Konstantin Lobanov.
But, to me, he would always be the man who killed Siroc and scarred me for life.
With the slam of the door echoing the forceful closing of a chapter, the car I was in joined the procession away from the clinic. The city of St. Petersburg soon vanished behind tinted glass, as if it were an ordinary night.
Now what?
Chapter Two
Konstantin’s POV
My phone vibrated as I parked my motorcycle at the back of the brick building. Pulling it out of my pocket, I saw that it was Mikhail calling. I picked up the call, getting off the motorcycle.
“Hi, Konstantin,” he greeted.
“Mikhail, what’s going on?”
“That’s the right way to greet your brother?”
I chuckled. “Exactly, mybrother.So I know better than anyone else that you don’t bother with pleasantries except when something is wrong.”
“Right,” he answered. “Are you still in Russia?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Vitya Morozov was sighted earlier today. In Moscow.”
“Of course, the bastard can’t hide for long. He’s too stupid and vain to stay away from the public eye. Does Viktor know? We should get a hold of him immediately.”
“Well, that’s where the issue lies,” Mikhail said. “The authorities got to him first. He has been arrested as we speak.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, kicking sand with my boot. “Now we’re at a risk of exposure if the bastard gets desperate enough.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, his sigh loud enough to be heard over the phone. “Roman and Viktor are meeting with some insider guys to see how much information is in public hands. We’ll see where to go from there after their meeting.”
“Okay,” I breathed.
“I just thought to let you know because the arrest hasn’t been made public yet,” he said.
“Hm. We’ll keep fingers crossed, then.”
“Yeah.”
Vitya Morozov was a Lobanov Bratva soldier—until he decided to go rogue by leaking our information. From when he suddenly disappeared to when our investigation revealed that he was betraying us wherever he was, we had been lying in wait for the bastard. Customarily, I could have gotten his location, swooped in on him, and beaten him bloody until I had the names of everyone he had breathed a word of our intel to. But Viktor, the Pakhan, absolute leader of the Lobanov Bratva and my oldest brother, had asked me to hold on since Vitya hadn’t made any move yet.
As one of the soldiers who operated more in Russia than at the Manhattan headquarters, Vitya used to be under me. Well, under acapowho was under me. So, while it was a Lobanov betrayal, making Vitya pay was quite personal.
And pay, he will.
**********
“Boss, he just confessed. We were right. It was the same guy. Justin,” Sergei said as I joined him in the rectangular, dimly lit hall.
Sergei had taken on the responsibility of torturing this particular thief even though one of his men could easily do the job. The guy was like that sometimes; it made me wonder if he preferred the torture part to the mafia boss’s right-hand man part. Nevertheless, I had no problem with him stepping down to smaller duties once in a while since it didn’t affect his main duties of handling intel, logistics, and cleanup.
The guy strapped to a metal chair beneath the only bulb in the room had his head inclined to the side, his face covered in blood. Only his low groans proved he was alive.
“Hmm,” I replied, nodding.
