“From what we gathered, Kirill made a lot of mistakes that cost Malik a shit ton of money,” Kenzi clicks the button in herhand. A new image appears on the tablet of a younger version of the man I knew. He was eighteen when he was banished to St. Petersburg to work under a man named Vlad Morozov. Kirill went from an enforcer to a drug runner. No one can verify it for sure, but it appears Malik forced him to use an assumed surname. One that couldn’t be tracked back to him.”
“Makes sense,” Leon pipes up from the backseat. “He may have let him keep the last name Tkachenko as an enforcer, but the moment shit hit the fan, he made sure no one was going to know who Kirill was and how they were related. Finding out he has an illegitimate son is one thing, but that that same son is responsible for some of his failures? That would have him in a rage.”
“So why not just kill him?” Mark wonders. “If he was such a purest, why keep him around and involve him at all? He didn’t involve any of his other offspring.”
I have a few theories but none that I am willing to share now. The churning in my gut tells me that there is more to the story than just him bedding a random maid. Malik hadn’t produced any more male heirs after his son Andrei was born. Kirill, although illegitimate, was a spare heir.
“Why did Kirill leave St. Petersburg?” Kenzi wonders aloud. “It seems a bit coincidental that your mother overdosed and then soon after that he kicked you out on the street never to be seen again.”
“Wasn’t there a big civil war that ended around that time, too?” Leon asks. “I remember hearing Tomas speak of it a few times. Said it was the reason he got out. Malik’s people were dying left and right. It was carnage.”
“Give me a sec.” The sound of Mark’s fingers popping over the hefty keyboard fills the car. “Bingo. There was a civil war from early 1986 to late 1996 after Andrei Tkachenko’s wifemysteriously went missing. One of the men Sasha interviewed told him that all fingers pointed at the boy’s father.”
“Why would Malik even care?”
“Because it wasn’t a marriage alliance,” Mark tells us. “He fell in love with her. She was a waitress. No money. No connections. And no one ever found a body. Andrei raged war for years until he finally killed his father with a knife to the throat in 1996, ending the bloody war. More than six hundred soldiers died in that war.”
Mark hums in surprise as he filters through the data our informants provided. “Funnily enough,” Mark continues. “The same year he kicked you out on the streets is the same year Andrei Tkachenko legitimized Kirill.”
“What is the significance of that?” Kenzi questions, confused. “If he was willing to legitimize Kirill, he would have no problem with a child born out of wedlock.”
“One, Kirill already had a family and a wife that probably didn’t know about his extracurricular activities,” Mark elucidates. “And two, I don’t think he wanted the burden of another child. He was already in hot water, and his pockets were practically empty. But none of you are asking the right question.”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair which is still damp from the rain. “And what is the right question?”
“Why assassinate a thirteen-year-old you could have just killed when he was eleven?” Mark notes.
Kenzi bites her lower lip, her eyes sinking to the bottom left. She is trying to conjure up a reason as much as anyone else. I have asked myself that same question so many times over the years and I never found an answer.
“Well, if Andrei was willing to legitimize Kirill, maybe Kirill thought he would legitimize Matthias without asking?” There is skepticism in her voice. The scenario doesn’t fit. “I mean,” sheshrugs. “If he was worried about his wife finding out. That could be a reason.”
I shoot her a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised, conveying just how little confidence I put in that statement.
She holds up her hands. “Okay, so probably not the reason,geesh,” she mutters petulantly. “Just trying to brainstorm here.”
“Until we can come up with some solid evidence, why don’t we move on to where the hell he is.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Kenzi winks as she presses the control to move the tablet’s viewer forward a few slides. “He is in London.”
That’s a hell of a lot further from Russia than I thought he would ever get. The man firmly believed in what it meant to be Russian. I never thought he would leave the country.
“What the hell is he doing there?” I wonder, my tone darkening. Kenzi’s brows bury in her hairline as she takes in my sudden demeanor change.
“He’sPakhanof the local Bratva there,” she informs me, her eyes narrowing, waiting for me to explode. I won’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off. I am in an information overload. The man I thought was dead is still alive. Kirill Kasyanov is the only name I ever knew him by. I never thought it to be an alias.
Fuck. All this time he was alive for me to interrogate. To kill—and I missed it. And to learn that he is Bratva royalty. Even illegitimately.
Shit, I have family. An uncle and cousins. Not just the brother I murdered in self-defense.
“He was madePakhanaround ten years ago,” Mark informs me. “But from the looks of his books, it’s not going well. He’s hemorrhaging money and not in a good way.”
“There’s a good way?” Leon teases, trying to lighten the mood as we near the private airstrip on the outskirts of Tukwila. My private jet waits for me, fueled and ready to go. Apparently,our trip is leading to London rather than Russia as I initially thought.
“He isn’t losing product to turf wars or thieves,” Mark clarifies. “The money is just…disappearing. It’s in small enough amounts at a time that unless you are a forensic accountant, you wouldn’t even notice it. I doubt the home office has even blinked an eye until recently.”
“What happened recently?” I question curiously.
“He couldn’t afford to pick up product from the Cartel.”
