The kotov duet, p.1
The Kotov Duet, page 1
Ghosts of the Past
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Copyright 2024 Monica Clayton
Published by M.E. Clayton
All Rights Reserved
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This book is a work of fiction. The entire content is a product of the author’s imagination, and all names, places, businesses, and incidences are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places or occurrences, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the express written consent from the author, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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Cover: Adobe Stock
Warning: This book contains sexual situations and other adult themes. Recommended for 18 years of age and over.
Table of Contents
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Author's Note
Contact Me
Dedication
Playlist
Prologue
1. Avgust
2. Samara
3. Avgust
4. Samara
5. Avgust
6. Samara
7. Avgust
8. Samara
9. Avgust
10. Samara
11. Avgust
12. Samara
13. Avgust
14. Samara
15. Avgust
16. Samara
17. Avgust
18. Samara
19. Avgust
20. Samara
21. Avgust
22. Samara
23. Avgust
24. Samara
25. Avgust
26. Samara
27. Avgust
28. Samara
29. Avgust
30. Samara
31. Avgust
32. Samara
33. Avgust
34. Samara
35. Avgust
36. Samara
37. Avgust
38. Samara
39. Avgust
40. Samara
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Author’s Note
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Just a couple of things before I let you go and get your read on. While I am doing my best to work with better editing and proofreading software, all my books are solo, independent works. I write my books, proofread my books, edit my books, create the covers, etc. I have one beta who gives me feedback on my stories, but other than that, all my books are independent projects.
That being said, I apologize, in advance, for the typos, grammar inconsistencies, or any other mistakes I may make. Since writing is strictly a hobby for me, I haven’t looked into commitments in regard to publishers, editors, etc. My hope is that my stories are enjoyable enough that a few mistakes, here and there, can be overlooked. However, if you’re a stickler for grammar, my books are probably not for you.
Also, I am an avid reader-I mean an AVID reader. I love to read above any other hobby. However, the only downside to my reading obsession is when I fall in love with a series, but I have to wait for the additional books to come out. So, because I feel that disappointment down to my soul, when I started publishing my works, I vowed to publish all books in my series all at once. No waiting here…LOL. Now, the exception to that will be if enough readers request additional stories based off the standalone, such as in Facing the Enemy. At that point, if I decide to move forward with a requested series, I will make sure all additional books are available all at once. As much as this is a hobby for me, I am writing these books for all of you, as well as myself.
Thank you for everything!
Contact Me
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I really appreciate you reading my book and I would love to hear from you! Now, unfortunately, because I do have a full-time job and one part-time job, plus a family that I love spending time with, I’m not very active on social media. However, for the sites I do participate in, here are my social media coordinates:
Website
News & Updates
Author Pages
Social Media Sites
Newsletter Sign Up
Other Books
Dedication
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For everyone that loves a man with tattoos.
Playlist
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Ghosts of the Past
Take What You Want – Post Malone ft. Ozzy Osborne & Travis Scott
Pray – Jry ft. Rooty
Dynasty – Miia
Everything – Jody Watley
To Love Somebody – Bee Gees
Wildflower – Skylark
Love Is – Vanessa Williams & Brian McKnight
Ease the Pain – Lisa Fischer
I Keep Forgetting – Michael McDonald
At This Moment -Billy Vera & The Beaters
Demons of the Future
I’m In It For Love – James House
Stay – Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko
Bother – Stone Sour
The Flame – Cheap Trick
Hold Tight – Lvly ft Jaslyn Edgar
Bad Friends – Mimmi Bangoura
Poison – Alice Cooper
Say Goodbye – Jordan Knight ft. Deborah Gibson
Piano in the Dark – Brenda Russell
Habits (Stay High) – Tove Lo
Prologue
I was pissed.
Really fucking pissed.
As I watched Liev cut off our new friend’s fingers, I was pissed that our newest guest was fucking British. Almost two fucking years later, we were no closer to finding out who Klive Simpson was, and part of that was due to his little gang comprising of all kinds of different nationalities and ethnicities. Klive Simpson had put himself together a hodgepodge of petty criminals, and that had made it more difficult to track him down.
At any rate, between what the Sartoris and O’Briens had managed to accomplish, by my count, there were only two people left in Simpson’s little entourage, and that was his right-hand man, Louie Manziel, and Klive Simpson himself. Nevertheless, the facts that we had managed to uncover pointed to a more personal tie to Simpson being in Port Townsend, and that tie was us, the Kotovs. Only no one knew what Klive’s agenda was, and the more that he evaded me, the more pissed off I became.
“Nichego,” Damir said, shaking his head.
I watched in silence, knowing that he wasn’t wrong. Nothing was exactly what we were getting from Thomas Westwood, and considering that Damir was second to Maksim as far as the skill of torture was concerned, Thomas Westwood wasn’t telling us anything more because there wasn’t anything left to tell. He’d already told us everything that he knew, which wasn’t enough to find Klive.
“I think we have enough to find Louie Manziel,” Melor remarked, always the optimist, something that no one would ever suspect by just looking at him.
“I want Klive Simpson,” I stated unnecessarily.
“Bratok, we all do,” Akim chimed in, and even though he wasn’t my brother by blood, we were brothers by loyalty. “But this dura is finished.”
As much as I agreed with him that Thomas Westwood was a fool, with every day that Klive Simpson still took in oxygen, I was beginning to feel like one as well, and that didn’t sit well with me. Something close and personal was coming for us, and I did not enjoy not knowing what it was.
“I say that we concentrate on finding Manziel,” Maksim suggested. “This one is just another pawn, a mere puppet.”
“Otlichno,” I said, even though things were definitely not fine. “Let’s put our boots to the floor to find Manziel.”
“I’ll finish this one off, then get everything cleaned up,” Damir added. “He’s already done for anyway.”
“Louie Manziel is not to be killed, if possible,” I ordered. “I want answers, and he’s the last person alive to be able to give them to me.”
Maksim let out a humorless snort. “You say that like he’s going to come willingly, Pakhan.”
“Perhaps not,” I agreed. “However, as your Pakhan, I expect my orders to be carried out as reasonably as possible.”
“Otets will want an update on the situation,” Melor commented conversationally.
Father.
Our father liked to believe that he still had a say in how we ran the bratva, but he didn’t. Honestly, the only reason that he kept peacocking was because he was still trying to impress my mother. After decades of betraying her with other women, now that she no longer held anymore affection for him, he was doing his best to undo the past, something that he would never be able to do.
“I’ll handle Otets,” I told him. “Since Klive and his men had been nothing but a nuisance so far, there was no need for him to be concerned.”
As Damir went back to sending Thomas Westwood into the afterlife, I turned to leave the warehouse, and I knew without having to look back that the footsteps echoing mine belonged to Maksim. There wasn’t a man more loyal than Maksim Barychev, and I was lucky to call him a bratok, and the man
“Manziel isn’t going to come quietly, Avgust,” he said, voicing his disagreement with my order in private, respecting my position in the bratva, no matter Maksim’s level of intelligence.
“I know,” I replied as we walked outside towards our respective vehicles. “But we need answers.”
“We’ll do our best, Pakhan,” he promised.
Since I’d kill any of my men that didn’t always do their best, that wasn’t a concern.
Chapter 1
Avgust~
As I stared out into the city’s skyline, I couldn’t help but wonder about the future of the bratva. Two years ago, the Sartoris had started getting married and having babies, and only a few months ago, the O’Briens began starting their own families. The other two crime syndicates in Port Townsend were already working on their next generation of leaders, and I could barely stand a woman long enough for her to put her clothes back on before leaving the hotel room.
The city’s lights twinkled bright enough that I could see them from the balcony of my bedroom, and even as far away from town as my home sat, the bright neon lights of the night reached my eyes. While many people only saw autumn postcards of Maryland, there was an entire underworld that existed inside the state, and thanks to New York and New Jersey being so close, crime was very prevalent here, more so in Port Townsend.
Now, once upon a time, Port Townsend had been divided into four different territories, the Sartoris, the O’Briens, the Schulzes, and us. However, Emil Schulz had pissed off Nero Sartori, ending his entire reign and bloodline with that one act. Emil had shot and kidnapped Nero’s wife, so Nero had wiped out every last German, and it’d been a win/win for the rest of us. Granted, with the Sartoris having the largest numbers out of all of us, Nero hadn’t had to share his spoils of war, but he’d had, expanding all of our territories.
Nevertheless, because Nero wasn’t a stupid man and outnumbered us and the O’Briens, he had retained control of the coastline and ports, the O’Briens had the northern border with access to state line airports, plus what they’d already had, and we had the rest. Now, while the Sartoris outnumbered us by eight-hundred strong, we outnumbered the Irish by a couple of hundred, and all that math was enough to keep everything civilized at the moment. There was also the fact that none of us wanted to go to war with each other when Klive Simpson was proving to be a problem in Port Townsend. Unbeknownst to Klive, the Italians, Irish, and Russians had an unspoken truce just to find the fucker.
Of course, that didn’t mean that we couldn’t go to war if we had to. While the Italians were larger and more organized, and the Irish were fearless and more resourceful, the bratva was deadlier and the bond between the family was stronger than anyone could possibly comprehend. Though we weren’t suicidal, we were close enough to it not to back down from anything or anyone.
Now, once upon a time, my father, Mikhail Kotov, had been the bratva’s Pakhan, but that had ended a few years ago when my mother had announced that she was leaving him. After years of emotional abuse and neglect, she’d had enough, so my father had handed the reins over to me and my brothers, hoping to win my mother back. However, anyone with a working pair of eyes could see that my mother was done with him, though we had no idea why she’d stayed with him. At any rate, since we were all grown men, their marriage was not our business until or unless my father did something to her.
As for my mother, Polina Kotov, she’d always been a faithful bratva wife and devoted mother to me and my two younger brothers, Bogdan and Melor. With always knowing what had awaited us in the future, she’d done her best to raise us with a strong sense of right and wrong, simply so that we’d know the difference, even if we very rarely chose to do the right thing. Still, for all that we lacked a conscience and decency, Polina Kotov had been an excellent mother and still was.
So, when my father had stepped down, as the oldest, I’d taken over, something that no one had contested. I’d began proving myself at the age of thirteen, and my father had made me start at the bottom. In fact, he’d made all his sons start at the bottom, so that it couldn’t be argued that we hadn’t earned our positions, and if someone disagreed…well, they were smart enough not to voice it out loud.
Now, while we weren’t as rigid as the Italians, the Russian Bratva had its own structure, and every position that we held within the organization was held with a sense of honor, not pride like the Italians. Every position in the bratva was an earned one, not something that you were appointed just because you were blood. We were warriors, and only the most cunning warriors ran the bratva.
Still, for all our differences, our structure was similar to the Italian Mafia. I was the Pakhan, which would be equivalent to their Don or Godfather. Maksim was my sovietnik, which was a counselor, same as how Aurelio Provenza was Nero’s consigliere. Then we had our obshchak, which was our bookmaker, and that position was held by my brother, Bogdan. My other brother, Melor, was our avtoriyet, which was a high authority figure that could make decisions in my name. The last person to round out the top-tier of the bratva was Akim Barychev, Maksim’s younger brother, and he was our boyevik, which put him in charge of all our warriors.
The rest of the organization consisted of kryshas, torpedoes, and bykis. The kryshas were our muscle, or as the Italians would call them, the soldiers. The torpedoes were our killers, with Damir Ivanov being our most talented ender of life. Lastly, the bykis were our bulls, or more commonly known as bodyguards. Now, while we had more kryshas and bykis than we had torpedoes, that wasn’t a problem for us. Our kryshas and bykis also knew how to kill when necessary, they just weren’t as skilled or as creative as our torpedoes.
There were also our Vory, but there weren’t many of them. It was a position that was bestowed on someone only when the candidate showed considerable personal ability, leadership skills, charisma, and incredible intellect. Normally, you could identify a Vor by his tattoos, because every tattoo that a bratva etched into his skin had meaning. Our tattoos were symbolic, and if you carried a mark that you hadn’t earned, then we carved it from your flesh.
It also didn’t matter that we were an American-born generation. Both my paternal and maternal grandparents had come over from Russia, and they had worked hard and had paid their dues to become American citizens. However, they hadn’t become too Americanized to not pass down years of Russian tradition and pride, and my mother and father’s native tongue was Russian, despite having been born in the US. So, my brothers and I had become something of a mix in that regard and spoke both Russian and English fluently.
Letting the sweet smell from my cigar fill the night air, I knew that I had to put thoughts about my legacy aside for the moment. Right now, the priority was finding Klive Simpson and taking care of him. Thanks to our little truce-non-truce, Nero’s hacker had managed to paint us a somewhat sketchy picture of why Klive Simpson could be in Port Townsend, and that picture pointed towards us. We believed that the petty bullshit that his gang had engaged in had been just a smokescreen to hide his true motives, which we still didn’t know. Though Klive’s band of criminal misfits had been a melting pot of all kinds of different races and ethnicities, there was no denying that a majority of them had been Russian. Plus, it made no sense that he’d pick a city and state that was already occupied to try his hand at starting up his own criminal organization. No one lived in Port Townsend without knowing who the Kotovs, O’Briens, and Sartoris were, so it felt right that Klive was in town for a personal reason, not a professional one.
As I wracked my brain to figure out what the fuck Klive Simpson could possibly want with us, my phone chimed with an incoming text, and since only a handful of people had a direct line to me, I always answered my phone.
Damir: At the Lullaby. Maribelle is here
I let out a low chuckle. Life was easy when you had money, and we were wealthy enough that everyone in our organization had money in spades.
Me: Not interested
While I had no problem with women that liked to spread themselves around, Maribelle was more trouble than she was worth, no matter how good she was at sucking cock. The shlyukha liked to cause problems where there weren’t any, and all because she thought that she deserved better than the cards that life had dealt her. Also, it wasn’t an insult to call a slut a slut when those were the facts.
