The gatekeeper a dark br.., p.1
The Gatekeeper: A Dark Bratva Romance (Chicago Bratva Book 9), page 1
The Gatekeeper
A Dark Bratva Romance
Chicago Bratva
Renee Rose
Copyright © January 2023 The Gatekeeper by Renee Rose and Renee Rose Romance
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the authors. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors' rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published in the United States of America
Wilrose Dream Ventures LLC
Cover by: Pop Kitty Designs
This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book contains descriptions of many BDSM and sexual practices, but this is a work of fiction and, as such, should not be used in any way as a guide. The author and publisher will not be responsible for any loss, harm, injury, or death resulting from use of the information contained within. In other words, don’t try this at home, folks!
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
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About Renee Rose
Prologue
Kira, 13 years old
A splintering pounding sounds on our front door.
I’m in my nightshirt, brushing my teeth for bed.
My father has been missing for two days. It’s not unusual. He has his addictions: alcohol. Gambling. Low-level grifting.
But unlike our mother, he’s a decent parent. When he’s home, he laughs and jokes with us. He may break every promise he makes, but at least he gives us attention.
Our mom is shut up in her room, as always at this time of night. She’s a living ghost. She’s emotionally checked out from living with our dad, I guess. She works to pay the rent and put groceries in the refrigerator but, otherwise, barely functions.
I run out to the living room.
“Kira, come here!” My sister, Anya, who is seventeen and more of a mother to me than our own, grabs a butcher knife from the kitchen.
The door bursts open, and our dingy apartment floods with tattooed men.
Bratva. The Russian mafiya. I’ve heard my dad speak of them, but I’ve never seen them before. Still, there’s no doubt in my mind that’s who these men are.
I fly to my sister’s side, behind the protection of her butcher knife. Our mother doesn’t even come out of her room.
“Grigor. Where is he?” one of them demands. They’re looking for our father. I know he does business with the bratva. I’m not sure what kind. Maybe that’s where he gambles.
“Wh–why? What has he done?” I ask.
“He owes us, and we’ve come to collect.”
“Well, he’s not here,” Anya says.
One of them advances. His upper lip curls. I don’t like the way he’s looking at my bare legs. At my sister’s breasts. “Where?”
“We don’t know!” Anya spits. “He’s been gone for two days.”
“Take the older one,” a man says quietly. He must be the leader because the men surge forward to obey.
One of them puts a gun to my forehead, but he speaks to my sister. “Come nicely or your little sister’s brains will cover the floor.”
Anya, shocked into submission, lets another man take the knife from her hand and grasp her firmly by the upper arm.
“You can’t take her!” I’m not begging, I’m shouting. As if I have any power to persuade them.
“Shut her up,” the leader says, and the man with the gun slams the side of it against my head. Everything goes black.
When I wake, Anya is gone.
Maykl, 13 years old
I stand, pistol shaking in my sweaty hand. My breath rasps in and out in harsh measures. I used this pistol four days ago to kill my own father. It was kill or be killed, but I’m still sick over it. I’m still in shock. I’ve barely slept in the nights since.
I’m grateful the bratva took care of everything. Got rid of the body. Gave me a place to stay. Put money in my pocket. It was Peter, one of the lower leaders, who gave me the gun in the first place.
“For protection,” he said when they were at my father’s auto shop, and he saw the bruises on my face.
Now, though–what he’s asking of me is too much.
“This is how you prove your loyalty, Maykl. Do you want to join the brotherhood?”
I stare down at the beaten man at my feet. Sweat beads along his greasy blond hairline. His light blue eyes bulge with terror. Breath rasps in and out at a rapid rate. “Nyet…nyet,” he pleads.
I do want to join the brotherhood. Rather desperately. I assumed I was already in. I won't survive without them. I’ll go to prison for killing my father.
“Take my daughter again! Use her,” the man pleads.
“We already tired of her,” Peter says.
“The younger one, then.”
“It’s easy,” Peter murmurs behind me. “Just pull the trigger. This guy would sell his own daughters. He is scum.”
I stop thinking. I have no other choice. I squeeze the trigger…
And miss.
“Again, Maykl.” Peter’s patient. “Right between the eyes. You can do it.”
The second time, I don’t miss. Clean shot in the head.
He dies immediately.
Grigor Koslov. I memorize his name as the ink is pressed into my skin to memorialize the crime.
My first murder on behalf of the bratva.
First of far too many.
Chapter One
Sixteen Years Later
Kira
I stand in the Cook County morgue and stare down at the wasted body of my sister. A wave of nausea rolls through me, even though I prepared myself for this sight. She’s skin and bones, reduced to a skeleton long before the final overdose took her. Her arms are covered in needle tracks.
This is the conclusion to yet another life ruined by the bratva. The second family member I’ve lost at their hands.
I barely slept on the plane from Russia, but seeing Anya’s horrific form instantly clears the fog from my brain and brings on an urgent sense of purpose: I need to find my nephew. I came to bring him home with me. It’s what I should have done years ago.
I was still in school when Anya left with Mika, but I begged her to leave him with me. I already knew the bright future she fantasized about for them here wouldn’t happen.
“That’s her,” I tell the morgue attendant. I started learning English the day she left with Aleksi, her client. Or boyfriend. Or whatever you call the bratva thug who pays you for sex and treats you like shit.
I suppose I always knew this day would come. I’m grateful now that I can understand and speak English well enough to get by.
“What do you want to do with the body?” The attendant at the morgue asks.
“I…I don’t know yet.”
“You have twenty-four hours to make arrangements. I’m sorry to rush you, but she’s already been here three days, and we need the space here,” the sharp-nosed attendant tells me. He’s nice enough. He tries to warn me off actually viewing the body and just identify her through a photograph, but I refuse.
I push back the mountain of grief that threatens to crush me. Now is not the time to mourn Anya. I don’t have the luxury to grieve yet. And dealing with Anya’s body is the least of my worries right now. “Okay. I’ll figure it out. Thank you.”
My next visit is to the police station to meet with the officer who signed the paperwork when Anya was brought in.
“I’m a police officer, too,” I tell him in hopes he’ll be more helpful than the one who called me in Russia. I produce my Politsiya Rossii identification to show him. “You have no idea where her son might be?”
The graying cop, Officer Green, shakes his head. “The 9-1-1 call came from another female junkie in the crack house where she was living. We haven’t investigated, as the cause of death was obviously an overdose.”
“May I have the address of the crack house, please?”
“Of course. You say she has a son? How old?”
The emotion that was absent from seeing my d ead sister suddenly floods me at grief for the loss of Mika. My sweet nephew. The boy I bounced, fed, and taught to walk. The child I raised when I was just a teenager.
“He’d be… fifteen now.”
“And the father?”
I shake my head. Who knows which bratva mudak actually sired Mika. It could have been any one of them who passed her around as payment for our father’s debt.
“No father.”
A junkie mother. And this kid on his own, living in a foreign land. It’s horrible. I’ve been trying to find both of them since I lost contact with Anya over four years ago, but even with my police ties, I found nothing.
Guilt tightens my gut. I should have done more.
This time, I’ll make it right. I won’t leave until I find my nephew.
I work hard to keep the wobble out of my voice. “I’ve been searching for my sister and nephew for several years. I’d like to file a missing person report on the boy.”
“Okay. We can check the database for any information on him, too. See if he’s popped up in the system,” Officer Green offers. He leads me to his desk where he sits behind a computer to enter the report.
“Thanks.”
I already know it won’t show anything. I’ve had a data request on them both for years, which is how they contacted me when they found my sister dead.
Officer Green fills out the missing person report and writes down the address of the crack house.
“Your sister’s tourist visa expired years ago. What brought her over here to begin with?”
I draw in a long, steadying breath. “The bratva.”
“Russian mafiya?”
“Yes.”
The cop grimaces. “Could the boy be with them? He’s old enough—he might be part of the organization by now.”
I nod. “My thoughts exactly, but most of those men turned up dead several years ago in a mass shooting.”
Officer Green frowns and nods. “I remember it. Some kind of mafia turf war with the Italians.”
“Do you know if any of them survived?”
He shakes his head. “No idea. But the bratva stronghold is down on Lake Shore Drive. They own an entire high-rise building–the neighborhood calls it the Kremlin. You could start there. I understand it’s sort of an embassy to any Russian in need, so you might show up and play dumb, you know? Hide that badge of yours and tell them you need a place to stay. I heard they only rent to Russians, and for a subsidized rate.” He shrugs. “Just an idea.”
I’d rather barge in with a gun in each hand and search every room until I get an answer, but I know I wouldn’t last a minute. Officer Green is right. If I want to succeed, I may have to go undercover.
Find Mika and get enough information to tear this whole operation down. If not through the American police, then through the bratva in Russia. I can pit them against one another and incite a war.
“What sort of crimes are they into, do you know? Prostitution? Drugs, I presume?”
Officer Green takes off his police cap and scratches his head. “I’m sure they’re into everything, but other than an arson charge last year, they’ve stayed squeaky clean.” He takes the paper he wrote the flophouse address back from me and writes the address for the bratva building and a phone number.
“That’s my number. If you find anything worth reporting, call me. Don’t put yourself in danger. I know you’re a cop and can handle yourself, but I’m sure you understand these men are extremely dangerous. Plus, I should remind you that this isn’t your jurisdiction. Any arrests will have to come through my department or the FBI. We clear?”
I nod. “Understood.”
He hands the paper back to me. “Good luck.”
“I appreciate it.” I stand and hold out my hand to clasp his.
His concerned gaze holds mine. I know what he’s thinking. What the bratva would do with an attractive woman like me if things went sideways. “Be very careful.”
“I’m not afraid,” I tell him.
I’ll use my beauty to my advantage, if necessary. The way the bratva treats women, they will see me as nothing more than an object, anyway.
I toss my hair out of my eyes. “They should be afraid.”
Maykl
I stand watch behind my desk as strangers off the street wander into our building for Kateryna’s open house. Her studio, Kremlin Clay, has a once-a-month open house where she and a handful of other potters sell their wares.
I head up security for our building, so I have men stationed all over the first floor to make sure nothing goes wrong.
My pakhan, Ravil, has Leo, a seventeen-year-old Russian-American who lives in the building, serving as a doorman while I keep a close watch on everyone from behind the desk.
“Welcome to the Open House.” Leo speaks flawless English, having moved here as a child. He’s not bratva–at least, not yet. He lives in the building with his single mother. Ravil gives him work–at a very generous wage–to help them out. He’s not just pakhan to the bratva. He considers himself a sort of tribal leader to everyone in the building.
“The studio is just past the elevators on your left.” Leo invites in a young couple.
I’m in a suit, my tattoos mostly covered, other than those that crawl up my neck. I try to keep the customary menace and suspicion from showing on my face, while still monitoring their every move.
It’s my job to assess danger at this entry point. I’m the gatekeeper. The guy who keeps out all threats to our occupants, especially to our pakhan.
Security cameras are on, recording everything. The stairwell doors lock from the outside. No one can take an elevator without a keycard. I see everyone who goes in or out of the restrooms.
Nikolai, Oleg, and Adrian are inside the studio, armed and extremely dangerous.
Still, this level of intrusion into what is normally an impenetrable fortress has me on edge.
Nikolai and Chelle saunter out to the lobby of the building holding glasses of champagne. I notice Nikolai’s drink appears untouched. He may appear casual, but he’s on duty like I am.
Chelle sets a small plate of hors d’oeuvres on the counter for me. “Nikolai said no alcohol for you, but I brought you some snacks.”
I clear my throat trying not to look too grateful because Nikolai, who is normally laid-back, gets irrationally jealous of his fiancée. “Thank you.”
“How many have come through?” Nikolai asks, knowing I will have an exact tally in my head.
“Forty-nine in, twenty-two out,” I report.
Chelle looks disappointed. She’s a publicist with the top publicity firm in the city, and she arranged a social media blitz to advertise tonight’s open house. “Well, there’s still another hour.”
Personally, I think there are plenty in attendance. More than I like having to keep track of.
“There’s hardly anything left in there to buy,” Nikolai consoles, his hand possessively at Chelle’s back.
Though they’ve been together a few months, I’m not used to this domesticated version of Nikolai. Nor of any of my brothers who are now paired with a woman.
Ravil’s break with the bratva code of forbidding marriage and relationships seems more dangerous than anything else he’s done.
Seeing my brothers paired up, seeing them in love, leaves me cold. I’ve already seen how irrational the women make them. How the females cloud their judgment and affect their decision-making.
Most of all, it creates some kind of scratchy void deep inside me. A prompting to wonder what it would be like for me to claim a woman. To have someone soft and beautiful warming my bed.
Not that I don’t bring a woman home on occasion. I get my basic sexual needs met. But finding a partner–that’s something different.
The mere idea of it creates unease in me. A noisy clamoring of danger.
