Brutal King: A Dark Bratva Academy Romance, page 1
Brutal King
A Dark Bratva Academy Romance
Jagger Cole
Brutal King
Jagger Cole © 2021
All rights reserved.
Cover by Plan 9 Book Design
Editing by MJ Edits | Proofing by Jessie Stafford, Teshia Elborne
This is a literary work of fiction. Any names, places, or incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Similarities or resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or establishments, are solely coincidental.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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The unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal and a violation of US copyright law.
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Contents
Brutal King
Playlist
A Special Present
Trigger Warning
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
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Coming Soon
Savage Heir Preview
Paying The Bratva’s Debt Preview
Also by Jagger Cole
End Notes
About the Author
Brutal King
He’s my deadliest poison. And my only cure.
To keep my empire, I’m going to marry a man whose family my family tried to destroy.
A terrifying and magnetically gorgeous man with brutal blue eyes. A man whose very presence sucks the air from my lungs. A man with no past, shrouded in scars, pain, and darkness.
But this isn't about me. This is about securing a future for my sister. Even if that means binding myself to a man who hates me.
Except “until death do us part” is going to come quicker than anyone knows.
You see, this story has an expiration date. I have an expiration date.
In six months, I’ll be dead.
They say love is a battle.
And I’ve got nothing to lose.
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This standalone, extra angsty Bratva academy romance is guaranteed to leave your kindle steaming. Step into the viper’s nest of Oxford Hills Academy and meet the Savage Heirs of Bratva kings and oligarchs.
Absolutely no cheating, no cliffhanger, and a happy ever after.
Playlist
Hurt - Johnny Cash
I Saw You Close Your Eyes - Local Natives
Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
To The Ground - Death Cab for Cutie
Good Luck - Broken Bells
Die Young - Sylvan Esso
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) - Marilyn Manson
Devil Like Me - Rainbow Kitten Surprise
Untitled - Interpol
Bags - Clairo
Creep - Radiohead
R U Mine? - Arctic Monkeys
Just What I Needed - The Careful Ones
Jesus Christ - Brand New
Sweetest Kill - Broken Social Scene
Daddy Issues - The Neighborhood
Duet for Ghosts - Ed Harcourt
I Will Follow You into the Dark - Death Cab For Cutie
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Search “Jagger Cole” on Spotify to find this and other book playlists!
A Special Present
The Jagger Cole fans-only newsletter is the first place to hear about new releases, giveaways, and more! Sign up today to grab a free copy of Mr Big - an extra hot billionaire romance not available anywhere else!
Trigger Warning
This book contains very graphic descriptions of past trauma and abuse. While these scenes were written to create a more vivid, in-depth story, they may be triggering to some readers. Please read with that in mind.
Prologue
I want to tear my own heart out.
I want to scream until my lungs give out and my throat erupts into flame. But I can’t even breathe, let alone make a sound. I curl tighter, dropping to my knees in the grit and the grime. The bottle and the gun tumble to the floor as I bring my hands up to tear at my own hair.
I curl into a ball, hissing, snarling on the floor.
And then, I hear it.
I scrabble to my feet, panting for air as my head throbs. I yank the gun up, my knuckles white as I grip it tightly and whirl with a snarl on my lips.
Glass snaps under a foot. Or maybe not. Floorboards creak, but don’t.
I squeeze my eyes shut, gasping as the pain explodes across my skin. Lightning bolts splay across my vision, leaving jagged traces in my brain.
This isn’t real. Or maybe it is. Or maybe I’m losing control, and losing all sense of what’s reality and what isn’t.
I groan, whirling again and storming for the door, gun in hand. But then, my eyes focus on the words scratched with a blade across the doorframe. Words that aren’t faded. Scratches that are fresh.
Budet rasplata.
There will be a reckoning.
The same words were on her windowsill.
My heart thuds. A cold sensation drips down my spine as I snarl and slowly turn. My muscles clench as I bring the gun up, fighting the chemicals dulling me as I peer into the darkness.
I’m not alone.
He’s here, and I suddenly, I’m sure of it. The phantom who’s been hunting her, is here.
I wasn’t careful enough. I let it slip away from my focus enough. And now, he’s followed me here. Now, he knows of this place.
And we both know there’s only one of us leaving here.
The crack of broken glass on the floor has me whirling again. I hiss quietly, eyes narrowed, and gun raised as I storm through the doorway into the murk of the ruined mansion.
I walk with staggered, wobbly steps. The pain is overwhelming—like just being here is dousing my very skin with acid or napalm. My vision blurs, and the glitches just keep happening, until I can barely see straight.
I whirl around corners, snarling at every creak of the floor. Every snickered, echoed laugh in the shadows.
He’s taunting me. Mocking me.
I growl as I smash down a door into one room, and then another to another.
“Where are you?!” I scream into the shadows, sweat clinging to my back.
“Where the fuck are you?!”
I roar like the devil in hell itself as I start to run blindly through the mansion. I crash into one room and then another. I whirl maniacally into a dining room, down hallways, into more rooms.
I stagger into a library, and suddenly, he’s there.
He’s right in front of me, twenty feet away.
My heart thuds as the world grows muffled and muddled. My vision glitches as we lock eyes across the dark, dank room of old books. I see my demons sneering back at me. I see my nightmares, taunting me.
This will be the final showdown. Only one of us leaves here tonight.
Wordlessly, we stare at each other across the room. I grin a death mask grin, and so does he, right back at me.
My gun raises; so does his.
Our eyes lock as my lips sneer a cold, brutal smile.
See you in another hell.
The trigger pulls, and the gun explodes in my hand.
1
Never let them see you cry. Never let them see you bleed.
Most of the advice my mother “bestowed” upon me over the years can be pretty categorically labeled as “toxic.” Insidious, poisonous, lethal, and guaranteed to make sure I ended up as jaded and broken as she is.
Out of context though? Well, today, it might just prove helpful.
With a soft crunch of tires over white gravel, the limo comes to a full stop in front of the main student services building of the esteemed academy. Not just any “esteemed,” “prestigious,” “hallowed” private preparatory school. The most of all of those snooty words, filled with the self-described “elite” of the world’s elite.
The very selective, very venerated, very expensive as fuck Oxford Hills Academy. Otherwise known as my new, and very temporary, home.
My hand reaches for the handle of the limo door. But I restrain myself. This place, where the heirs and offspring of the world’s richest, most powerful, and most elite churn like a den of vipers, is all about image.
Out here in the bucolic rolling hills of England, on a campus th
Or, in my case, a piece of shit Russian mob kingpin.
So I stay my hand, and I wait until the driver steps out and comes to open it for me. Because that’s what’s expected here. It’s the whole reason I dipped into the meager, bare-bones cash I have left to even rent this damn limo just to get out to the campus from Manchester.
Like I said, it’s all about image. But this isn’t about “fitting in” or “looking cool.” This is all part of the plan, and this is step one.
Well, no, step one was using the very last of my money to bribe the right officials in the FSS—Russia’s FBI—to unfreeze some of my late father’s assets. My acceptance letter to Oxford Hills from two years ago—before my father was killed in a Bratva power-grab war—was still valid. I just needed the unseemly amount for tuition.
Before, even though I hadn’t lived in the same house as that monster for years, the king’s ransom it costs to even attend OHA would have been nothing to my father. Couch-cushion change. The monthly cleaning budget for his yacht.
Now, it’s literally the last of my reserves… the scrapings from the very bottom of the barrel. But like I said, it’s all part of the plan.
It’s all for Mara.
Four years ago, my twin sister went out for a jog, along with a whole crew of my dad’s bodyguards. She didn’t make it two blocks from home before some of my father’s several enemies—maybe the same ones who eventually killed him, I don’t know or much care—pulled up in a van and started shooting. Four of the five guards died, and Mara took a bullet graze across the back of the head.
She’s been in a coma ever since.
That’s why I’m here: step one to proving my legitimacy and taking back the empire and fortune that was taken from us when my dad finally got his comeuppance.
I know on paper I don’t look all that different from any of the other little snobs who go here. I grew up summering on yachts in the Black Sea or the Mediterranean and wintering in Zurich. We had mansions and townhouses in ten cities across four continents. I had maids, butlers, personal chefs and shoppers, shopping accounts and chauffeurs.
But that’s the outside. The veneer. The thin paint that covers the rot underneath.
I also had the psychotic, alcoholic mother, with the cruel jabs, the venomous distain, and the cold lack of empathy. I had the constant threat of violence with the work my father did. We had staff whose entire jobs were to skim the grounds of our homes and the undersides of our cars for explosives.
But worst of all, I had Semyon fucking Belsky as a father, and that’s a hell I wouldn’t inflict on anyone. Except him, that is.
I always knew what happened two years ago would happen. I’d hoped for it. Literally. I’m not even religious, and I’d still fucking pray for the universe to take him away forever. Then it did, but with him went the money, and any hope of a future where Mara and I could climb out of the mile-deep hole that having the last name “Belsky” put us in.
So that’s why I’m here. Oxford Hills gets me legitimacy. Legitimacy gets me in front of the Bratva High Council, where I can take back the empire that was stolen from me.
Not for me. For Mara. Because she’ll wake up someday. She has to. The universe can’t be that sadistically fucked up.
With a muted click, the driver opens the door. I step out, my black flats—I’m wearing the green, gold, and black tartan uniform of OHA—crunching against the soft white gravel. My eyes scan the gorgeous old brownstone gothic buildings, and the perfectly manicured hedges and rose gardens. The quaint little pathways weaving across campus. The adorable little cottages in the distance where students live.
This is it. Time to dive in.
My belongings—clothes, mostly—have already been shipped and brought to my cottage, which I’ll share with one other student. Inside, I’ll meet with the Dean, who will I’m sure give me his most plastic smile while he welcomes me—both of us steadfastly ignoring the very public knowledge that my dead dad was a psychotic, murderous thug.
And then, it’s welcome to the viper den. Abandon hope all ye who enter.
Except, these snobs and these “elites” don’t scare or intimidate me. Maybe I used to be in that world. But I’m not anymore. I won’t be, either. I’m just here to do a job and get out. They don’t frighten me.
I thank the driver, smooth down my skirt, roll my shoulders under the black blazer with the gold crest, and look up at the face of the main building. But then, just for a second, my confidence flickers. And though I’ve been trying to put it out of mind, I’m reminded of one other hurdle—one last fear to face once I step foot inside here.
The three dark demon kings of Oxford Hills.
You see, I’m not the only one here who’s tuition was paid in Bratva blood money. There are three others here, desecrating these hallowed halls, who come from the same world: Ilya Volkov, Misha Tsavakov, and Lukas Komarov—known in here as the Wolf, the Lion, and the Dragon.
And I know they’re in there, waiting for me.
I tremble as I start to walk. My feet crunch on the white stone as I step under the gilded, wrought-iron archway beside the main building.
Two years ago, it was a war my father started with Ilya’s uncle and Lukas’s father—adoptive father—that got him killed. It’s what took my empire and Mara’s future away from us. And I’m guessing it hasn’t exactly painted someone with the last name Belsky in any sort of favorable light to those three warlords of Oxford Hills.
But, this is how I get the keys to the kingdom, or at least the fortune behind it. Because Mara will need that when she wakes up.
I can do this. I can get through this.
I take a deep breath, step around the corner, and instantly gasp as a huge shape suddenly materializes in front of me.
I suck in air, catching my balance as I gaze up and freeze. I see a broad chest and powerful arms and shoulders, straining what looks like a tailor-fit OHA uniform. I see a strong jaw, clenched tight. I see bared teeth, twisted lips, a regal nose, and sandy-blond hair.
But when my gaze lands on the cold, brutal blue eyes staring daggers through me, I give up on trying to take that breath. Because the very air around me is suddenly sucked away. Like the vacuum after a bomb’s lethal scorch.
I look up, and I tremble as I find myself standing before Lukas Komarov, the dragon himself.
My throat makes a swallowing motion. But it’s too dry to actually manage that. So I just end up making this awkward frog look for a second.
Never let them see you cry. Never let them see you bleed.
I slow my racing heart as best I can. I center myself. And slowly, I breathe.
I knew what I was walking into here. I knew they’d be waiting for me, or at least blocking my way once they knew I was here. But it’s just another hurdle. One last obstacle to get over and get past before I can claim what’s mine, for Mara.
And yet it takes every ounce of my courage not to quail under that haunting blue gaze—like crushed ice trickling down your spine.
His face darkens, and I stiffen as he suddenly steps closer to me.
