Red Reaper - Soldiers of Fortune [book one]

Chapter EIGHT

Konstantin Ivanov

The fresh winter breeze cools my cheeks and soft flakes of snow begin to fall as I spy through the scope of the sleek black SV Dragunov sniper rifle..

The gentle sleet brings a tranquil nostalgic calm to my chest as it settles to remind me of my Mother Russia.. My home..

Ah, how I miss my homeland and the small town of Myshkin where I was raised in the care of a monastery..

The distant memory of my youth, now long past, is all I have and somehow even that is discoloured and faded by the passage of time.. I am not a young man, my spirit no longer seeks, instead it withers.. I am dying, day by day, month by month, little by little and that death cannot come fast enough..

It has been so long since I have felt any sense of belonging.. To be understood..

I am an alien in this country, a foreigner, looked down upon with suspicion and fear.. Though, I cannot argue that fear is not justified..

What I have become inside is colder than the ice that now rains around me..

Back in Russia I had risen to the position of a Bratva Enforcer, Second only to Oska Romanov as he terrorised the streets of Moscow..

But those years could only last so long and would sour as quickly as they become sweet..

For selfish reasons I became indebted to Oska and for even more foolish sentimental reasons, I became involved with his dear arranged bride.. I had intervened in their marital discord in all the ways I shouldn't have.. I spoke frequently out of turn and became violently possessive of his trophy wife.. I was no longer subservient to the Bratva Pakhan and instead became a threat to the man I had once called brother..

All for a dear girl.. Katya Czarina..

Never before had I developed such an emotional attachment to another who did not share my blood. I thought I'd forgotten how to care after losing my own family..

But somehow I had learned the ability to love again through her affection for me..

She saw all that I was, the evil within me and still she loved me anyway.. The sweet Serbian princess Katya, had become like a daughter to me, as if she were the fruit of my own flesh, I would have died to defend her..

At seventeen, she was a beautiful and delicate flower.. So innocent and angelic..

Oska would beat her.. He would use his fists to silence her tempestuous mouth and his undeserving cock to punish her willful defiance.. A trespass I could not stand for..

I had grown to hate Oska for the way he treated the sweet child Katya, I loathed him from the fiery pits of my scorched blackened soul..

And so I would conspire that he had to die and his fate was fixed..