmes
Also by Gianni Holmes
Editor: Tanja Ongkiehong
Proofreader: Abrianna Marchesotti
Final Proofreaders: Marissa Miller, Tammy Jones, Malissa Hilton, Lori Martini, Teresa Mangrum.
Cover Designer: Charli Childs
Tyrant © 2023 Gianni Holmes
All Rights Reserved
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic, in whole or in part, without expressed written permission. This is excluding brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
TYRANT
Rumor has it I’m a tyrant.
The head of the Russian mob you don’t want to cross.
After all, I killed my wife when she betrayed me.
Then I buried her in the same grave as her lover, my best friend.
Rumor has it I stole their love child.
The little boy that, for the first two years of his life, I thought was mine.
They say I locked him up on a deserted estate where he’s gone mad talking to imaginary friends.
Rumor has it the boy is mine now.
That I let him roam my mansion completely naked.
And he has a life sentence for paying for his mother’s crimes in my bed.
Rumor has it I’m obsessed with this little ray of sunshine in my dark world.
And anyone who tries to hurt him will soon take their last breath.
Still, you shouldn’t listen to rumors. They're not always true.
Sometimes.
CONTENT WARNING
This book contains an unconventional guardian/ward romance (a very negligent guardian who hasn’t seen his ward in eighteen years). There’s over-the-top jealousy and possessiveness due to the past experiences of one character. Other warnings must be mentioned for a huge age gap, unsafe sex, indirect prostitution, child neglect, the torture of bad guys and subsequent murder.
PROLOGUE
YARO
The gut-wrenching screams of a little boy filled the night, piercing through the cold air and into my very core. I clenched my fists, nails digging into my palms as I forced myself to remain stoic in front of those who’d gathered to watch the ghastly, unforgivable sin I was about to commit.
I could almost hear their thoughts condemning me. Servants who weren’t paid to have opinions judging me—the tyrant.
Although I was the one who’d been cheated on and lied to, somehow, I’d still ended up as the villain in their eyes. But when I’d been born into a life of villainy, they could hardly expect me to behave differently.
“Daaaaaaddy!” the little boy strained against his nanny, arms stretching over her shoulders in my direction. I felt his confusion as his two-year-old brain grappled to understand why the father who’d bonded with him, played with him, and until two days ago ran to his every cry was suddenly not responding to his pain.
The nanny, Polina, hesitated and half turned as if questioning whether I was certain I was doing the right thing.
“Sir, perhaps this isn’t a good idea,” she said timidly, her voice barely audible above the little boy’s wails.
“Enough!” I barked, and the cries quieted to whimpers. The little boy pulled back his arms and cowered against his nanny. From my position on the steps, the uncertainty and fear in his wet, red-rimmed eyes were hard to miss.
He was afraid of me.
Bile rushed into my mouth, but I couldn’t show any weakness. I swallowed down the bitter fluid. “Take him out of here,” I forced out the words past the lump in my throat.
“Right away, sir.”
Chase’s sobs weren’t as loud anymore as if he’d resigned in his tiny brain that I wasn’t the father he knew. Just the man who’d been tricked into raising him as my own for two years. How was I supposed to look at his innocent face and not remember? He looked so much like her. His wild, black curls needed a trim, since the locks now reached his shoulders, but he hated getting a haircut.
“Come on, Chase. We need to go to the salon.”
The little boy darted between my legs, and I chuckled as the tall, willowy woman in front of us crossed her arms and glared. She was breathtaking, even when mad, her dark mahogany skin an unblemished wonderland I loved to explore.
“You’re like a wild puppy with your hair looking like that,” she said sternly. “Yaro, will you help me? Don’t just stand there and laugh. He needs his hair groomed properly.”
He did, but I couldn’t forget how traumatized he’d seemed the last time his mother had taken him to her salon. It’d been his first time, and he’d cried the whole day while clutching a clump of his hair.
“Why does he need a haircut?” I picked up the little boy hiding behind me and hitched him to my side. He stuffed his thumb into his mouth and placed his head on my shoulder, swinging his legs as if he knew he was safe now from his mother.
“You have eyes, Yaro. Are you wearing your hair this long? No, so why should he? I’ll have them cut it all off this time, so it’ll take longer between appointments.”
Chase popped his finger out of his mouth, clutched my neck tight, and shook his head. “Nonono! Daddy, no! No haircut.”
How could I turn him down?
“It’s a deal, then,” I said. “I’ll let my hair grow out so we’ll look exactly alike.”
“Sir, please.” A hand enclosed around my leg, almost tripping me. I regained my balance—barely—and glared at the imbecile who’d fallen to her knees and obstructed my path.
Maya was Chase’s favorite of all three nannies he had.
“Let go.”
“No! I won’t. Not until you change your mind. This is wrong.”
I scowled at my men, who stood watching the sight, uncertain about what to do.
“What the fuck do I pay you for?” I snapped. “Somebody get this woman off me now.”
They rushed over all at once, and two of the men pried her off my leg. She didn’t go easily, and it was a wonder she didn’t take a piece of the material away in her fist.
“You can’t do this to him!” she screamed. “He’s a baby! A baby, for god’s sake. How can you be this cruel? You’re a monster. A heartless bastard. Please don’t do this to him.”
“Do you have a death wish?” I asked quietly.
“Go ahead. Shoot me if you want. I don’t care.” She wrestled to her feet, shoving two of my men off her. Chest heaving and struggling to breathe, she waved her hand at the servants and hired muscles spread out around us in the courtyard. “Shame on you! Shame on all of you. You know what he’s doing isn’t right, yet none of you will do anything about it. Well, I won’t stand by and let you ruin that innocent child’s life.”
“Is that all?”
“You raised that child for two years.” Tears streamed down her face. “He calls you Daddy, and you’re the only father he knows. It doesn’t matter what his mother did or whose blood runs in his veins. He is your son. Even you can’t be so cruel as to banish this child to a godforsaken place with no future.”
“How about I banish you along with him? If you care that much, then maybe you should go with him.”
She sucked in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Then I will. You just wait and see Yaroslav Noskov! This child will be someone great. You’ll regret what you’ve done. I’ll make sure of it as long as there’s breath in my body. I hope you die a horrible death and burn in hell, you cold, heartless bastard!”
She’d said enough to warrant me taking her head clean off. She’d ranted at me in front of servants who already whispered enough behind my back. They’d been whispering long before I got a whiff there was even anything amiss. Had I not happened upon two of them discussing walking in on my wife sucking my best friend’s cock in the gazebo, I would never have known of their affair. I would still be the laughingstock, playing the infatuated husband.
To think, every time I went out of the city, I left Oleg behind to keep my wife and child safe.
No, not my wife. Not my child.
His lover and his child.
His child.
Why did Chase have t o be his? I could have handled everything else but that. How could I show my face to others when I was raising a bastard? The Noskov name had been slandered enough. I would be damned to let it happen again.
But maybe… just maybe the nanny could provide the little boy with the love I couldn’t, so I pardoned the woman who clearly had a death wish. I raised my hand, and Andrei halted from accosting her.
Two lives were already lost tonight. We could do without another.
Maya was still hissing at my back, cursing me, and calling me every vile creature she knew. She wasn’t wrong. Back ramrod straight, I stalked away from the scene unfolding in my courtyard. I didn’t need to see them driving away. It was bad enough his sobs echoed in my head.
The front door closed behind me and muted the sounds outside. I strode along the long foyer, the faded rectangles a constant memory of the pictures I’d broken. Our wedding. Our family picnic. Our first Christmas.
Why would I want to see memories of the day she had promised to be faithful when she would defile those vows for two years? Hell, maybe even longer. For all I knew, she’d been fucking Oleg behind my back since the beginning.
All the milestones I’d framed were now tainted memories I wished to erase from my long-term memory.
I stomped up the stairs to the second floor and turned left. I shouldn’t. Looking inside the room would bring nothing but heartache and pain. Still, I opened the door and entered the room—a little boy’s paradise. Emotions held me in a chokehold as I surveyed the room. His little bed—a Lightning McQueen twin bed—where I sat each night and read to him was framed by a mini basketball court. To the left was a punching bag and to the right a climbing wall. The peekaboo portals in the walls were his crawlspace, where he would hide from me as if he wasn’t still in plain view.
Damn you. Damn you, Olive. How could you?
If she wasn’t already dead, I would have pulled the trigger a second time.
A knock sounded on the door. Andrei stood framed in the doorway, uncertain whether he should enter.
“What is it?”
He scratched the back of his neck as he often did when he was nervous about something. “The men are here at your request, sir.”
“My request?”
What was he talking about? The last two days were still a blur.
“To remove the furniture, gut the room, and throw out everything that belonged to the kid.”
Not the kid. He had a name. His name was Chase.
I swallowed, vaguely remembering the conversation I’d had with Andrei. “Let them in.”
Andrei barked at the men in Russian, then stepped aside. Two muscular guys, twins, entered the bedroom.
“Mr. Noskov,” they said in unison. When I didn’t respond, they walked around me.
This is all wrong. They shouldn’t be touching his stuff.
“Get out,” I said.
“Huh?”
“I said to get out!” I shouted, and the guy standing at the bed jumped, dropping the galaxy night light, which shattered on the floor. They broke his favorite lamp. “Get the fuck out. Now!”
The two men scrambled from the bedroom, almost knocking over Andrei in their haste.
“Yaro, this is—”
“Mr. Noskov.” The last man I’d allowed to call me Yaro had stabbed me in the back. “From now on, you and everyone else call me Mr. Noskov.”
“As you wish.” Andrei nodded. “Should I send the men back in?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No one should enter this bedroom.” I narrowed my gaze, and Andrei stepped back until he was standing outside. “In fact, I want it sealed off and nailed shut.”
“And the things inside?”
“Leave it be.”
It would serve as a reminder of how I let my guard down and was taken for a fool. I would never let anyone take advantage of me the way those two had. Who needed love anyway?
They thought I was a tyrant? They dared to whisper behind my back that I was a cold-hearted bastard?
I would show them what a tyrant really was.
CHAPTER ONE
YARO
On a scale of one to ten, my annoyance was at an eleven. No wonder the cute little bell that had rung above my head when I walked into the main entrance of the sleazy motel lay shattered on the floor from the bullet I’d put through it. If not for the bell, it would have been the “innocent” owner cowering behind the front desk.
Behind me, my bodyguard, Andrei, all but radiated his disapproval. But after working for me for almost twenty years, he knew all too well to give me a wide berth when I was in the mood. Not the black mood. That was my default. The blacker mood.
A head of dark brown curls threaded through with silver peeked up from behind the receptionist’s desk. Slowly the man rose to his feet with his arms raised.
Milton Ranger owned Free Range, a budget-friendly, run-down motel frequented by prostitutes, lowlives, and the worst of them all—serial adulterers.
“Shucks, Mr. Noskov,” he grumbled. “This is a peaceful place of business. Why’d you have to do that for?”
“You run a prostitution ring right here. How peaceful can it be?” I walked up to the desk and pointed at the mismatched pigeonholes stuffed with keys at his back. “Room 12.”
“Is this really necessary? Why don’t I ring the room and have him meet you here? Then you can bring him with you.”
For a man who’d called me the minute the soon-to-be victim had checked into the motel, he wasn’t cooperating enough. I knew better than to think he’d had a second thought about the part he played in this. He was fishing for more money.
“I don’t have the patience. Will I have to come over there and get the key myself?”
“No, no. I’ll get it.” He removed the key from the cubbyhole. With trembling hands, he handed it to me. “Blood stains are a bitch to get rid of, you know.”
Andrei came up to my right side and plunked down a wad of cash on the desk. “For your troubles.”
“Room 12 is down the corridor to the right,” he mumbled, gesturing the way, while with the other hand, he greedily snatched the money out of plain sight. He knew damn well what was going to happen, but people like him had no scruples when it came to money. He would sell his own mother for a hundred bucks.
My thoughts raced as Andrei and I made our way outside and up the corridor. Another shipment bound for East Asia had been hijacked by the Falcons, my longtime rivals. After the first shipment went missing, I’d suspected they had an inside man. On the third hijack, I’d figured out who was responsible. Now I had the pleasure of sending them to meet their maker early.
Everyone in my orbit knew betrayal was the fastest way for me to dig a hole with their name on it.
“Yaro,” Andrei said. “I know you’re angry, but don’t do anything rash.”
He was wrong. I wasn’t angry. Being angry meant I had feelings. I’d divorced myself from that years ago, making decisions based purely on people’s actions. Betraying me was an action that could never happen again. The one way to guarantee that was to get rid of the traitor.
“When have I ever done anything I regretted?”
A memory tried to force its way in, but my willpower was stronger. Room 12 loomed in front of me at the end of the corridor, just as Ranger had said. I handed the key to Andrei, who unlocked the door, then shoved it open. Inside the hot, dank hotel room, the sound of heavy breathing, moans, and the faint notes of a late-night TV infomercial in Spanish filled the air.
