Katya could feel Nick watching her, and she wanted to sink into the floor. He was the junior partner at her law firm, not quite her boss, but not her peer either, despite his friendliness toward her. She imagined she must have fallen several rungs in his estimation tonight. Her husband was showing himself to be the irresponsible drunk he was, exposing the secret that Katya’s perfect storybook life wasn’t quite so perfect.
Her natural inclination would be to smile, to pretend everything was fine, to hide the cracks in her marriage. But she couldn't. Not now with the police buzzing around and a terrible crime hanging over her family.
Here were the facts: a man was dead; Aleksei’s sister had been harmed; all of this had happened at Aleksei’s club; and he was now falling down drunk. He looked guilty, even if only by association. The police would think so, too. They already did.
She had no reason to suspect Aleksei’s guilt, but deep down she didn’t quite trust him. At heart, he was still a little boy, spoiled and delighted with his own mischief, quick to blame others when things didn’t go his way.
What was it Mikhail was supposed to have handled tonight? Had Aleksei deliberately dragged his feet getting to the club? Was he using her as an unwitting alibi? What had Aleksei done? He and Mikhail, his partner in crime.
The police had asked a lot of questions about drugs. Was Aleksei dealing? The pharmacies he owned would give him access to prescription medications that could capture a high price on the black market, dirty money that could explain his own success when the club did so little business.
Katya’s brother-in-law, Jack, complained he was barely making ends meet as Aleksei’s partner at Troika. Yet Aleksei was rolling in money. He claimed the cash was from his other ventures—his pharmacies and his investments. Maybe it was legitimate. But maybe it wasn’t.
Katya needed to face the truths, whatever they were, about her husband and her marriage.
“Here, Aleksei.” She tapped him on the shoulder to rouse him and lifted the coffee cup to his lips. “Come on, baby. You need to wake up. You need to talk to the police.”
Unaware of his own strength, he pushed her away with enough force that she slipped from the stool, lost her balance, and hit the floor. Her tailbone smarted, and her lovely ivory blouse dripped with coffee, but the damage was nothing to the emotional stab. She scrambled to her feet, indignant.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said. He made a dismissive wave in her direction, and her temper, fueled by hurt, ignited.
“Your sister’s in the hospital, and you’re here passed out drunk. Don’t you care what happened to her? Don’t you feel responsible?”
Aleksei stood up to his full height. He grabbed her by both shoulders. She expected he would embrace her, say the words that would make everything better. Instead, he shook her hard. “Stop asking so many damn questions!”
She gasped with shock and swatted at him with her hands. “Stop that! You’re hurting me.”
He abruptly let go of her shoulders and took a faltering step back. He swung his arm, as if trying to balance himself, but he clipped her with a backhand across her nose.
She felt dizzy, and the salty taste of blood filled her throat. He hadn’t hit her hard, but her nose was bleeding. She grabbed a stack of napkins from the bar and crushed them to her face.
“Katya, I’m sorry,” Aleksei said, as if surprised by his own actions.
Nick reached his hand toward her, but Aleksei rallied. He pushed Nick out of the way. “Keep your hands off her,” he said, but Nick turned around and decked him. Aleksei stumbled back.
“What’s going on here?” The officer who had been conducting the interviews appeared at the bar.
“Nothing,” Katya said quickly.
“He hit her,” Nick said.
“He didn’t mean it,” Katya said. The officer gave her a suspicious look, as if he had heard that line before.
“He’s had too much to drink,” she said, and then wished she could take back the words. She sounded like the worst sort of cliché, the woman who stood by her man and made excuses for him no matter how he abused her. She grabbed another stack of napkins and blotted herself as if nothing had happened.
Nick moved closer and hissed in her ear. “There’s no excuse. He hit you. And if he ever does it again, I will finish him.”
“It was an accident,” she said, wishing she fully believed it was true. “He’s too drunk to know what he’s doing.”
She wouldn’t blindly defend Aleksei or let him abuse her, but she wouldn’t walk away either. Not yet. Not until she had done everything she could to fix what was broken in their relationship. She had more than herself to consider.
Ready or not, good idea or not, Aleksei was going to be a father. He just didn’t know it yet.
VLAD
VLAD LEFT THE precinct with a vaguely empty feeling in his gut. He hadn’t expected to come face to face with Saul or to confront how much his life seemed to have come full circle. He had escaped Brighton Beach twenty years ago, had run away and tried not to look back, had tried to make himself into one of the good guys, only to return to where it all started.
He made his way down Brighton Beach Avenue, the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the night chill. The distance from the precinct back to Troika was only about a mile, and he covered the first few blocks with long, determined strides. After tonight’s events, the opening was there to move in, gain Artur’s trust, secure his position on Artur’s crew before slowly taking over.
The shop fronts were all dark, most with metal grates locked over their front doors and windows. Some of the restaurants were closing, but music and lights still spilled out of others. He observed them with detachment. He had grown up in this neighborhood, in a tiny rent-controlled apartment a few blocks from the ocean.
The air smelled the way he remembered, a hint of ocean salt mingled with the heavy scents of fried potatoes and meat and car exhaust. He had never felt a part of this neighborhood, and the smells and sounds held no nostalgia for him, although he did feel a pang when he thought about Nadia. His mother had been the only woman he had ever loved.
He tried hard not to think about her, to bury the hurt and rejection. Seeing Saul tonight had opened a wound Vlad had thought had healed over. He wouldn’t call Nadia. He couldn’t afford the distraction. He needed to stay focused. He had a mission, a goal, a promising future, and he wouldn’t be derailed due to a twenty-year-old family drama.
A creepy feeling stole over him. He was being watched. An icy chill breathed over his skin. He felt the eyes of his assailants before he heard them. The tap of footsteps on concrete. Vlad didn’t glance over his shoulder. If they knew he sensed them, he would lose an important advantage.
Vlad moved away from the buildings, closer to the street, where a row of cars—old and new, shiny and rusted, a manifestation of the rundown fortunes and great wealth living side by side in the neighborhood—were parallel parked. The streetlights shone down, and the harsh light cast reflections on the windshields and hoods.
The reflections off the doors of a black BMW gave him his first view of the two men behind him, dark figures in long coats. They crept close to the building, but hurried to keep up with his long strides. There were only two, not very stealthy. Not cops either. Their gold rings and heavy neck chains glittered, catching the light. Dressed for show, not serious business, he thought hopefully.
He couldn’t tell what weapons his welcome party had. They didn’t look like the macho types to depend on fists alone. Too bad for him. Guns were too much of an equalizer. Even a hack could do mortal damage with a lucky shot, and dead was dead.
The thought of death didn’t scare him, not the way it should.
Vlad reached for his guns and turned to face the two. In his career in law enforcement, the difference between right and wrong had come down to a thin dividing line between legal and illegal, a hairsbreadth tightrope that didn’t
differentiate between good and evil or offer any assurance that he wasn’t exactly the same kind of monster as his old man.
The law could be a shield for some truly terrible acts. Murder, for instance, was sanctioned if it was an act of self-defense.
He knew he needed to serve up some diplomacy, have a chat with the bling brothers, get the Georgians—he assumed that’s who they were—to stand down. He almost hoped they’d give him an excuse to fire.
“Hands up, fellas.”
Of course they didn’t freeze or raise their hands. The shorter of the two, a squat man, ran at him full speed, head down as if preparing to gore him like an angry bull. The other, slim with shoulder-length black hair, held back, drew a gun.
There was nowhere to run, and an armed standoff was an impossibility with the human torpedo coming his way.
Vlad sidestepped, but the man corrected course and head-butted him. The blow hit him in the ribs and threw him against a car door. He winced at the wallop and the hard impact against the side of the car. In the moment he lost catching his breath, his attacker let his fists fly and tried to pummel Vlad against the passenger side of a black Mercedes.
The car’s alarm sounded, a siren followed by steady beeps and then a swooping sound. Loud and irritating, the noise echoed off of the subway tracks above them, creating a ruckus that drowned the sound of their heavy breathing.
Perhaps immune to the noise or too frightened to stick their necks out, no one came running to the car’s rescue. Or Vlad’s. Not that he expected help. He had never received any, not when it mattered, anyway.
He was cornered against the car, almost pinned, without enough room to bring up his arms and block the blows. In the close space between them, Vlad used his pistols like fists and punched his attacker with a short, hard jab to the solar plexus. In a move that indicated he was not a trained fighter, the man staggered back with a gasp.
The extra distance gave Vlad the space he needed. He went on the offensive and hit hard with the barrels of his guns—shoulders, arms, face, neck, whatever he could get. Adrenaline shot through his system. He was high on the physical violence and the sense of threat that gave him license to deliver a brutal beating.
With the car alarm blaring behind him, he didn’t hear the crack of bone, but his attacker’s right arm dropped limp at his side, and the man’s face turned ashen with pain.
“Freeze!” Slim, who had been standing back, now aimed his gun at Vlad. Time to get scarce. Vlad slid across the hood of the nearest car and crouched behind it. He lifted his head enough to peer through the darkened windows.
A shot rang in his direction. Vlad ducked and the shot missed by a wide margin. The slug embedded itself in the hood of a red sedan. A warning shot or Slim’s best shot?
“I said freeze,” Slim said.
“Fuck you,” Vlad said. He trained one pistol on his crumpling assailant and the other on the man’s accomplice.
Slim laughed heartily, as if Vlad had told a dirty joke. “Ivan will be pleased,” he said in a very heavy Russian accent, “kogda ya yemu skazhu chto ti ne malenkaya devochka.” When I tell him you’re not a little girl.
“Is that what this is about? Ivan sent you to test me?” A strict adherent to the Thieves’ Code, Ivan had never openly acknowledged Vlad as his son nor married Nadia—having a family was forbidden, at least at the time when Ivan had battled his way through the Siberian prison camps. He had never denied he might be Vlad’s father, although there were many nights as a young boy when Vlad had wished he would.
Ivan had made clear he wouldn’t abide any child who might possibly be his to be a sissy. He used to beat Vlad and forbid Nadia to comfort him—so that he would become tough, Ivan had claimed, while his mother urged him to see Ivan’s bruises as a kindness, a lesson that would serve Vlad well.
Vlad hated his father, hated even more the little sting of pleasure he got from the thought that this minion might send his old man a favorable report.
“You waste my time,” Vlad growled. His gaze moved back and forth between Slim and Torpedo, who cradled his broken arm against his middle and cupped his nose as blood dripped from his fingers. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you both where you stand,” Vlad said.
“Your father has a message for you,” Slim said with a shrug.
“You lie.” Vlad kept his guns pointed at both men. “I have no father.”
A smile spread slowly across Slim’s face. “Perhaps not, but you’re exactly like him.”
Vlad didn’t want to be anything like Ivan. Slim’s comment, perhaps meant as a compliment to Vlad’s toughness, resonated with the force of a curse. Vlad spit at the ground.
The specter of his father’s brutality had shadowed Vlad most of his adult life, ready to claim his soul with every shot or swing he took, ready to trap him into addiction with every sweet drop of violence. He couldn’t deny he loved the adrenaline rush, the ferocious power, when he let the savage in him take over.
Only a few slender threads of self-control, or perhaps self-deceit, kept him from being a brute like Ivan. Vlad had never hit a woman. Or a child. He had never hurt someone who had not attacked or threatened first.
“Ivan’s watching you. He knows you used to be a Fed.”
Vlad raised his hand, squeezed the trigger of his gun, and a bullet arced past Slim’s shoulder. Slim ducked and then stared in his direction with a look of dumb surprise, as if he hadn’t expected that Vlad would shoot.
“That was a warning,” Vlad said. “Stop wasting my time.”
“There’s an agent in the field,” Slim said. “Know anything about that?” There was a challenge in his words, but weaker now that a bullet had buzzed his ear.
“Yeah. Tell Ivan his intel’s worthless.”
“What do you mean, worthless?” Slim acted as if he had handed Vlad a priceless gem.
“The mole was a cop, not an agent. And now he’s dead.”
“You kill him?” Slim asked, prepared, it seemed, to be impressed.
“No. But the Georgians think Inna Koslovsky did. Tell Ivan there’s a threat against her.”
“Why would he care?” Slim challenged.
“If you don’t know, then you don’t need to know,” Vlad said. “Just tell him.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Slim said.
“If you take them from Ivan, then you’ll tell him.”
“Or what?”
“Or you’ll be dead,” Vlad said simply, trusting it was true. He had seen the style in which his mother lived. Artur had taken care of her all of these years, just as he had sent Vlad to military school before Vlad had slipped Artur’s radar. Vlad had no doubt that Ivan and Artur had pooled their resources into obshak, a common fund meant to be used, among other things, to support criminals’ families. More importantly, Artur controlled that money, a clear sign of his importance, at least in Ivan’s eyes. If their partnership was what Vlad suspected, then Inna’s safety had to be, by agreement, as important to Ivan as Nadia’s now was to Artur. If Ivan’s underling failed to notify him of the threat, Vlad was willing to bet there would be deadly consequences.
Guns still trained on both opponents through the car’s window, Vlad backed up slowly into the street, still crouching to use the cars as much as possible for cover. He wasn’t sure where he stood with Ivan, although he hardly expected to be included in the man’s circle of protection.
Vlad didn’t have time to waste if he hoped to execute his plans. Ivan could be freed soon, and Vlad needed to deal with him from a position of strength. Ivan’s appeal could be granted any day now, and Vlad aspired to be a key player in mob business before he arrived. So far, he had traded on the old connections, the automatic legitimacy and entry bought by being the son of a high-ranking vor v zakone, the closest thing the Russian mob had to royalty.
People knew Vlad had spent time with the FBI, but his ties to Ivan overrode what might otherwise be an impediment. His father had an almost mythical reputation, and the denizens of
Brighton Beach, upon seeing how much Vlad favored his father, were willing to accept that his blood ran true. Some, like Artur, could even appreciate how well his training might serve them all now, especially on a night like tonight. Still, until Vlad proved himself, a word from Ivan could have him out on his ass, which was why Vlad intended to be occupying his father’s old seat as an indispensable and central member of Artur’s organization. From there, he could execute a takeover, with or without his father’s approval, and hold the full operation in his own hands.
When he got to the curb in the middle of the street and Slim failed to take another shot, Vlad turned and ran. Behind him, he heard Slim laughing.
Vlad ran the rest of the way to Troika. The ocean wind slapped at his cheeks and battered his leather jacket, but he barely felt the chill. He had survived his latest test, and he felt alive.
He slowed when he reached the red carpet marking the entry to the club. The lights shined brightly under the black awning, but he saw only shadows behind the large double doors with their golden handles and the club’s logo, three horsemen, stenciled in red. For a moment he wondered at the significance of the number three in the name. As best he knew, the club was owned by Aleksei Koslovsky and his brother-in-law, Jack Roseman. Was there a third owner, or had the nightclub merely adopted a common Russian icon?
Vlad rapped on the glass door, hoping that Svetlana would still be in the club. She knew the players here and was good at working out the angles. Her devious mind might pick through tonight’s intrigue and see the relevant patterns. Even better, maybe she had seen something firsthand from her post at the bar.
As he waited, he glanced over his shoulder for signs of Slim or Torpedo or any new surprises, but the street corner was quiet. A minute or two passed. Maybe Sveta had gone home already. He decided to try his luck at the back entrance. At best, he might find her there. At worst, he might be able to make his way in and do some investigating on his own.
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 6
