Gennadiy lifted one perfect, dark brow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Thataccent!It caressed each word like a paintbrush dipped in liquid silver. But it didn’t hide the undercurrent of smug satisfaction. Ithadbeen him. And he wanted me to know it.
The rage slipped loose, expanding, consuming me. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t think about how many people he’d killed, or how much trouble I could get in. I just knew he’d ripped away the only part of my childhood I had left, and destroyed something precious and beautiful, and he didn’t care,no one cared,and no one was going to do a fucking thing about it, and?—
I punched him in the face as hard as I could.
2
GENNADIY
Two minutes earlier
Letme tell you something about power. The more you have, the more people there are trying to snatch it from you. You want to hang on to power? You better be ready to fight every day of your life. And to fight, you have to have something that drives you.
Business was good. The Aristov empire stretched right across Chicago, and we had cars, mansions, money…everything we’d dreamed of when we were three starving kids in Russia. But our size made us a target. Our enemies were constantly hunting for weaknesses, there were hundreds of illegal operations to oversee,andI had to run the casino, a full-time job in itself. It was too much for one person, but my brothers had their own responsibilities, and I didn’t trust anyone outside the family enough to let them help. I was already working eighteen-hour days, and as we expanded, it was reaching the point where something had to give.
But I had a secret weapon. The thing that pulled me out of bed before dawn, that kept me going until the early hours.
Anger.
It’s been with me too long to be an emotion. It’s a force of nature,a storm made of darkness that rises and falls but never dies away completely. It started in a borstal in Vladivostok, and it’s been building ever since. The anger let me become what I needed to be: a prince of darkness, the most ruthless of all my brothers. It lets me do the things I have to do: threaten, blackmail, kill. The one thing it won’t let me do...is rest.
So I never stop. I’m constantly moving: speeding around the city, dealing with enemies, solving problems. And when I’m here at the casino, I don’t sit in my office having meetings, I prowl the floor, checking for issues, and my men run up to me and mutter questions in my ear.
“Two of our guys got picked up hijacking a truck in the eighth precinct last night,” one of them told me. “Cops were supposed to keep away from that block. Commander Meggitt says he’s sorry.”
I know the name of every cop on our payroll. “Meggitt...he’s the one into woodworking, isn’t he?”
“Yes sir. Builds dollhouses in his downtime.”
I walked on, past the roulette wheel. “Woodworking’s such adangeroushobby. Those table saws...you could lose a finger before you knew what was happening. Pay Commander Meggitt a visit, remind him to be more careful.”
“Got it.” The man ran off.
I marched over to the craps tables. Another of my men hurried over to me. “We caught the guy who was dealing in our club. But he won’t tell us who his supplier is.”
“Throw him into the foundation of Radimir’s new building and start pouring concrete.”
“And once he’s talked?”
“Keep pouring.”
I held up my hand to pause the craps game, picked up the dice, and turned them in my palm, checking the weight: just last week, we’d had a guy swap in loaded dice. But these were fine. I rolled them, waved for the game to continue, and moved on.
My brother Valentin appeared from the shadows. “You asked me to find Iosif Kalugin. He’s holed up in a motel, south side.” Valentinpaused. “You want me to…” He reached under his long coat and brushed the hilt of one of his knives.
“No.” I thought about what Kalugin had been doing and the disgust rolled through me like thunder. “I’ll do it personally, tonight. Get a boat and some heavy chains.”
Valentin nodded and peeled off into the crowd. I marched on, the crowd parting in front of me?—
And that’s when I saw her for the very first time.
A woman, a small one, but marching towards me with utter determination. “Gennadiy Aristov,” she growled.
She’d heard of me, but she wasn’t scared. That irritated me...but it made me curious, too. “Yes?”
“You burned down the theater.”
I had to think for a second. That old wreck, down the block? Yes, Ihadsent someone to deal with it, one of the three places that would burn this week alone. Why did she care? The theater was a dump, and the space would make an excellent high-stakes poker area. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her.
