Brian edged out from between Nikolai and the plexiglas, but Nikolai’s dark, hooded glare followed him all the way back to the drill line-up. He hadn’t been a fan of the diva hockey player with the long blond hair before he’d bought the team. And he was even less of a fan now.
He skated back over to the bleacher side of the rink, where his cousin was standing with a hot coffee.
“Maybe we trade him before playoffs.”
Alexei answered with a low laugh. “You don’t think Atwood got your point about not letting his fame interfere with his obligations?” His English words came out so smooth, one might not have known he’d been born and raised in Russia. Thanks to his business background, unlike Nikolai, Alexei had managed to mostly lose the accent of his youth.
“I don’t like having to make the point,” Nikolai answered in Russian.
“Be grateful,” Alexei answered, easily flipping back to Russian, too. “He is the reason you own the team now at such a low price.”
True. Part of the reason Nikolai had been able to buy ownership of the team so easily was because the last owner had blown much of the team’s operating funds to sign Atwood to a seven-figure deal. That had been six months ago, and just four months before he’d been forced to formally declare bankruptcy when the new addition didn’t bring in as many new fans as he’d planned. With a sizeable investment from his billionaire cousin, Nikolai had been able to snatch up the team in a sweetheart deal.
Now Nikolai was looking forward to leading the Polar into the future with a much firmer hand. But the acquisition of the team had come at great cost to his career.
“Are you angry at him or angry because he gets to play the game you no longer can?” Alexei asked behind the short rink wall.
Technically, you couldn’t both play and hold a majority stake in a team, especially if you didn’t want to cede your vote to someone else within your organization. He had a vision for the team, and not being able to speak or vote at NHL meetings wasn’t part of that vision. So sadly, the night before had been his last game with the Indianapolis Polar.
“I am grateful for your support, cousin. Having control of this team is my dream,” he told Alexei. Then he grumbled, “Not so much the paperwork.”
Now Alexei really laughed. “The only cure for paperwork is family. When I come home from the office and see my Eva, my Aaron, and my little Layla, all the bad parts of business go away. Think about settling down, Nikolai. It is best thing a business man can do for himself.”
“We are from the same place, but my family was not like your family,” Nikolai answered. “I do not have a wish for a wife or children.”
He thought about how Fedya had looked in his study. Wild eyes and obviously strung out. Like the worst stereotype of every junkie he’d ever seen on American television—but with a Russian accent.
“I see how children can become,” he said.
Alexei’s good cheer dimmed. “Yes, it was hard to see Fedya like that…”
Both Nikolai and his older brother, Fedya, had started out as star players for the Indiana Polar after getting drafted as a pair from their Russian team. But whereas Nikolai had flourished, going on to win two Stanley Cups as a defenseman in the golden days of his adopted team, his brother, their original star left winger, had not been immune to the temptations America offered up to a previously cloistered athlete.
He’d quickly fallen to the vices of drugs and alcohol and within two seasons, his star, which had burned even brighter than Nikolai’s, had been diminished. Eventually he’d been kicked off the Polar for missing too many practices. And in recent years, he’d sunk to a place so low, Nikolai had been forced to cut him off.
He thought back to Saturday when his formerly large brother had shown up on his doorstep, emaciated and in possession of only half his teeth, claiming to need money. Badly.
“Some Russians hired me to sell their product because their boss heard a lot about your father back when he was in Russia. I pretended Sergei was my father, too—least the dead fuck could do is give me his name for business purposes,” he told Nikolai in Russian, scratching at his arm. “They gave me product to sell, and I came up with a plan—a good plan. Cut product down, sell even more, turn better profit.”
Fedya acted liked this was the most inspired plan a drug dealer had ever come up with. And he actually seemed proud of himself when he said, “I sold all of it, just like I promised, and I gave money to Russian Boss. But afterwards, people started complaining about the product, and now the Russian Boss is demanding I pay him more, even though I already paid him. I wouldn’t give in to his demand, but he thinks he is like your father. He might try to make example of me if I don’t give him money.”
A typical Fedya sob story. Bad idea explodes into a total shit storm, which his brother somehow managed to take no responsibility whatsoever for. It happened this way every single time.
Nikolai had given his brother a look colder than the Indiana winter raging outside the study’s windows.
“You dare come to my home, high on drugs, asking for more money after I’ve already wasted so much money on you in past? No. I will tell you like I did last time you came to me. From now on, I will only give you money for rehab.”
Fedya went from plaintive to petulant in an instant, Nikolai and Alexei just watched as Fedya threw a full-fledged temper tantrum. Kicking at Nikolai’s desk like an oversized man-child as he accused Nikolai of being a terrible brother, and Alexei of looking down on him because, unlike Nikolai, Fedya wasn’t a Rustanov. Then he had burst into tears.
Years ago, before Nikolai had learned to harden his heart where Fedya was concerned, seeing his brother unravel like this might have been enough to move him to open his wallet wide. The sight of his brother brought so low used to rip at his heart, move him to do anything to get his brother, who used to be a person Nikolai admired, to stop crying.
But Fedya had taught him a lesson about helping those who didn’t truly want to be helped. Every single dollar he’d given his brother over the years had been wasted on more drugs. He’d gotten kicked out of any decent apartment Nikolai had arranged for him and either totaled the cars Nikolai had gifted him or sold them off for more drugs.
“You have five minutes to finish your crying,” Nikolai told his brother. “Then security will escort you out. Do not come here again.”
More cursing. This time in both English and Russian.
That was when Nikolai had gotten the text from Isaac saying the woman in the green dress had been detained at the porte-cochère valet station, right outside the front door. As good a reason as any to end the conversation with his brother.
Nikolai had headed toward the valet station with his heart full of ice, but his body was burning hot with need. He wanted to lose himself inside someone, and he’d already decided it would be her. Not the vapid fan she’d tried to pass him off to. Her.
But he’d only gotten one kiss. A kiss so unexpectedly earth shattering, he was still thinking about it three days later.
“Have you been able to find her?”
“Who?” Nikolai asked, even though he knew exactly who his cousin was talking about.
“The woman in the green dress,” Alexei answered in English, his eyes highly amused.
“Your visit for my last game has been very nice, but you are eager to get back to your family, yes? When will you go to your plane?” Nikolai asked in Russian.
Alexei just smirked, and continued to speak in English. “The car won’t be here for another five minutes. Until then you can answer my questions about this woman. I assume you still have not found her.”
“No,” Nikolai, answered, making a terse switch back to English. “Isaac is still checking. But nothing so far. We think she gave fake name to guard at gate.”
“Hunh,” Alexei said with a thoughtful raise of his eyebrows. “It sounds like you have a mystery woman on your hands. It must be killing you, cousin. She was very attractive, and I know you do not like loose ends.”
This was true. Nikolai wasn’t one to let challenges go unanswered, whether it be from an opposing team’s player or their team’s former spendthrift owner. And though getting turned down by a strange woman who maybe was or wasn’t supposed to be at his party shouldn’t have qualified as a thing that disturbed him, he’d found himself visited a few times over the past few days by mental images of him “eating her for breakfast.” An idea she’d unintentionally put in his head. Even now, his body stirred in response to the mere thought of having her in this way, the flesh between his legs tightening as he imagined his tongue inside of her, her hands in his hair as she submitted to his mouth. He could almost taste her, hear her moaning cries as she came for him—
“Mr. Rustanov! Mr. Rustanov!”
Isaac’s voice shattered the erotic vision. Both he and his cousin turned to see his assistant running around the edge of the rink wall toward them.
“Sorry,” he said to Alexei, when he reached them. “I meant Nikolai.”
“Da, what is it, Isaac?” Nikolai asked, not knowing whether to be irritated or grateful that the smaller man had snapped him out of his waking dream.
“Maybe it would be better if we talked privately?” Isaac suggested with a glance towards Alexei.
Nikolai shook his head. “Whatever you say to me, you can say in front of Alexei.”
“Okay,” Isaac said. Yet he still lowered his voice to whisper level when he let Nikolai know, “Indy PD is on the line. They say it’s about your brother.”
Isaac held the phone out to him.
And Nikolai sighed. “Tell the Indiana police department you will come down to the station after our practice is finished to bail him out. Whatever the trouble is that he has brought upon himself this time, he can wait until then.”
Isaac nodded in agreement. “Yes, I offered to take care of whatever assistance your brother needed, but they’re insisting on talking to you.”
Nikolai’s brow knitted. This was highly unusual. Back when Isaac had first come to work for him as his personal assistant, before Nikolai had cut Fedya off, Indy PD hadn’t had any problem letting his assistant handle his brother’s bail and the subsequent charges—the least egregious of which were dropped in deference to a generous on-the-spot donation from Nikolai to the policeman’s ball.
Isaac gave him an apologetic grimace. “They say it’s important.”
He took the phone from Isaac with a frown. “Da, this is Nikolai Rustanov.”
8
Years later, Nikolai could still remember the call as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. It came in the early hours of the morning, startling him from a deep sleep.
“I am sorry to wake you,” his cousin had said in careful Russian. “But I must throw a party for your father.”
Code for kill. His cousin had given him a courtesy call to tell him he planned to have Sergei executed. Later he would find out the very good reason Alexei decided to do this, but at the time, it wouldn’t have been wise to ask over an insecure line.
“I understand,” he’d said, not really needing to know the reasons why.
“I have a man ready to host a party for Uncle Sergei, but our way is to let the son host, so I am calling you…”
One of the stranger Rustanov traditions. Every once in a while it became necessary to kill a member of your own family. But in a morbid bid to honor, the option of killing the family member was always given to the killee’s son.
Sergei had described this time-honored tradition to Nikolai with pride.
“If it ever happens to me, I want you to do it,” he’d told his only son. “I am Rustanov until end.”
The tradition and the conversation about it had been incredibly surreal and Nikolai had quickly put it out of his head. Especially after Alexei made the Rustanov family a legitimate business. Yet here was his cousin now, putting out a hit on his uncle, Nikolai’s father.
Sergei would still want his son to do the deed, Nikolai knew. To fly all the way to Russia to put a bullet in his own father’s head. Sergei would actually consider that an honorable way to go.
So, of course, Nikolai had said, “Thank you, but I do not wish to host this party. I trust your man to do a good job.”
And the next time Nikolai had seen Sergei, he’d been dead on a slab. Just like Fedya was lying dead in front him right now, his face a bluish gray, with a bullet wound between his open eyes.
“If anything ever happens to me. If your father ever does as he threatens, you must take care of your brother. He is weak. Not strong like you. You are your father’s son, and he is his. You must protect him. Take care of him.”
His mother’s words rang in his ears as he stared into his brother’s lifeless eyes.
“That him?” a voice asked from somewhere behind him. Probably the detective who’d escorted him in.
Nikolai nodded, unable to look away from his dead brother’s face.
“Sorry, but we need a spoken yes. You gotta say it out loud. Sorry, Mount Nik,” the voice said.
A hockey fan, Nikolai noted with a grim disinterest. During his decade plus in Indiana, he’d found that fans of America’s fourth favorite professional sport were everywhere. If Fedya were alive, he would have been thrilled at the recognition. During the years when he and Nikolai had still been talking, Fedya had often taken in Nikolai the pride he couldn’t take for himself.
“You showed your father good,” he once said to Nikolai. “You escaped. You did not let him ruin you like he ruined our mother. Like he ruined me.”
On the table, Fedya’s body morphed into a slightly shorter and more muscular one, grey of hair, but still radiating danger even in his death. The body was now Sergei’s, lying on the same kind of slab as Fedya, but in a Russian coroner’s office. Also, unlike Fedya, his father had been killed in the old way, the one named after the Rustanovs and popularized by Sergei himself. One last show of respect from Alexei who’d ordered the hit, but could not get Sergei’s son to make it honorable.
It had taken Nikolai three days to get to Russia and deal with the body, just as it had taken three days for the police to track him down. As it turned out, Fedya had moved since the last time Isaac had bailed him out of jail, and “hockey star brother” wasn’t the kind of note kept in the non-existent file of a criminal who had been arrested several times but had never garnered an official record, thanks to Nikolai’s connections. If one of the police officers in the precinct hadn’t been a hockey fan and put two and two together after an internet search, they might never have made the connection, since he and Fedya had different last names.
But there had been no denying it when the white sheet had been pulled from Fedya’s head. And now, as the body on the slab morphed back into his brother, he confirmed it out loud.
“Yes, that’s him,” he said, his voice grim.
“If you want more time to say your goodbyes, we can give you that.”
“No, that is not necessary,” Nikolai answered, placing another layer of ice over his heart. He’d said his goodbye to Fedya a long time ago when he cut him off. He known then that there was no way his brother would live past his forties. Known and forced himself to accept the inevitable bad end.
Nikolai took charge of the situation, turning to face the officers. “Tomorrow my assistant will come here, handle body. Is there anything else or can I go now?”
“We’ll get the paperwork together for you upstairs,” the older detective who’d brought him in answered. His face was creased with weary lines that spoke to how often he’d watch this same scenario unfold. “Now that you’ve given us a positive ID, we should probably ask you a few questions, seeing as how foul play was obviously involved. And there’s also the matter of your nephew…”
Nikolai went thunderously still. “My what?” he asked.
HIS NEPHEW. He had a nephew.
Nikolai was still having trouble believing what he’d been told, even as the police officer whose desk he was currently sitting at wrote down an add
ress for him.
“Normally, I wouldn’t do this,” the officer, who’s desk plate read “Marco J. Gutierrez”, said. “But I’m a big fan. Plus, I want to see you reunited with your nephew. You know, it was me who connected the dots. Since he’s half black, nobody was putting it together, even though he’s got a Russian name. But he was over at my girl’s house watching hockey and I remembered reading something about you having a half brother who used to play hockey, too. Did an internet search the next day and put it all together. Lucky break, huh?”
Lucky indeed, though Nikolai still wasn’t clear on a few things. “Why is my nephew in custody of your girl? She is not his relation. I am.”
“Yeah, try telling her that,” Marco answered with a wry half-smile. “That’s why I’m giving you her address, so you can go over there. You should have seen the hoops she wanted me to jump through just to find him a foster home. My girl is sweet—real cute, too, but she can be like a rabid dog when it comes to the women and kids she takes in. And she’s taken a real shining to your nephew. The truth is, she might take some convincing before she hands him over to you.”
The prospect of having to convince some police officer’s girlfriend to give him the custody that should be his by familial right didn’t sit well with Nikolai. Not well at all.
Marco mistook his frown of irritation as one of worry.
“Maybe lay on the uncle stuff real thick. Make sure she knows you had no idea this kid was in the picture, or you would have helped out.”
“I would have done more than ‘helped out,’” Nikolai informed the police officer.
According to the police reports, the child’s mother had died of an overdose about two years ago—right around the same time Nikolai cut his brother off. Nikolai had no idea how close Fedya had been to the boy’s mother, but obviously he’d taken over his custody without telling Nikolai. Maybe because he’d thought Nikolai would have judged him for having a bi-racial son. Sergei, like many in Russians in his generation, had been a vehement racist and maybe Fedya thought Nikolai would react badly to the prospect of a half-black nephew.
HER RUSSIAN SURRENDER Page 5
