I turn everything I’ve just learned over in my mind.
“You think Sidorov clipped your source?”
“It’s possible. He’s a ruthless prick and capable of anything.” He pauses, looking torn, like he’s measuring his words. “But my source is also his brother.”
Shock hits me.
“Wait a fucking minute. You’re telling me that Mikhail Sidorov’s brother—Dimitri the Executioner—was your sourceandthat there’s a sister we didn’t know about?”
Priest long suspected that Scorpion’s Bratva mole was Dimitri. But to hear it confirmed this way, and to know there’s a mysterious sister involved now too, thickens the plot considerably. Not for the first time, I wish Priest were here so that I could bounce all this off him. But he’s not, and I’m holding true to my determination not to interrupt his honeymoon in paradise.
So it’s all me, Scorpion, and Lucky.
Scorpion nods. “Dimitri and I go way back. He didn’t know anything about Mikhail returning. If he had, I would have had some warning on this.”
The two brothers had worked themselves up in the organization until they became the right and left hands of the Pakhan, Ivan Aleksandrov, here in the city. But there was a massive fallout between them a few years back, and Aleksandrov had sent Mikhail back to Russia to oversee that part of their operations. No one knew why, though speculation had been rife at the time that it involved a woman.
“So, in other words, something big has gone down,” I say, absently stroking the five-o’clock shadow on my jaw.
I didn’t want to take the time to shave this morning. I just got the hell out of my apartment, needing to put some distance between Isla and me as fast as I could, even though yesterday’s danger was still leaving me off-kilter.
I shouldn’t worry, I know. The guards are in place. She’s safe where she’s at, and everyone is under strict orders to keep her the fuck inside where she belongs until I return. Even if that means handcuffing her to a goddamn bed.
Why do I like the image that brings to my mind far more than I should? And why the hell do I want her so much? She was worried about saving the life of a fucking spider. Jesus, women like her should be outlawed. She’s like a lamb for the slaughter. A hot-as-fuck nerd lamb.
“For Mikhail to have returned to the States?” Scorpion brings me back to the conversation. “Yes, something big has likely gone down in their ranks.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“So, Aleksandrov?”
“Gone.”
“Gone as in back to Russia, or gone as in dead?”
“If I had to bet, I’d put my money on dead, although no one’s talking, and certainly not Ekaterina.”
I examine my brother. “The sister has a name.”
There’s something about the way he said it too. The look on his face.Hmm.I don’t know what to make of it, but I have a feeling a whole lot more happened between Scorpion and Ekaterina than he’s letting on.
“She’s feral,” he says.
And that’s when I take note of the scratches on his neck. Looks like I wasn’t wrong about her being a hellcat.Interesting.
“Is she going to be an asset to us? We could sure as hell use someone in the Bratva ranks, now more than ever, given the return of Mikhail Sidorov and his potential rise to Pakhan. This is all happening at the speed of light, and the fact that Sidorov was on our territory, openly challenging us, is alarming.”
We’ve always gotten along with the Russians, for the most part. There have been moments of strain and tension, like when Amedeo the Animal tried to start a war between the Andriani family and the Bratva. But we shut that down, and Amedeo too.
“I have to work on that,” Scorpion hedges, sounding uncertain.
“Do you have anything on Dimitri you can use as leverage?”
Scorpion being tight with the younger Sidorov brother was news to me, but I’m not afraid to use it to our advantage in every way possible.
“I have a few things up my sleeve.”
