Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
That fucking bastard was not going to control me for another second. He’d made me trash, but no more.
I took another bite, then another.
I’m no longer trash.
I am Charlotte Yahontov.
Chapter Four
Ive
One Month Later
We didn’t have a sixth brigadier, and running Oleg’s territory between the five of us was wearing thin.
I knew Ivan was pissed. There was no one he could trust. I couldn’t be in different territories, not when I had problems building within my own. I had it on good authority that a Hank Balafonte had started running drugs through my city. Not only had he begun to do that, but they had started to do the rounds in my nightclubs. I’d already gotten my hands on several pieces of product, and got my nerd to analyze all the components within the drugs. I really fucking despised what I found.
The drugs were not designed to give a high. They were being distributed to women, and those women were turning up on the missing list. This was causing me a headache. They were not turning up at hospitals or dead. No, they were missing, which only left one option—they were being sold.
So now I had a drug problem, and human trafficking to deal with, which pissed me off, especially since the last place the women were seen was at one of my nightclubs. This meant the cops were knocking at my places of business. This wasn’t good.
There were five missing women so far in the past month. That was too high a number for me. I’d already paid off several of my guys within the police force to give me the necessary details to find the women. As for Hank, he was floating under the radar as well. I’d already had several of his men locked up across the city in my cages, and were currently enjoying several days of starvation.
There was also the other detail of another problem—Benjamin Court—who liked to think of himself as a supplier of everything everyone needed. The small little gangs who thought they could run the streets now had guns and knives, and there was once again direction toward me, because being the fucking king of this territory, I had to have control over it.
I knew Ivan’s fake death would cause a ripple effect throughout his territories. People would take the chance to try and rise up. His other brigadiers and I, who didn’t know until Ivan wanted his fake death to be known, had to react to the news accordingly. We did, and this was the consequence of that. Our enemies were trying to rise, and it was up to us to squash it.
“Where is the passage to the ports?” I said, looking at the large map of our city.
Vlad, one of the few men I trusted, pointed at one direct road. He traced it with his finger that led out of my city and down a long road, going straight to the docks. “That’s the only access point.”
Vlad had been working by my side for twenty years. He’d been tossed out by the previous Bratva as he’d been born a bastard to a soldier. He’d been declared worthless because his mother had been a whore who attempted to blackmail the soldier for money. Vlad paid the price for his parents’ actions. We’d met twenty years ago, and he swore his loyalty to me and to Volkov Bratva, so he could exact his revenge. I granted him that request, and he’d been loyal ever since. He was also a happily married man, and he said the key to the perfect marriage was that he listened to his wife. He talked to her. Even as I stared at the map, I couldn’t help but think about Charlotte.
We’d been married a month. I’d left her at our country home while I traveled to my penthouse suite in the city. I hated city life. I always tried to make it back home, but in the past month, I’d gladly made the excuse of work.
Pushing Charlotte from my thoughts, I focused back on the map and Vlad. He’d been the one to alert me to the problems bubbling on the streets. We had eyes and ears everywhere.
“They can’t make that distance with unconscious girls, without raising suspicion,” I said.
“Unless they’ve got someone on their books.”
“That’s an option as well. I don’t like it, but it’s there.”
“You’ve got a better chance of them paying someone off.”
I put my hands on my hips. My men were already spread quite thinly at the moment. My territory had to be on the fucking border with Oleg’s, didn’t it?
“I want eyes along this line,” I said. It would be easier to climb into my car and drive down the long stretch of road, but that could take hours, if not days, to assess every possible avenue. “I want the full details of everyone that comes and goes along this stretch of road. Even if it’s making a delivery to what appears to be an abandoned warehouse.”