Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkinwoke from a nice deep sleep to the piercing tones of his comms going off. Gray eyes snapped open, squinting through the darkness in his bedroom. He lifted his left arm and watched as the thin, flexible bioware embedded beneath the skin of his wrist and forearm flashed a number he didn’t immediatelyrecognize.
Alexei frowned, running a hand over his face. It took him another second or two before his brain finally placed the identifying call ID. That’s when all traces of sleep disappeared and he sat up in bed, acceptingthecall.
“Dvorkin,”hesaid.
He expected it to be Sean on the other side of the line, using his cover from London—why, Alexei had no idea, they hadn’t been notified of Sean going into the field this week—but the voice that answered didn’t sound at all like he was fromBrooklyn.
“Alexei Dvorkin, Ipresume?”
Alexei flipped off the sheet covering his naked body and slid out of bed. He kept the apartment set to 70 degrees Fahrenheit to save on energy costs, a habit instilled by his father after they immigrated to America on a generational refugee asylum request. The apartment building’s attending computer turned on the lights at the first hint of movement without him needing to voice the order. He grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor and yanked them on, not bothering with underwear for themoment.
“Da. Who are you? Where is Riley?” he asked, remembering at the last second to use Sean’s coveridentity.
“I understand your CEO is unavailable, and that you are the next person in line with decision-making authority at yourcompany.”
Alexei double-checked that the call was being recorded by his bioware as he slipped out of his bedroom. The apartment’s second bedroom was directly across the hall from his, and he palmed open the door, the computer turning on the lightsforhim.
“What the fuck?” Staff Sergeant Kyle Brannigan swore as he flailed into a sittingposition.
Alexei hand-signaled his younger brother tobe quietbefore pointing at his ear and giving the sign fortrouble.
“Still not hear name,” Alexei snapped irritably. “Give me name or put Riley ontheline.”
Kyle stared at him for a second before his green eyes narrowed and he got out of bed to yank on some clothes. Both their names were on the apartment lease, but Kyle rarely stayed there anymore. He lived with Jamie now, and only came back when Jamie was away with his father on the campaign trail. With the number of eyes focused on the Callahan family, Kyle couldn’t stay at the condo alone unless he wanted to draw unwanted attention. So he’d come back to the apartment to bother Alexei and brood on the couch like he was teenager instead of twenty-nine. Alexei was a year older than Kyle and suffered through his little brother’s pining only because Kyle brought a bag of coffee as an apologyeverytime.
Not like Alexei would ever kick Kyle out, but the coffee was anicegift.
“Get an uplink,” the man orderedbrusquely.
Alexei scowled and strode into the living room, pressing his hand to the scanner taking up half the small control panel embedded in the wall. The equally small flatscreen located to the right of it snapped on, linking to Alexei’s call. Kyle came out of the hallway right as the uplink connected, and Alexei held up his hand in astopgesture at his brother out of view of thevideofeed.
What he could see on the other side of the line made him clench his jaw inanger.
A long conference table with an opaque screen embedded in the top dominated the room. At the head of the table sat a man he assumed was the speaker, but Alexei’s attention was drawn to the person sitting to the man’s right. Sean sat rigidly in his chair, staring across the table at a man and a woman in ruined evening wear rather than at Alexei. The right side of Sean’s face, including his eye, was heavily bruised and swollen. No blood that Alexei could see, but that didn’t mean anything. Still, the fact that Sean was hurt had anger burning through Alexei’s mind, hotasfire.
“All right, Riley?” Alexeiasked.
Sean had his left hand flattened over the terminal in front of him, data pulled from his bioware linking with the computer for the call. “Fine,” Sean said, lips barelymoving.
“Mr. Miller and his dinner partners will continue to be fine as long as things work out between us,” the man who’d initiated thecallsaid.
Alexei wrenched his gaze away from Sean to meet the stranger’s eyes. “You lucky am not in New Miamirightnow.”
The man was older, possibly in his fifties, and darkly tanned, with thick black hair barely going white at the temples. The bulk he carried on his frame was due to indulging in too much expensive food instead of hours at a gym. Large gold rings on his thick fingers flashed in the light as he tapped them against the conference table. They matched the gold chains around his neck in gaudiness and monetary value. Scattered around the room were a couple of bodyguard types who kept their eyes on the table and not theuplink.
“My name is Christov Antonovich,” the man inchargesaid.
Alexei waited a beat, but when nothing else was forthcoming, he raised an eyebrow. “Am supposed toknowyou?”
A muscle twitched in Christov’s face. “Your co-worker here name-drops Stanislav Pavluhkin with a casualness that can be dangerous and yet, you don’t know whoIam?”
His name was Russian, but he didn’t sound Russian. When Alexei’s family had emigrated from the refugee city in the Ukraine to Boston, they’d had the option to resettle in cities with a larger Russian-American community, but his parents had declined. Alexei didn’t know why until he was older and finally clued into the fact that those communities sometimes weren’t the safest placestobe.
The Russian mafia had long arms, after all, and it had been entrenched in America forcenturies.
“Was deployed. What I care for trash street gangs when in sandbox?” Alexeiretorted.
“I’d be very, very careful with how you describe mybrigada,” Christov said tightly. “I have your company’s CFO, after all, and one of your potential clients as my guests. Though after tonight, I somehow doubt the Wolcotts will be willing to do businesswithyou.”
