Ilya nodded. “Because of the Vardi deal. I swear, Kirill, I didn’t take a cut. I would never. It wasn’t me,” he panted.
“As you know, if there’s anything I hate more than betrayal, it’s lying. You fucked up, Ilya. Be man enough to admit it and take your punishment,” I said through gritted teeth.
People were so disappointing, and the disloyal pissed me off more than anything. A therapist would no doubt tell me it all started with Mallory, but I already knew that. Mallory was the start of all of it, and she would also be the end.
“I swear, I didn’t know. I thought he was in on it when he showed up. I thought you knew he was here,” Ilya pleaded.
I frowned at him, the slightest trickle of curiosity staying my hand before I slipped the sharp, thin blade into his neck from below. The soft place under his tongue was a favorite of mine. It didn’t kill quickly and hurt like a bitch, or so I’d heard.“Who?”
“Nikolai. It’s Nikolai. He’s back. Your brother is back,” Ilya said, his chest heaving.
In my distraction, I’d pressed the blade in, and blood welled from the cut as the rancid stink of Ilya’s piss filled the air. The man had wet himself. There was no dignity in death.
I pulled the knife from his skin, and he cried out. I wiped it on my black jeans, my mind lost in his revelation.
Nikolai. My brother. Well, half-brother, and even that was too close a relationship for my liking. Where I was brutal in my dealings for my father’s bratva, Niko was insane. Perhaps growing up with my father from a tender age and seeing the blood, murder, mayhem, and depravity had broken something inside him too fundamental to be fixed. He was dangerous—a loose cannon. Yet, as soon as Ilya said his name, I realized my father must know he was back. Viktor knew everything that happened in this city, including where his lunatic son was. That meant he was keeping things from me again. That was never good.
“Find out what you can about Niko, but don’t let any of Viktor’s men know.” I strode out of the warehouse, wiping my bloodied hands on a rag and tossing it into the fire burning in a can outside.
“What about Ilya?” Ivan asked.
“If he survives, all is forgiven. He doesn’t have the money. Niko does,” I muttered, furious at the man who thought he was free to walk rough-shod over the empire I had built.
Before I was born, Viktor Chernov had run the strongest bratva in New York. By the time I was old enough to join him, it had been lagging, an antiquated system of doing business that would only see his profit margins narrow over time. Once I was reluctantly dedicated to my father’s organization, I changed everything. The real money these days wasn’t in shaking down local thugs or dealing nickel-and-dime bags of heroin on the street. The real money was in secrets, information, arms, and tech. I had helped the Chernov name expand its horizons. Niko wanted to burn it all down if it couldn’t be his. The problem was me. My father had two successors, and neither of us would walk away. I had nothing except this life. I’d fight for it to my last breath. Trouble was, Niko felt the same.
I slammed the door of the bulletproof SUV I traveled in. Since a run-in a year ago with a rival syndicate out of Chicago, Viktor insisted on drivers and cars that could withstand the zombie apocalypse.
I was pissed. I didn’t want to think about Niko. I didn’t want to think about Viktor and what new way he had thought up to pitch his two sons against each other. It brought back memories too dark for even me to stomach. The forge that had formed me into whatever I was now still haunted me. From a rising track star with a scholarship to a monster. It wasn’t quite the trajectory most people dream of, but such was life.
I lit another smoke in the back of the car, enjoying the harsh curl of smoky fruit. It smelled like the chaotic markets and brothels lining the Black Sea. I sucked back the acrid taste, enjoying how it burned my senses. These days, it was hard to feel much unless it had an edge of pain. With that edge, my dulled and blunted senses came alive. Lately, the necessary edge only grew wider.
After a moment, I flicked the cigar out the window, tired of the flavor. I dug in my pocket for my vibrating cell. Ilya’s blood was still stuck around my nails, gummy and dark. I tutted with annoyance. Bodily fluids could be so irritatingly sticky, whether you were trying to get it off your body or scrub down a kill site—not that I did cleanup anymore. I was long past the days when I’d scrubbed buckets of bleach over concrete floors and watched it turn to pink foam as it mixed with freshly spilled blood. The days of being a pupil in my father’s vicious school of violence were behind me. Nico and I had been the only students left standing by graduating class.
“What?” I answered the call, seeing Max’s name flash on the screen. He was my second, after Ivan, and the only one I trusted with my years-long task. He called it an obsession. He was right. I was fucking obsessed.
“Kirill, you might want to sit down for this.”
Idiot.Despite the horrors we’d been through, the fool still thought I had the patience for banter.“Tell me.”
“I’ve found her. Mallory Madison. I’ve finally fucking found her.”
2
MOLLY
The Blue Rabbit on a Saturday night was the stuff of nightmares.
Sweating, salivating men filled the club, and cigar smoke rose from the private rooms downstairs. Illegal or not, Rafael, the owner of the gentleman’s club in downtown Manhattan, didn’t care. It wasn’t like smoking indoors was the only rule being broken at the Blue Rabbit.
There was no rule Rafael and his rabble of ungentlemanly patrons couldn’t break. You could call the police, but the commissioner was in the Pink Room getting a private show. Staff whispered in corners that Rafael Navarro was an actual Navarro from the ruthless Mexican cartel flooding the city with some of the priciest pharmaceuticals on the market. I couldn’t afford to care about that. I was broke, and the tips here were good.
The men who patronized The Blue Rabbit were the wealthiest, most entitled men in this rotten city. They were also the most depraved, lawless, and cruel I’d ever met. I should know. My father used to be a member before he gambled too much and lost everything my mother had left him. The house, cars, private school, and reputation all flushed away in a mad frenzy of drugs and betting.
Thanks, Dad.
I was a few months into working the bar at the Blue Rabbit. I hated places like these and the kind of people who frequented them, yet I gobbled down their tips with gratitude.
Poverty and desperation went hand in hand. What seemed abhorrent only a little while ago gradually became palatable as the world shifted around you. Lately, I’d been thinking a lot about that.