Nikolai liked the penthouse; he hated the feeling of people living on top of him. His home had some of the best views in the city. As much as he loved the hustle of New York, of Manhattan, he craved peace occasionally, and the view over Central Park provided exactly what he needed when he needed it. There was something soothing about watching the neon specks of joggers running their circuits, the colorful dots of people enjoying the green space, exercising their pets, or just walking together. He could watch the world pass him by without any need to control it, without any need to guard against it.
Their driver dropped them right outside the door, as if there were no parking restrictions in evidence, just as Nikolai expected. It would be a rare day before a car bearing one of the family's personalized plates received a ticket. The doorman and the reception staff greeted them with the usual polite deference, they were simply employees, they were not part of the Bratva. The guards stationed in the lobby were Volkovs, by loyalty if not by blood.
Nikolai and Luka took the stairs rather than the elevator, a force of habit for both of them, a habit formed as children in Magnitogorsk. They had not been poor there, but neither had they lived as the highest in society. And besides, they were both more than aware that elevators were not safe spaces for people in their line of work.
Pleased to find that thanks to plenty of time spent in the gym he could still manage those few flights at the age of thirty-five without getting even slightly out of breath, Nikolai nodded to the guard stationed outside Irina's apartment door. He received a similar gesture in return, an unspoken conversation that there was nothing to report. The man was a permanent fixture in their security arrangements, a necessary precaution in the scheme of their life.
Everyone who had entered the apartment from the outside exchanged their shoes for tapochki. In his own space, Nikolai usually wandered around in his stocking feet, but his grandmother would consider that uncouth, so he and Luka each donned a pair of the generic slippers from the stash that his grandmother kept by the door for her visitors.
Knowing where his grandmother would be in her palatial home, Nikolai led the way into a room that was decorated in every shade of pink, offset with the brightest of whites. If there was something that could be edged in gold leaf or gold braid, it was. The cushions were decorated with tassels and more cushions. His babusya was sitting in her favorite chair, an overstuffed, high back confection of mahogany wood and deep rose velvet that bore a strong relation to a throne.
She had survived the dictators and the ensuing new wave of presidents. She had survived the loss of her father, her husband, her brothers, and her son. She was the strongest person that Nikolai knew. She had been mother, and eventually father to him. She was responsible for everything that he was.
Nikolai bent to kiss his grandmother, pressing his lips to each of her cheeks in turn. He stepped back to make way for Luka to perform his similar greeting. Once Luka was done and seated on one of the fussy sofas, Nikolai pulled up an overstuffed stool and sat at his babusya's knee, as he had all his life.
“Are you well, krov moya'?”
“I'm good, Babusya. I brought you these.” Nikolai handed over the bag of almost still warm pastries.
“Oh, you good boy.” She took the bag, unrolled the top, put her face to the opening, and inhaled deeply. “You get these from Pekarov?”
“Da.”
“Khorosho, but you do not smell like you spent time in Odessa.” His grandmother made a theatrical sniffing motion at his shoulder. “You do not stink like Ukraintsy.”
Nikolai had known his grandmother to work with all creeds and colors with little complaint. As long as they could give her money, status, or property, she didn't give a shit about their family history. Except for Ukrainians, she reserved all her hatred for them and disliked them with a fiery passion. She barely tolerated the Medvedev family, and did so only out of allegiance to Santo Tosetti, and only because she knew that to do otherwise would be to bring about a war in New York, a war that would hurt their own profitable interests as much as everyone else's, and bring the focused gaze of the law into their activities. Irina was ruthless, but she was also ruthlessly practical.
His grandmother extracted one of the flaky pastries from the bag and took a bite, visibly rolling in the ecstasy of the taste and aroma and texture. “Ahhh, you are my good boy! Are perfect.”
As his grandmother enjoyed every last morsel of the pastry, an anonymous maid appeared with a tray of small crystal glasses and a bottle of vodka, which she placed on the side table at his grandmothers' elbow. The young girl left without fanfare. His grandmother finished the pastry, then she opened the vodka with a snap of the lid. She poured generous drinks for all present; herself, Nikolai and Luka.
“Za vas.” Nikolai lifted his glass in a toast to his grandmother. Irina grimaced but nodded, then she and Luka raised their glasses. As one, the three downed their drinks in one swallow.
Nikolai refilled the glasses. This time Irina made the toast. “Za vas, nash lider.”
Nikolai drank, then shook his head. “While you're breathing, Babushka, you are head of this family.”
His grandmother gave a thin, sad smile. “We both know is no longer true, krov moya.”
Nikolai knew she hated her new role within their family, but they needed her. She’d turned over the operational reins of the family to him, and she would never undermine his authority by meddling, but it had been hard for her to take that step backwards. He would never cut his grandmother out entirely though, along with Luka, he counted her as his best source of advice.
“It is true, it is true to the people who need it to be true. It is true to us, to Vadim, Yury, Ruslan, and Kolya also, as well as the Uncles.” Nikolai and his cousins had no blood uncles living, but they used the term to encompass the offspring of their great uncles, their first cousins once removed, who collectively formed another branch of their extensive enterprise.
“If you say.” Irina patted his hand.
Nikolai shook his head. “You know I'm right. Even I couldn't make you do something you didn't want to do.”
Irina chuckled. “Is true, is true.” She poured another round of shots and toasted to the family again before they all drank. “How was meeting?” she asked after they had drained their glasses.
“It went well. There was nothing of particular interest except for our business. Santo and Ilya have granted us the access we need to Red Hook.”
“Khorosho. Good.” Irina nodded. “I'm glad the Ukraintsy make no trouble. What about others?”
In truth, the Medvedevs were rarely the instigators of any discord at the meetings. Their Council, by its very nature and purpose, was comprised of organized families. Each group had a structure of its own, its own rules, its own code. They administered crime in New York, across America, and further across the world because they were able to function as businesses, as machines. Their main trouble came from the gangs not represented at Santo's table. The street gangs - loose affiliations which sometimes gathered under a vague cultural or ethnic banner, but generally with no clear overall leader - were the troublemakers. They were the factions that brought the gaze of law enforcement with their violent and sloppy ways.
Still, Nikolai was there to make a report, not to correct his grandmother. “The Kaneshiro and Zhang families grow stronger with their real estate deals. They're chafing at the restrictions that we place on them in Manhattan, but they don't intend to break the peace. Still, they are gathering debts from important people. We would do well to act sooner rather than later. They're looking to Staten Island in the meantime, Don Belmonte is not pleased.”
“That slaboumnyy has no business complaining. He sleeps at wheel.” Irina's tone dripped with contempt.
Nikolai nodded in agreement. “It was not discussed, but the Ortiz brothers are working more closely with Flores. I don’t think this will cause any problems for our relationship with Gloria, but they are going to have to remember that they do not have the firs
t seat at our table.”
Irina scowled. “Dario and his brother are ambitious, perhaps too much.”
Nikolai had always felt that his grandmother had underestimated the Puerto Ricans to some extent. It was true that their presence at the table had not been as weighty as the Italians, but they now controlled a borough entirely by themselves, and they were developing close links to El Estragó, a gang built from refugees from El Salvador that still maintained close enough contact with their homeland to be effective conduits to the Mexican Larriva Cartel that the Volkovs were allied with.
“He should be watched, closely,” was all the admonishment that Nikolai ultimately offered. He had fresh news to bring his grandmother. “Santo is looking to bring the Haitians in. We might vote on that at the next meeting, before then there is still research to be done. They are not exactly stable, maybe they never will be, but there are too many to be ignored and they appear to be arranging themselves into some semblance of order. On the street, they call themselves 'Sivivan Yo'.”
Many groups chose a name to inspire fear or respect, the Haitians had chosen something more literal, The Survivors. There had been an influx of immigrants since the devastating earthquake of 2010. At first, the result had been small pockets of disorganized chaos, but the incomers had infiltrated established gangs and had taken them over through sheer audacity and weight of numbers. Now they were becoming a force that could not be ignored.
“It would be well for Santo to bring them close. Better they learn way of things, our way, from beginning. Easier for us, safer for them.”
Luka leaned forward from his perch on the overstuffed couch. “These fresh matters are of interest, but there is much in the history of this group that concerns me.”
“Who?” Irina asked.
“Don Dioli,” Luka continued. “He showed all the proper deference,” Luka continued. “But when Don Tosetti was not watching him, the durak was rolling his eyes or glancing at his watch. Maybe he is cheating on his wife and had a hot date to get to, or maybe he thinks he should be sitting in Don Tosetti's seat.”
“Luka is right, Babusya.” Nikolai agreed with his cousin. “There was no argument that Benito would succeed his father, but we, Luka and I, both feel that he has neither the strength or the foresight to keep the peace as Don Tosetti does. The others see this, too. Perhaps they will not speak, Benito is Italian, he is married to Santo's granddaughter, they are almost blood, but his disrespect injures the alliance.
“If others not take him seriously, his mud will stick to Don Tosetti.” Irina leaned back in her chair. Not for the first time, Nikolai was struck by the idea that her age was beginning to tell upon her. “When Santo build this thing, his family was strong, all Italian families were strong. They are no longer what they once were. So many gone now. The inorodets may not be quick to draw much blood, but can cripple these Italians in other ways.” She chuffed a snort of derision. “Zhang make phone call and price of steel will rise or fall as he wishes. The Italians have lose their hold on construction; Chinese steel and illegal labor hurt them more than FBI could ever hope to.”
Irina poured more vodka for them all and they drank but without the minimal formality of a toast. Nikolai watched as his grandmother turned the small glass in her fingers; once so nimble, the knuckles were now swollen with arthritis. “This not yet may be of interest or use, but Dioli's young wife, she is at that nelepyy auction. I think man is durak at home, as well as business. She is not happy woman.”
“If her husband moves against her grandfather, she’ll be lucky to make it through the war,” Luka scoffed. “The Italians might not like killing women, but the Puerto Ricans and the others won't give a shit that she’s got a pizda, neither will the Medvedevs.”
“No, they will not.” Irina shook her head. “It is shame. I like her. She has strength, but she knows not yet she is strong. I offer her friendship, I think she will need it.”
“Will you warn her?” Nikolai knew that this was no mere observation by his grandmother. She wasn’t meddling, not exactly. She had her own code, and that Don Dioli's wife might amount to little more than collateral damage in the eyes of the men playing with her existence was an affront to it. He also knew that his grandmother favored Don Tosetti's granddaughter because she had known her mother. Even though the don had lost his child to natural causes, Irina seemed to have taken that death as a personal insult, as though she should have had the power to catch the tumor in time, or to stop it, or to simply have done more.
“I may offer some advice.”
“You may need to move quickly, Babusya.”
Irina laughed. “You play as you will with your chess pieces, the Dioli queen is my affair.”
Nikolai decided that he would light a candle and offer up a prayer for Don Dioli's wife.
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