He rolls his eyes again and exhales in a huff. “How worried are you about Rodion?”
“Not at all,” I say. “The man won’t move against me. I’m more sure of that now that I’ve met with him.”
“How did he seem?”
“Wary,” I admit. “He doesn’t want things to escalate.”
“But does that mean you will inherit the Ivanov Bratva?”
“I’ll get it one way or the other,” I reason. “I don’t need the old man to make a ceremony of it. Once he’s no more, his Bratva will break into factions. A large part of them will fall in line behind me.”
“And the rest?”
“If they don’t choose me right off the bat, I have no interest in bringing them into the fold at all.”
“Manpower is one thing,” he says. “What about the Ivanovs’ assets? Investments? Businesses?”
“I’ll buy them out. The ones worth buying, that is. The rest can go to hell.”
Yulian looks at me with clear shock. “You would go through all that trouble when you could simply get it on a platter?”
“A platter?” I repeat. “Is that what you would call sucking up to a man who thinks I murdered his daughter?”
“Small price to pay—”
“You and I have very different definitions of what certain costs represent,” I snap. “My pride is not for sale.”
Yulian’s lips snap shut. I know I’ve hurt him. It isn’t the first time. He’s learned to roll with the punches, though. And he doesn’t wait for an apology. He knows one isn’t coming.
“Heard any chatter lately?” I ask, if only to smooth things over a little bit.
He shakes his head. “Not much. Everything seems to have settled.”
“So the dinner worked.”
He shrugs. “So far.”
When did my little brother get so level-headed? So cautious? Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. In my head, he’s still the same snot-nosed ten-year-old who cried every time he lost a fight to me.
“You think I still need to watch Rodion?”
“Yes,” he says firmly. “The man hasn’t let her death go.”
I shake my head. “Say what you want about the old bastard, but he loved Marina. He may have been the only person to truly love her.”
“That’s harsh. She was quite charming when she wanted to be,” Yulian reminds me.
“She was seductive,” I growl. “There is a difference. She could win over any man with just a smile. But men are easily won.”
“I liked her at one point,” Yulian reminds me. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. You were the one in there defending her when shit went south.”
He has the grace to look embarrassed. “It was a good match. I wanted it to work. And I knew how stubborn you could be.”
“In terms of stubbornness if nothing else, it was a very good match indeed.”
“Which is exactly why everyone thought it would work.”