Heavy Crown: A Dark Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 6)

It’s my wedding day.

I feel an excitement so acute it’s almost painful. My chest is too tight to breathe. I feel tense and feverish.

Yet, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

I had my bachelor party last night with Nero, Jace, Giovanni, and Brody. Brody was my roommate in college, and the shooting guard on the basketball team. After graduation, he played a year in the Chinese league. Now he’s back in Chicago, flush with stories of how many girls in Beijing wanted to try out a 6’8 white dude, even with the ugly mug he’s carrying around.

Giovanni is one of my lieutenants, generally in charge of the high-roller poker ring. And of course Jace was both roommate and soldier, up until this week. After today, he’ll be living alone in the apartment in Hyde Park, while I move in with Yelena.

The thought of waking up to her every morning, seeing her every time I come home, makes me happier than I can express. I wouldn’t give a fuck if we were moving into a cardboard box if she was going to be there.

But I wanted to get her the most beautiful apartment imaginable. Something that had space and light, and most of all, belonged to her. I want her to pick the paint color, the furniture. I want her to feel that it’s all her own, not imposed on by anyone else, for once in her life.

Unfortunately we haven’t had time to pick out much of anything just yet, because of how rushed the wedding has been. But there’ll be plenty of time afterward. All the time in the world.

I told my groomsmen I had no interest in strippers, so instead we went drinking at the Blarney Stone. If I would have been getting married a year ago, I’m sure Nero would have fought me on that. But he’s been shockingly faithful to Camille, and seemed perfectly satisfied to slug down a few shots, then challenge Giovanni to a game of pool, without even bothering to check out the co-eds lined up at the bar, who kept throwing hopeful glances in his direction.

Jace leaned on the table with both elbows, glumly slugging down a beer.

“I can’t believe you two are in a committed relationship before me,” he said, casting a disbelieving look at me and then Nero.

“I’m still single!” Brody piped up from the pool table.

“Of course you are!” Jace shouted back. “Just look at you!”

Brody shrugged and grinned. He’s got a head the size and shape of an overgrown potato, and one of the scraggliest, patchiest beards I’ve ever seen, so he’s used to taking shit about his looks.

“And you . . .” Jace shook his head in disbelief. “You’re just walking down the street and you happen to bump into a Russian goddess. Some guys have all the luck.”

“Maybe Yelena has a cousin,” I told him, trying to cheer him up.

“Really?” Jace said, perking up a little. “Like, coming to the wedding tomorrow? Cause I’m gonna be lookin’ pretty fucking spiffy in my new suit.”

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “It’s going to be a tiny ceremony. Just a dinner after, no reception.”

Jace pouted at the idea of no reception where he could dance with the gorgeous Russian cousins of his imagination.

“What about the honeymoon?” he said. “You going back to her home country? You could take me with you . . . I could carry your suitcases . . .”

“We’re going to Switzerland,” I told him. “But not for a couple months. We want to backpack in the Alps, and we need more time to plan it all out.”

Despite the disappointments of my wedding and honeymoon plans, Jace cheered up pretty well once he got a couple more beers in him. He even snagged a phone number from one of the co-eds at the bar, after she realized that no amount of hair-tossing or lip-biting was going to get Nero to pay attention to her.

Brody likewise enjoyed himself, despite losing four games in a row to Nero. He managed to beat me at darts, and that seemed like more than enough victory for him, ignoring the fact that I’d never played darts before in my life and only had the shakiest understanding of the rules.

Nero was quiet, though not in his usual sullen, glowering way. He just seemed lost in thought.

When he stepped outside for a smoke I followed after him, wondering what he was thinking about.

He lit the cigarette, the flare of his lighter briefly illuminating the sharp planes of his face. His hair hung down over his eyes, casting them in shadow.

He took a long pull, then exhaled, the smoke forming a wreath around his face.

Without prodding, he said, “I wish Dante was here.”

“Me too,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right without him.”

“Have you talked to him?” Nero asked.

“Yeah. He said exactly what you’d expect. That this whole thing is a bad idea.”

I expected Nero to give an impatient snort. I thought he’d agree with me—he was always the most annoyed of anyone when Dante tried to exert his stodgy big-brother conservatism on the rest of us.

But to my surprise, Nero just took another long exhale and said, “I understand him better since he’s been gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The weight of it. Of all of it. It’s heavy and it’s relentless.”

I nodded slowly.

I’ve been feeling it, too—the sheer mass of responsibility that Dante had been shouldering all that time, falling onto me and Nero instead. Nero covering the South Shore, me running the rest of our territory. Papa retreating further and further from all of it.

“Your mistakes aren’t your own,” Nero said. “They affect everyone. And that’s terrifying.”

I didn’t know if he was referring to me embroiling us with the Russians, or if he was talking about himself and the risk he’d taken in stealing that diamond. Either way, it shocked me to hear Nero admit that anything scared him.

“It’ll be alright,” I told him. “You and I can handle it, with or without Dante.”

“Yeah,” Nero said. “But it does make me appreciate him just a little bit more.”

“Who knew that he really was doing a fuck-ton of work, and not just complaining about it,” I said. We both laughed.

We already knew that, of course. Theoretically. But reality hits harder.

“How’s the shop?” I asked him.

Nero and Camille opened a custom car modification shop, over on Howe Street. They live above it, in a tiny apartment that always smells a little bit like fresh paint and gasoline fumes, which I think they like.

“Flourishing,” he said. “Camille’s brilliant. Some of the shit she can do with an engine . . . I hate to admit it, but she might be better than me.”

He said it like it shamed him, but I could hear the obvious pride in his voice.

“Think you’ll be following me down the church aisle?” I asked him.

“One hundred percent,” Nero said without hesitation. “Very soon. Her dad’s been sick—”

I nodded, remembering that her father had lung cancer.

“We’re waiting for him to be completely recovered. Or, recovered as much as you can be with that kind of thing.”

“I’m happy for you, man,” I told him.

“Likewise,” Nero said with a little half-smile.

Now my groomsmen are probably getting dressed just the same as I am, in pewter-colored suits. I hadn’t planned to have any groomsmen, since Yelena doesn’t have any bridesmaids, but she said she didn’t care —“Adrian will stand up with me.”

It won’t really matter for the ceremony. It’s not arranged like a Catholic wedding. Only Yelena and I will stand at the altar, along with the priest and Adrian, who will function as something called a koumbaros.

Instead of sleeping at my apartment with Jace, I spent one last night at my family home. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep in this narrow twin bed again, in this steeply-gabled roof with its posters and familiar scent of cedarwood.

I take a long time getting ready, wanting everything to be just right, down to the last hair on my head. Unfortunately, my hair rarely cooperates when I want it to. The curls seem just as excited as I am today, and I wish I would have gotten my hair cut shorter this time around, so I could be sure of managing it.

As I’m buttoning up my crisp white dress shirt, I see the gleam of the tiny gold medallion on my chest. I press it between my thumb and index finger, wondering what Uncle Francesco would say if he could see me marrying a daughter of the Bratva. Would he see it as a betrayal? Or would he understand?

It’s impossible to know. That’s the trouble with losing the people you love. You can’t ask their opinions anymore. You can’t make them happy or unhappy with your choices.

My mother isn’t here, either. She never got to see a single one of us married.

Her opinion, at least, I can be sure of. She married for love, damn the circumstances. She wanted to be with my father, no matter his history.

She would have loved Yelena. She’d be glad that I was marrying someone who loved music like she did. She would have been the one to pick the piano for our wedding present.

When I’m shaved and brushed and dressed to perfection, I meet Papa and Greta downstairs in the kitchen. Papa is wearing his finest charcoal suit, double-breasted, with an almost invisible pinstripe—the one Mama had made for him for their fifteenth anniversary. Greta looks very nice as well. She’s got on a navy blazer and skirt, with a little matching hat pinned in her reddish hair.

“You look like you’re going to a royal wedding,” I tease her.

“At least one of us does!” she snaps back, never at a loss for a response. “What happened to men wearing proper tuxes for their weddings?”

“A lot of people wear suits now,” I say, shrugging.

“A lot of people get married in Vegas,” Greta sniffs. “That doesn’t mean it’s good manners.”

“You look very handsome,” Papa assures me. He lays his hand on my shoulder, something he has to reach up to do these days. “I’m proud of you, my son.”

“Thank you, Papa,” I say.

He knows I mean thank you for all of this, not just for the compliment.

Nero pulls upfront of the house in one of his nicest cars—the oxblood Talbot Lago Grand Sport. It’s freshly washed and waxed, gleaming in the bright morning light. It’s such a boat that Papa, Greta, and I can all fit in the bench seat in the back, while Camille rides up front with Nero.

“Congratulations, Seb,” she says, turning around in her seat to squeeze my shoulder.

Her dark, curly hair is pulled up in a bun on top of her head, and her pretty sundress almost exactly matches the shade of the car.

“You finally finished this thing!” Papa says to Nero, admiring the buttery leather seats and the vintage dashboard with its round dials and knobs.

“We finished it,” Nero says, throwing his arm around Camille’s shoulders. “Camille helped me swap out the alternator. It’s her car, by the way, she’s just letting us borrow it today.”

“That’s brave of you,” I say to Camille. “Have you seen him drive?”

Camille grins. “If he runs into anything, I know how to fix it.”

We speed off toward the church, swift and smooth as a bird in flight. For all I like to give Nero shit, he’s an excellent driver. I’d trust him to take me anywhere, even in this ancient car without a single modern safety feature.

The closer we get to the church, the less I can listen to the conversation swirling around me. All I can think about is what Yelena will look like in her wedding dress.

We’re getting married in the Orthodox Cathedral in Ukrainian Village. Technically, my family is Catholic, but that was one of the many concessions we were willing to cede to Yenin to make this whole thing go smoothly.

Nero pulls up in front of the church, which is a white-plastered building with a large octagonal dome and a bell tower. It looks simultaneously grand and provincial, with its painted woodwork and its rustic shapes, so unlike a Catholic cathedral.

As we walk inside, it seems even more exotic. A massive triptych stands behind the altar, painted in red, turquoise, and gold. The mosaic angels on the walls look decidedly Byzantine. The interior of the dome is likewise painted turquoise, spotted with stars. I smile at that, thinking that Yelena will like it.

Greta looks around at the scarlet carpet and the gilded wood.

“It’s very . . . Russian,” she whispers to me.

I stifle a laugh. “I think that’s the idea.”

Yenin comes striding around the triptych, flanked by an Orthodox priest and his son Adrian.

“Good morning,” he greets us politely. “What a perfect day for a wedding.”

“You couldn’t ask for better,” Papa says, holding out his hand to shake Alexei’s.

Yenin looks over at Greta with mild curiosity, and Papa says, “Allow me to introduce our . . . Greta.”

He doesn’t like to call her our housekeeper, because Greta is so much more than that to our family.

Greta likewise shakes Yenin’s hand, with less than her usual enthusiasm. I’m sure Papa told her all about Alexei. Or else she just dislikes the look of him, with his wide smile that doesn’t extend up to his eyes.

“My son Adrian,” Yenin says. Adrian likewise shakes hands all around, with about the same enthusiasm as Greta showed.

When he comes to me, I say eagerly, “Is Yelena here?”

“She’s getting ready in one of the side rooms,” Adrian says.

He looks pale and solemn in his dark suit. I always have an automatic liking for Adrian, because he looks so much like Yelena. But I don’t think that feeling is returned. Today he meets my eyes, but not with any warmth. He looks unhappy and slightly ill.

“I have a question,” Greta says to the priest. “Where are the pews?”

“We do not sit during sermons,” the priest explains. “But you may bring forward the chairs from along the wall, if you wish.”

He points to the high-backed ornate armchairs lined up along the walls. They look heavy and difficult to move, so—catching sight of Jace, Giovanni, and Brody coming into the church—I say, “Just in time—I’ve got a job for you.”

“Already?” Brody grins.

Greta directs us as to where she thinks the chairs should go, and Jace, Giovanni, Brody, and I move them into place.

Nero sits in one of the chairs along the wall, watching us.

“You should be doing that, not your brother!” Greta scolds him. “It’s his wedding day.”

“Yes, but he’s not as hungover as I am,” Nero says.

Nero didn’t actually drink enough to be hungover. I think he’s more interested in keeping an eye on the rest of Yenin’s men who have come into the church. I see the big silent one, Rodion, who appears to be in a particularly foul mood, and then three others behind him. One is the baby-faced kid that was at the negotiating table. I believe he’s Yenin’s driver, and a distant cousin of Yelena—his name is Timur-something. The other two I don’t recognize. They might also be relatives, or just bratoks. I get the feeling that Yenin has more soldiers than family.

The tension is palpable, even in the open space of the chapel. Yenin and his men take the seats we arranged on the left side of the space, and my family sits down on the right. We’re all facing forward toward the altar with its massive painted triptych almost two stories high. But we’re glancing sideways at each other, no one entirely comfortable.

For all they might not like the idea of this wedding, the Russians dressed up just as nicely as we did. Yenin is wearing a rich blue suit with a single white lily in the buttonhole, and Adrian a black suit with the same.

I didn’t get boutonnières for myself or the groomsmen. I wonder if that was a mistake. I hope Yelena won’t mind.

I keep checking my watch, counting down the minutes until the ceremony is supposed to start. At five minutes to noon, the priest gets up to close the doors to the chapel. Right before he can pull them shut, a burly arm shoots through, blocking their path.

The priest startles, stumbling backward in his long black robes.

“Sorry,” a deep, rumbling voice says.

I jump up, shocked and pleased. “Dante!”

He pushes his way inside, dressed nicely in a dark suit and tie, with his black hair freshly combed back.

Yenin frowns at the sight of him. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he says, in an irritated tone. He seems offended that Dante refused to attend initially, and even more offended that he showed up now at the last minute.

Dante ignores him. He does allow me to hug him and clap him on the shoulder.

“I’m glad you came,” I say.

“I thought I’d regret it if I didn’t,” he says. “I am happy for you, Seb.”

“I know you are,” I say.

My side of the church now includes both my brothers, Papa and Greta, Giovanni, Brody, and Jace. On the opposite side are Yenin, Adrian, Rodion, Timur, and the other two men.

The only person missing is my bride.

The priest closes the doors, then takes his position behind the altar.

He motions me to join him, and Adrian as well. Adrian is going to be our koumbaros, which Yelena told me is an essential part of the ceremony, and a sort of godfather to the couple for the rest of their lives.

Adrian looks less than pleased about his position next to the priest, but one quick glance at his father seems to remind him of his duty. He straightens up, shoulders back, readying himself for the task at hand.

Now, at last, I hear the doors behind the triptych creak open, as Yelena enters the chapel. Unlike in a Catholic ceremony, she comes from behind the altar, instead of walking up the aisle.

It doesn’t matter—she doesn’t need a grand entrance to blow my fucking mind. There’s no music playing, no path of rose petals for her to walk along. And yet she is so intensely, ethereally beautiful that my heart stops dead in my chest.

Her dress is so light and transparent it seems to float around her body. I can just make out the shape of her long, slim arms and legs as she moves, the gown swirling around her like fog. Her hair is half pinned up, with a thin silver circlet on her head, and then her long pale hair tumbles down her back in waves. The silver of her crown is picked up in the tiny pinpricks of silver on her gown, glimmering like stars in the translucent material.

Her skin is as luminescent as the moon. Her eyes are the brightest I’ve ever seen them—clear and unearthly. For a moment I wonder if Yelena really is human at all, because I’ve never seen a woman like this.

All of us are stunned to silence, even the priest.

As Yelena joins me at the altar, all I can do is take her cool, slim hands in mine and whisper, “Incredible.”

The priest begins the long and convoluted ceremony, which I can only stumble through, since I’ve never seen an Orthodox wedding before. The priest recites his blessings and bible passages, then takes our rings so he can press them to our foreheads three times each. It seems like everything happens three times over, to represent the trinity I’d guess. Adrian passes the rings between our hands three times, and then finally sets them on our fingers.

Next we do a ceremony with lit candles that Yelena and I each hold in our hands. And then we share wine from a cup and walk around the altar together three times over. At last the priest gives us his final prayers, saying the words “Na zisete,” which Yelena had told me before is an ancient blessing meaning, “May you live!”

With those words, Yelena and I become man and wife. She looks up into my face, her eyes brilliant with tears. I bend down to kiss her. Her lips are just as sweet as the very first time I tasted them.

We turn to face our families, her hand locked in mine, both of us smiling with all our might.

What happens next seems to happen in slow motion, like a nightmare. And just like a nightmare, I’m frozen in place, unable to move.

In one swift motion, like the swell of the tide, Alexei Yenin and his men rise from their seats. They pull their guns from their suit jackets, pointing them across the aisle at my family.

Before I can move, before I can shout, before I can even take a breath, they begin to fire.

My father is the first one hit, because he’s the slowest to react, and because he’s the one they’re targeting. The bullets hit him in the chest, the neck, and the jaw, blowing bits of his flesh onto Greta’s horrified face. His body jolts from the impact, betraying how frail he’s truly become. I can tell from the way that he falls that he’s dead before he hits the ground.

At the same moment, I see a blur of motion in my peripheral vision, as Adrian Yenin raises his gun and presses it against my temple. He hesitated just a moment—he didn’t pull his weapon as fast as the others.

That hesitation is the only reason I’m not dead. Had he raised his gun while I was looking at my father, I never would have known what hit me. His bullet would have torn through my skull while I watched Papa die.

But I see his arm move up, and I react without thinking. My knee may be fucked, but I still have all the reflexes of an athlete. My right hand shoots up, hitting him in the elbow and knocking his arm upward. The gun explodes an inch above my head, deafening me. I bring my left fist swinging around, crashing into Adrian’s jaw.

As these things happen, the cathedral rings with a long, long, unbroken shriek, as loud as a siren—Yelena is screaming, her fingernails digging into her cheeks.

Two more Russians come around the side of the triptych, both armed. One I’ve never seen before, but the other looks oddly familiar. He’s got a squashed nose, and a tattoo of an arrow running down the side of his shaved head. With a sickening jolt, I realize he’s the man who was trying to shove Yelena in the trunk of his car, the night she and I first met.

Everything that happens next I see in split-second snapshots. It all happens simultaneously, but my brain registers it as still images, captured between chaotic flashes of light.

I see Nero flinging himself on top of Camille, shielding her with his body as he’s shot in the back three, four, five times. I see Brody pick up one of the heavy chairs and fling it at Yenin, before he too takes a dozen bullets to his lanky frame. Giovanni is shot while charging at the Russians. He manages to barrel into two of them and knock them over, even after being hit several times.

The priest tries to run and is shot in the back—whether by accident, or to eliminate any witnesses. I rip the gun out of Adrian’s hands, and I turn it on the men who have just entered the room. I shoot the pretend kidnapper right before he can fire at Greta.

The other man snarls and points his gun at me, pulling the trigger before I can swing my gun around at him.

I hear Yelena’s scream at the same time as the gun fires. She slams into me, knocking me backward. My bad knee folds beneath me, and we both go tumbling down. It’s only when I try to shove her off of me, and I feel how limp she’s become, that I realize she’s been shot.

Rodion is hit in the shoulder, and another of Yenin’s soldiers fall—the baby-faced driver called Timur. I realize that Jace is shooting back, and Dante too. They weren’t stupid enough to come unarmed like I did.

But Dante’s been hit himself. He stumbles toward the triptych, bleeding from the leg and hand.

Snarling, Yenin tries to shoot at Dante in the back. It’s too late—Dante has braced himself against the massive wooden triptych and he’s shoving it with all his might. With a strangled roar, Dante manages to tip the two-story screen. It falls toward the seats with sickening force. It must weigh two thousand pounds, like the front of a house falling down—anyone beneath it will be crushed.

The shooting stops as everyone scatters.

I grab Yelena’s limp body and fling her over my shoulder. Camille is dragging Nero, her teeth bared and the tendons standing out on her neck. Dante has grabbed Greta, who alone seems unharmed.

The triptych crashes down with a thunderous impact like a bomb exploding, shards of wood shooting off in all directions. I don’t know if it hit the Russians or not, because there’s no time to look back. We’re fleeing out the back of the cathedral, Dante limping on his injured leg, but still helping Camille to support Nero’s bleeding body, me trying not to trip over the long train of Yelena’s gown as it hangs down over my shoulder.

In the darkened apse, I hear footsteps pounding after us.

I spin around, Adrian’s gun still clutched in my hand. I can barely see, and my finger jerks convulsively against the trigger. Right before I fire, I realize it’s only Jace.

“Don’t wait for me or anything!” he pants, highly incensed.

I have no words to answer him.

I just turn around again and run from the church, leaving my father’s body behind.