“Fine,” Marten said, stepping back. “You want to drink? You want to fucking throw away everything you've worked your ass off for? Go ahead! You do that, and you'd be the irresponsible man you always feared Dad thought you were.”
I swung at Marten, but even though he was shorter and more muscular, he was faster. He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, and shoved me against the wall.
“Don't fucking forget who taught you how to fight,” Marten growled.
I struggled for a few seconds before he let me go. I turned to face him, glaring, my fingers digging into my palms. Marten’s cold glare dared me to try swinging again. I stalked out of the conference room and headed to my office, slamming the door behind me.
“Take it easy, Avit,” I muttered to myself as I dropped into the chair behind my desk. “It’s just part of the deal.”
The problem was, every deal I’d ever made gave me something in return. That damn deal I struck with Sienna on a fucking whim? It benefited her, not me. I should’ve used my fucking head and kept my emotions out of it.
I needed to go back to the man I was before Sienna, sooner rather than later. Calculated. Detailed. Unreadable. Undeniably fucking Bratva. With Sienna, I’d gotten soft. Vulnerable. She’d become my fucking weakness. So while she’d reclaim her freedom through the divorce, I’d reclaim my strength.
I changed into gym clothes. If anything could put my head straight, it was training. I left the taste of vodka on mytongue, letting it burn, letting it remind me exactly what losing control would cost me. What she could cost me. I let that fire fuel me for the next two hours as I worked out and sparred with the men, every hit a release, every strike a warning.
When I finally headed back to my office to shower, my phone buzzed. It was an email from Sienna.
A humorless laugh escaped me as I opened it. She finally cracked the encryption…and instead of waiting for me to get home to share it, she sent a damn e-mail?
So that’s how badly she didn’t want to talk to me?
Once I got back to the office, I took a quick shower and sat down to read Sienna’s findings. The deeper I read, the harder my shock hit.
Fucking Oskar Mosav wasn’t just some business tycoon; he was Bratva. A full-blown bastard of the underworld. His real name was Rasko Vosam. He’d legally changed it, then wiped out anyone who knew the truth.
He’d had ties to the Italian mob, protected under Rinaldi himself, and before that, he’d worked with the Albanian mafia, the Romanian mafia, and even the fucking Triads. But he’d been outsmarted, betrayed, and forced to flee Russia with the only family he had left: a younger sister, barely fifteen at the time.
Fucking hell.
Without Rinaldi, Oskar was a sitting duck, even if the old photo Sienna sent—thin, different hair color—barely resembled the Oskar I knew now.
Her e-mail also included a list of all his operations, everything from racehorses to drugs, plus a roster of his men. No note on wives or children, though.
Still, this was the leverage I needed.
I’d threaten Oskar. Make him pay us every cent he owed, or I’d make it known that he and his sister were living on US soil. His enemies could handle the rest.
Hopefully, that would be enough to make him stop buying our stolen goods.
His sister was innocent, and I had no intention of hurting her; I just needed Oskar to believe I would.
There was a knock on my door, and Marten walked in, dropping down onto the sofa across from my desk.
“You good now? I saw you in the gym.”
I nodded. “I am. And look, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have swung at you. I was wrong, and I apologize.”
“Yeah,” he snorted, “because next time you try that shit, I will knock you the fuck out. Anyway, you need to call Lev and smooth things over. That meeting was supposed to clarify a few things in a contract he just headed off to with Jaroslav.”
“I will. It shouldn’t have gotten to the point where I walked out. I owe you and the others an apology for that, too.”
“You do.” Marten leaned back. “Now let me fill you in on what you missed.”
Over the next forty-five minutes, Marten caught me up, and once he left, I finally refocused on Oskar.
But before I could dive back into the files, my phone rang. It was one of the men I had watching Jasper.
“Speak,” I barked.
