Blood and Betrayal

Five Years Earlier

“Anya, sit up straight. You look like a peasant.”

Katarina Kozlov’s voice cut through the breakfast air like a knife. She was twenty-five years old, and at the sound of her mother’s cold gray eyes, she automatically straightened her shoulders against the chill. The mahogany table between them gleamed with deceptive innocence. Dimitri was hunched over economic charts, bitter coffee at his lips and brow furrowed. Elena smiled like the sun in the middle of winter. A princess with a crown to match, bathed in unearned privilege.

“Sorry, Mama.” Anya clasped her hands tightly in her lap, folding into herself. Apologizing for existing was something she had been doing for a long time.

“Elena never slouches.” Katarina said, words sharpened to surgical accuracy. “Perfect posture, perfect face, perfect everything. That is why Alexei married her, not some nobody off the street.”

Across the table, Elena smiled indulgently like a queen condescending to a commoner. Twenty-eight, and she was everything the Bratva loved: deadly beauty veiled by innocence, obedience when it was convenient, ambition honed just below the surface. Her marriage to Alexei Volkov, a sadistic Bratva captain from a crew ranked two above, had solidified the Kozlov’s place in the hierarchy. Elena knew it. Everyone knew it.

“Anya’s just nervous about the engagement party,” Elena cooed, laying her hand across the table to grasp her sister’s with manicured perfection. “It’s such a big step, isn’t it, little sister?”

The fact hung in Anya’s stomach like lead. Tonight, she would stand beside Marcus Webb and announce her engagement to the entire Bratva community. The life her family had chosen for her. The life she was supposed to be excited about. Instead, it was a funeral march in slow motion.

“Marcus is a good catch,” Dimitri said finally, looking up from his papers. The words were final, chiseled in granite. “Legitimate lawyer, political connections, clean record. More respectable than you deserve.”

A girl like you. He had said that for years, and every time it carved itself into her flesh.

“He’s very handsome too,” Elena added sweetly. “So ambitious. You’ll be happy together.”

Practice made Anya’s smile automatic. The smile she had repeated in front of her bedroom mirror until her cheeks burned — the smile of a grateful woman who knew her place. Her stomach churned uneasily. Elena’s voice was too bright around Marcus, almost too intimate.

“The important thing,” Katarina said, spreading caviar onto toast with lethal precision, “is that you do not embarrass us tonight. Alexei’s connections will be watching. Others as well. You represent this family now.”

“No pressure,” Anya whispered.

The air grew ice cold.

“This isn’t a joke, Anya.” Dimitri’s voice gripped her still. “You have been useless to us your entire life. Not ruthless enough for business, not clever enough for strategy, not beautiful enough to marry above your station. Marcus is your one chance to be useful.”

Every syllable was a blow. Roped fists raised, battle tested, yet the words still wrenched her breath.

“You’re right, your father is right.” Katarina continued, tone soft but scalpel-edged, nonetheless.

“We indulged you your whole life because you are fragile. The least you can do now is marry well and give us legitimate grandchildren.”

Elena puffed an exaggerated sigh of sympathy. “Don’t be so hard on her, Mama. She can’t help being… different.”

Different. The word stung like a slap.

Anya felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Marcus: Can’t wait to see you tonight, beautiful. It’ll be perfect.

Perfect. She braced herself and smiled a practiced brightness into the mirror. “That’s Marcus. He’s so sweet.”

“Yes,” Elena said, too brightly. “Perfect for you. You’re lucky.”

Lucky. The word curdled in her mouth. Lucky would have been her sister’s self-assurance, her mother’s coldness, her father’s respect. Lucky would have been acceptance.

“I should get ready.” Anya rose from the table. “Elena, will you help me with my hair later?”

“Of course!” Elena beamed. “We’ll make you stunning. Marcus won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

The rest of her family conversation flowed seamlessly around her ascent up the staircase: Territory, money, names Anya had been taught never to repeat in a million years. She felt as if she had never been there, as if they would not notice if she were never there again.

When she closed the door to her childhood bedroom behind her, she stopped for a moment.

Boxes of old clothes, pictures of birthdays with other children her age. Pictures she had made her mother keep because she needed to believe for a second that her childhood wasn’t entirely an illusion. Pale skin, nervous eyes, and a mouth already bending into gratitude. Elena was right: She was different. Soft, clumsy, so easily overlooked.

On the other hand. On her better days, she looked in the mirror and felt like she was being lied to. The corners of her mouth were hiding a secret, a shadow under the placid water. Something hard. Something hungry. A flash of defiance that refused to stay caged for long.

Tonight, she would smile, wear the dress her parents had picked out for her, play the role of good daughter, good friend, good fiancée. She would stand with Marcus and accept empty congratulations and empty promises. She would be quiet, grateful, appropriately small.

Beneath the facade, there was something restless stirring. A voice that said different did not equal weak. A feeling of defiance that dared to ask the question what if? What if she stopped apologizing, stopped shrinking, stopped bending?

In the city, names like Petrov held more weight than her family’s legacy. Whispered in fear, spoken with only the deepest respect. She had heard enough to know they were the predators in the pack, men who took rivals apart, who owned judges and generals, who ruled over half the city. Men like Viktor Petrov, the heir to that dynasty. Men her father feared.

She did not know yet how irrevocably her life would become entwined with theirs.

The engagement party would be perfect.

Perfection, Anya was learning, was like glass. Beautiful and delicate until it shattered.