Monstrous Urges: A Dark Mafia Enemies To Lovers Romance

There’s a certain irony in being referred to as a ghost, when you don’t yourself believe in them.

That’s what most call me: a ghost. A devil from hell. Something wicked this way comes, as they say.

That’s me.

I am the thing that goes bump in the night. The blackness that even fierce, hardened grown men fear.

Over the years, I’ve been—and been called—many things. A soldier. A freedom-fighter, and defender of my home.

A killer. A terrorist. A war criminal.

A monster. A demon. “The headsman”, or Baba Yaga. The boogeyman. A force of malice, and vengeance.

But here and there along the way I was other things, too.

A brother. A son.

A husband.

My gaze pierces the darkness, stabbing through the bullet-proof windows of my sky-high lair and looking out over the entirety of Manhattan sprawled submissively beneath me.

In the beginning, I had none of this. I had nothing but the charred, scorched remains of an empire I might have one day led in another life and another reality.

Because that empire was taken from me. Taken from my father. Taken from his father. And that made me a king of ash. An emperor of dust and bones.

A demon hell-bent on his revenge.

In the very beginning, there was Ioaan Vasilyev, my great-great-grandfather. The favorite bodyguard of Tsarina Alexandra, the last empress of Russia, Ioaan was given a priceless gift that would have lifted our family to breathe the rarified air of kings.

Imperskaya gvardiya. The Imperial Shield Fabergé Egg.

Alexandra commissioned it personally as a gift to my great-great-grandfather. And when the Bolsheviks were marching on the royal palace, she had him go to Paris to arrange for a safe place for her and her family to stay after they fled Russia.

That never happened. Despite the many myths and legends surrounding Anastasia, the reality is that the entire Romanov family was executed in the woods outside Yekaterinburg and buried in shallow graves.

They never met up with my great-great-grandfather. And while he awaited news from Russia, Ioaan himself was murdered in his sleep, and the Imperial Shield Fabergé Egg was lost.

Ioaan was not without an heir, however. His son Mikhail, my great-grandfather, fled the blood-soaked revolution of his homeland and landed in Serbia. There, even without the egg and the priceless treasure it contained, he began work on the foundations of his own empire: one built not upon the protection of a royal monarchy, but on simply taking what he wanted.

An empire built on blood and violence, taking the life skills he’d learned in his native Russia and melding them with the cutthroat street smarts necessary for survival in war-torn Serbia after World War One.

Mikhail never used his father’s name. He saw “Vasilyev” as a reminder of the servitude to an emperor that got Ioaan killed, as well as the promise of a future and riches in France that was never kept.

Instead, he adopted my great-great-grandmother’s maiden name for the brand of his new criminal Serbian empire.

Krylov.

Mikhail had three sons—three heirs to help him make the Krylov Bratva into something powerful and feared. Together, that’s what they did, taking over every small outfit around him until his modest criminal organization became a force to be reckoned with.

The Krylov name inspired fear and respect. People bowed their heads when my great-grandfather Mikhail and his sons passed by.

My great-uncle Ioaan, named after his grandfather, was due to be married to a beautiful girl named Alyona. They were young and in love, and the Krylov family was on the brink of becoming one of the greatest Bratva families in Eastern Europe.

But then tragedy struck.

An aggrieved rival family chose the day of the wedding to attack. It was a bloodbath, and though the Krylov name lived on and ultimately claimed victory over their rivals that day, the “empire” was no more.

Mikhail was killed that day. So were my two great-uncles, Ioaan and Matvey, along with almost three quarters of my great-grandfather’s soldiers. The family home that Mikhail had built was burned to the ground. So were his warehouses full of merchandise to be sold.

After that, the Krylov name withered and almost died.

The connections my great-grandfather had built vanished. His trade routes collapsed, and his contacts found new business partners. Now significantly weakened, the Krylov name was hunted by emboldened local political powers and the police and chased into the shadows.

But I come from a long, proud line of survivors.

In hiding, my grandfather Lev ended up marrying his brother’s intended, Alyona. Together, they had a son, Miroslav. Lev didn’t have much in the wake of the wedding massacre, but he kept the Krylov name going and rebuilt where he could. Miroslav became a man, got married, and brought his own son into the world.

Me.

But hardship seems to have trouble staying away from my family.

The problem was, the Krylov family was neither Russian nor Serbian. Technically, it was both, since Alyona was Serbian-born, mixing the bloodlines when she and Lev had my father. But to the Serbians, particularly the Serbian mafia, we were Russians. And to the Bratva and the Russians, we were “tainted”: diluted blood, and not truly Bratva.

It was during the Yugoslav wars and the bloodshed that was Kosovo in the nineties that things erupted. In a non-sanctioned gun battle between the Krylov Bratva and our biggest rival, the Serbian Brancovich family, stray bullets almost took the lives of two innocents: my grandmother, Alyona, and Mihajlo Brancovich’s young daughter, Annika.

After that, things clearly had to change. As the Balkan war wound down, it was obvious there was going to be a power grab by anyone who had the means. In Kosovo at the time, that was my family, and Mihajlo Brancovich’s family.

An agreement was made: although she and I were both still children, I only a few years older, Annika Brancovich and I were betrothed to marry when she turned eighteen. Our families ceased hostilities and started working together to seize whatever we could in the aftermath of the Balkan War. Both families grew powerful and wealthy, and although we were essentially strangers, let alone “in love”, Annika and I were married when she turned eighteen.

A month later, she and the rest of her family betrayed mine.

In his rise to restored power, my father and my grandfather had both amassed more than a few enemies: some Serbian, but mostly Russian—Bratva families who were jealous of the power, influence, and wealth the Krylovs had carved out for themselves without even having to play games with Moscow or St. Petersburg. They schemed against us, pooling their resources to help Mihajlo.

A month after the wedding, Annika let assassins in through the back door of our summer island estate in Italy.

I watched as my entire family was slaughtered that night. My grandfather and grandmother. My father and mother. My aunt and two cousins. My sister, her husband, and my newborn nephew.

All dead.

After that, the monsters torched the house and left me to die in the fire and blood they left behind.

Except I didn’t die.

I lived.

When I climbed out of the wreckage of my life the next morning, I had nothing. The Krylov Bratva had been eradicated overnight. All our assets stolen or destroyed. All our government connections paid to turn their backs. All our allies dead, or no longer friendly.

My only solace that day was learning that Annika hadn’t made it either. One of our men, in his last moments, had blown up the only bridge connecting our island to the mainland just as the car carrying that treacherous bitch was driving over it.

I found her charred remains in the wreckage of the car on the rocks below, spit on her corpse, and set my resolve.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years since that fateful day clawing back my empire and utterly destroying anyone and everyone who had any part in the massacre of my family.

I embraced my heritage. I became an avenging angel of death. I even located the Imperskaya gvardiya—the Imperial Shield Fabergé Egg—and used its hidden riches to storm back into the light under a new banner.

But now, there’s this.

Fifteen years ago, she betrayed me and destroyed my world. Fifteen years ago, I thought she died, denying me my vengeance.

Tonight, I found her ghost.

Tonight, I fucking found Annika. And this time, nothing will cheat me of my retribution.

You can run, little Annika. In fact, I want you to. And this time, I’m going to chase you. I’m going to find you. And when I do, I’ll fucking destroy you, Annika.

Or should I say, Taylor…