Maybe Katie was right, and Aleks was wrong. Maybe everyone who’d been trying to get me to experience new things my whole life was right, and some of the reason I was such a homebody was based in fear.
I spent a little time scrolling through apartment listing websites and found to my dismay that I couldn’t afford anything that any of my cousins would allow me to live in. They had strict security standards due to the vast number of people who would love to take one of us out, and none of those dodgy dumps met the bill. Without Masha to help with rent and bills, or dipping into my trust fund, I was stuck at Aleks’s mansion.
The trust fund was something I wanted to keep from using if at all possible, because, despite growing up with vast wealth, there was also constant upheaval. My family always had a target on its back, and while no one had managed to topple us yet, I felt better knowing that if the worst ever happened, I’d have that nest egg to help us rebuild.
So moving out was off the table, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find something to get me out of the house. But what? My first thought was an exercise class since the wispy comment got to me a little. But the idea of jumping around to blasting music in a crowd of fit people, or worse, a team sport, just about gave me hives.
A glance around my room for inspiration landed me on another old family picture on my bedside table. This one featured my older cousin Rurik, who we’d grown up with and was as close to me as a brother. He had been strong-armed by my father into taking Masha and me to a pottery class, and in the picture, my sister was holding up her pile of mushy clay while he proudly pointed to me holding up what was a pretty fair vase.
Okay, that had been a fun day for me, even with Masha complaining the whole time about how dull it was. Most likely, everyone else in a pottery class would be occupied with their own projects. It seemed as chill as anything I could come up with, and I found one that promised to have only four people for maximum time with the instructor. Problem solved, and possibly a nice birthday present to give someone on top of getting out of the house.
Even if it was terrible, I could put on a brave face and gush about how fun it was so Katie wouldn’t worry. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be terrible.
Chapter 2 - Gavril
I rolled around to the back of the bar, pulling into the empty lot and parking with a little more gusto than necessary. The front wheels of my Bentley knocked into the chipped yellow barrier. The car stood out like a… well, like a Bentley at a seedy dive bar.
A glance at my watch told me I wasn’t early. The others who were supposed to meet me there were late. Every last one of them. This crew wasn’t what anyone would label conscientious, so it might have been in character that they weren’t already waiting for me, their supposed boss.
I might have thought that if this shit hadn’t been going on for weeks now. At best, it was annoying. At worst, it was going to get dangerous. For them, because if they thought I didn’t see what they were doing and was about to be caught off guard, they were stupider than I gave them credit for. And I didn’t give them much credit.
The headache I had been ignoring pulsed behind my eyes, getting sharper as the minutes ticked past, and still no one arrived at the meeting I had called earlier that day.
Come to California,they said.It will be fun.
Well, here I was, reminiscing about better days. Running my organization in Russia was about as easy as breathing, with hardworking, loyal people who didn’t need constant babysitting or meticulously laid-out orders before they did something. And they certainly weren’t plotting behind my back.
No one would dare. Not just because I would have crushed them and everyone they cared about, but because I had earned their respect. I missed those days, which seemed so longago, when it was only a little more than a year since I came to America.
So what happened to change everything if I was so happy back home? A not-so-little organization called the Collective came knocking at my door while I was spending some time in Milan, bolstering my relationships with the crime families there. They ran a tight ship in Italy and were kicking ass and taking names in Russia as well.
But they were having problems in America, namely, a family I was already familiar with due to my businesses in Russia. The Petrovs had neatly taken out almost their entire leadership structure in one attack. From a strictly academic point of view, it was a masterful take-down. That was a family I didn’t get on the wrong side of, and for the most part, neither did the international Collective that was wooing me to come on board with them.
Why not clean up the mess with the Petrovs in America? I got lured in with the promise of better weather, more money, and vast amounts of power, to head to LA and bring down the hammer.
The weather and the money were certainly true. Even the power to a certain extent. While juggling the promises I made to the Collective, I was quietly building up my own little empire in the parts of LA that weren’t already under the Petrovs’ rule. Besides my well-oiled machine back in the old country, I was sitting pretty.
However, I was now the leader of an unruly bunch of assholes, ranging from idiots to psychopaths, and without a single loyal one among them. My branch of the Collective had turned out to be a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
Thankfully, I had a small, loyal crew who came with me and whom I could count on without any qualms, or I might very well have been dead by now. And I was damn hard to kill. People had been trying for years, and I wasn’t about to let someone in my own organization end up finally succeeding.
Ever since I took over this shit show when the Petrovs annihilated the Santino family, who’d been corruptly running the whole organization into the ground and sullying the Collective’s international reputation, I had been fighting one headache after another. That was just my own people. The Petrovs were still a major thorn in my side, and one that needed to be eradicated. That was one thing the Santinos had right, they just couldn’t manage it.
And neither could I so far, and it was continuing to be a seemingly impossible task. The most recent attempt was a complete disaster, losing me a valuable plant in the FBI. It wasn’t easy to find a cop dirty enough to bring over to the dark side, and I had a great stooge who could cover up a raft of wrongdoings. Now he was dead, after blundering through what should have been a simple kidnapping. All I needed for him to do was get rid of someone who knew too much about a particularly shady accounting firm I had since shut down.
Unfortunately, that person with too much knowledge just happened to be a woman one of the Petrovs had an interest in. The last I heard, they were getting married, and she was out of my reach. Not that it mattered since that accounting firm was getting to be more trouble than it was worth.
Like almost everything since I arrived in sunny California.
Everything always came back to the damn Petrovs. They weren’t just a major criminal organization, completely on topof their game. They were a true family, completely cohesive. Everything the American branch of the Collective was not.
My undisciplined bunch wasn’t just making me look bad with their random attacks, they were getting themselves picked off one by one with every new, failed attempt. Which didn’t exactly break my heart, though it was annoying as hell. They were childishly lashing out while I called for a break so we could regroup and make a foolproof plan. That kind of thing only works when there are no fools involved, though.
Speaking of fools. Luigi Scalfiore finally arrived, with his men pulling in shortly after him. Luigi was about ten years older than me, and had racked up enough failures in his life that bitterness seemed to seep from his pores. He was unable to hide the fact that he was still pissed off about me being brought in to lead after the Santinos were slaughtered. He hated me for a variety of reasons, not least of all that I was Russian, taller than him, younger, and had a better car collection. Things that should only matter to fools, but he was one of those, and I could sometimes be petty and rub it in.
It certainly didn’t help that his youngest daughter had a massive thing for me, but I made a point to ignore her whenever we were in the same room together. I might have hated him just as much, but I wasn’t petty in that way.
I got out of the car as they hovered near the back door, lighting up cigarettes and wasting even more time. I blew past them, tapping on my watch. One of the young men whose name I could never remember scurried after me, probably earning himself a punishment from Luigi later.
