“Find the article, and I promise I’ll be a good boy.”
He snorts. “You?”
Right. “Just fucking do it, man.”
I close my eyes again and it’s blessed silence for a few minutes. At some point he gets up and comes back. Nudges me. “Pills.”
“Mother hen,” I grumble, but take them and the water he brought me gratefully. “Got anything?”
“Yeah…” He sounds uncertain. “A boy, you said?”
“Read it out.” I lean back. “What does it say?”
“Andrei Vasiliev, owner of Casino Blue and other establishments, says he has legal custody of his nephew, son of the recently deceased Mikhail Vasiliev, known in street fighting cycles as the Hammer.” He pauses. “There’s no pic. But the boy’s name is Evgeny. Evgeny Vasiliev. Not Kasimir.”
“It’s him,” I whisper. “That boy, it’s him.”
The boy in Brussels. The rich uncle. The Vasilievs.
I’d dreamed about him. That article, it’s been stuck in my mind for so long. Deep in my gut, I always knew it was him.
“That’s an even bigger leap,” he mutters. “Boy’s called Evgeny. You did hear that, right?”
“What do you wanna bet I’m right? Type it. Evgeny Kasimir Vasiliev.”
“Fine.” More clacking on the keyboard. Man, my laptop is ancient. Then he says, voice strangled, “Holy fuck, Nate. Holy shit, I found him.”
I sit up. “Tell me.”
His eyes are wide, red spots on his cheeks, and he turns to tell me. But before he opens his mouth, the apartment door opens and Sydney walks in.
“You guys still up?” She quirks a brow at us, and saunters up to the sofa. She’s like a pin-up model with her red hair piled high and that damn dress.
I’m certainly up, although I feel like shit. My dick waves an enthusiastic salute.
She comes to us and we move sideways to make space for her between us. She kicks off her shoes and crawls in our middle. “What are you guys doing?”
“Nate thinks we’ve found out who Kash is.”
“What? Are you serious?” She puts her arms around us, green eyes bright. “Tell me.”
“That’s what I said.” I toss West a pointed look.
“Okay.” He clears his throat, balancing my ancient laptop on his knees. “It’s only a passing reference to Evgeny Kasimir Vasiliev. It says that his uncle, Andrei, assured everyone the boy is in a boarding school in Brussels.”
That motherfucker uncle.
“You think this is him? Kash?” Sydney looks from me to West, brows drawn together. “What makes you think that? Is there a pic?”
“No pics.”
“But it fits,” I mutter. “The name. The dad dying.”
Does it, though? Or am I trying too hard to make the puzzle pieces fit?
“I thought his whole family was dead? Mom and sister and all?” Sydney leans in to read the article. “It doesn’t say anything about them here.”
No, it doesn’t.