To the outside world, this place is just a boarding school for orphans. Polished halls, uniforms, smiling brochures stamped with the logo of a charity calledFunding for a Better Future. A neat little front tied to the Dashkov Corporation.
But no one on the outside knows the truth. No one ever will.
The kids here aren’t just orphans. Most are children of Bratva men and women, raised inside our walls, where they can be safe while learning lessons no public school could ever give them.
They learn to survive.
To strategize.
To be loyal.
By the time they graduate, every single one of them walks out with more than half a million to their name. Some go play at college before circling back to join us. Those are usually the ones with living parents still serving the Bratva. The rest—mostly orphans—come straight into the ranks.
Not a single one has ever walked away.
“Where to begin,” I mutter lowly as I pour myself a whiskey neat.
“The beginning, obviously,” Maksim deadpans as he grabs a beer from the small fridge just under the bar. Leon snorts, shaking his head in mild amusement at the large Russian. For an Italian, he’s not half bad.
Most of the time.
Leon is the more refined of us all. Minus Matthias. While the rest of us sport jeans and T-shirts half the time, maybe a polo here and there, he wears a suit.
Downtime? Suit.
His first camping trip? Suit.
Fuck, I’m ninety-nine percent sure the pretty boy came out of the womb in a suit.
He drinks wine and eats at upscale restaurants whose names I can barely pronounce. Unlike the rest of us, Leon grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. Doesn’t make him any less our brother, but it certainly makes for good entertainment.
“Insightful as ever, my friend,” Leon chuckles under Maksim’s glare. Even from across the table, that shit makes my skin crawl. Maksim is no teddy bear wrapped in bulking muscle like Dima.
He’s a killer. End of story.
The fact that his glare, which I’ve personally seen reduce grown men his size to tears, doesn’t bother Leon tells me how much of a psychopath the posh Italian really is.
“Children,” Nikolai admonishes with a smirk, dragging out what Matthias dubbed his professor voice. “Settle down so we may listen to our fearless usurper.”
Fucking old-timer.
“All hail Vasily the Fearless.” Maksim holds up his beer in mock salute.
“I thought it was Vasily the Fearful? Running from the seat of power since 1993,” Leon cracks as he takes a sip of his wine, eyes gleaming.
“No, no,” Dima crows. “Vasily the Drama Queen.”
Har-fucking-har.
“It’s going to be ‘Vasily with his boot up your asses’ in a moment,” I threaten, but there’s no real heat behind my words, and the three men howl with laughter. They all know how much I loathe being in this position. “Now, report.”
“Spoilsport,” Dima mutters somewhat petulantly, still chuckling under his breath as he lifts his beer to his lips. After taking a long swig and a deep breath, he sets the bottle down onthe table and pulls up a map on the small screen that sits nestled in the middle of the table facing upward.
“We’ve been tracking all of Ward’s known associates, including the Romanos,” Dima begins as a slew of red dots pops up on a map across Seattle. Each one of them is a tracker of a targeted individual. It’s late, just past midnight, and most of the dots are inactive, but there are a few still moving along the streets. “The Romanos have been the most active since the wedding, but as far as I can tell, they haven’t strayed outside their normal routine.”
“Are we sure they don’t suspect they’re being followed?” I ask. If Ward’s people have a suspicion they’re being tracked, they’d be more careful to keep their movements the same. But even that’s a pattern we’d be able to detect. No one does the exact same thing each day, every day.
“We’ve come up with some…creative ways to ensure they remain unaware they’re being followed,” Dima assures me. Not that it helps. Dima’s plans, although solid most of the time, usually end up with me paying someone off.
