MAKSIM
It’s no secret that part of the Bratva has been shifting beneath me like cracks forming over a frozen lake.
It’s not the young bloods. They’re fine. Better than fine, actually. The ones who came up with me, the ones I’ve personally molded when I took over after my father passed, they understand that the world doesn’t run on brute strength anymore. Not in this day and age with modern technology and instant gratification at the forefront.
You don’t hold power by pointing a gun at someone’s head anymore. You hold it by knowing the code to their vault and taking their things for ransom, the numbers for their offshore accounts and draining them dry for fucking up, the skeleton in their second cousin’s closet and weaponizing it against them.
These days, it’s all about digital information, control and pressure from outside in order to force people back into their places like the good little cattle they are.
The new generation gets it. They’ve grown up with it, understand that we aren’t just a syndicate anymore that takes out hits onour enemies to get what we want. We’re a shadow institution, a government structure beneath the actual government, and power now lies in leverage against our enemies still alive, not bodies we accumulate in our wake as we tear through families.
My own problems are in the old guard. Myfather’smen.
The ones who still believe loyalty is built on broken bones and laundering money through shady deals that attract the attention of local PDs. The ones who spat at my digital expansion initiatives five years ago and snorted at the cyber-forensics I instilled when I took Matvey in, all the while asking me how much digital currency was backed by real-life gold.
They don’t adapt. Theyrefuseto. In their minds, the Bratva they pledged to die for died with my father. Following me? I’m just the steward of a corpse now buried six feet under.
I’ve tried everything—reason, threats, bribes. Hell, I even tried brute force at one point with quiet executions of the worst offenders and disappearances disguised as retirement. I’ve spilled blood to hold the line and still, the rot grows.
What’s worse is I know exactly who is at the center of it. Anton. Our Bratva’sobshchak.
Sidorov’s always cloaked his resistance in faux diplomacy. His manners are tailored, his actions pristine and well managed, but underneath it all, he’s the last of the wolves who thinks a snarling show of teeth is how you win wars. He’s never hidden what side of the line he stands on—tradition, brutality, and obedience.
All hallmarks of my father.
He wears the role of treasurer well. Too well, sometimes, but I see through it. He’s not counting rubles like he should be. He’s weighing the cost of rebellion and figuring out whether a coup is really worth the trouble it’s going to cause in the long-term.
For the time being, I can’t root him out just yet because I’m certain I’ll end up tearing my entire Bratva in half due to loyalties already being tested and frayed. The fracture is already forming in the whispers behind locked doors. In the sudden silences when I enter a room and they think they’re being covert.
Usually, I have nothing that can be held over me.
But now Ivy is in the middle of it and I’m being looked at as housing a potential liability.
She shouldn’t be here, that much is clear. That much Iknow.
She was supposed to be background noise that no one ever noticed, an American tutor playing house with Sergei’s daughter while he consumed himself with our business and our projects. She was never supposed to be a liability, let alone a variable I needed to keep easily contained.
For reasons unknown, someone pulled her background information before she ever set foot in Moscow, and that changes everything.
It means whoever is holding interest in her is now my number-one suspect. The coincidence of her coming over here and starting a new life and the timing of my Bratva splintering is too much for me not to look into.
I find Matvey down in his workroom in the basement, in his natural habitat. He’s hunched over one of his many curved screens while clicking away at hundreds of still frames. The faintwhir of cooling fans fills the air, accompanied by the rapidclick-click-clickof his mouse.
Blue light spills from the screen, bouncing off his glasses, turning his lenses into mirrored pools that hide his eyes, but I know better than to mistake the reflection for distraction.
Matvey’s gaze never stops moving, darting from screengrab to screengrab, frame by frame, picking apart still images from security feeds like he’s conducting surgery. Every so often, his fingers flick across the keys, magnifying a section of grainy footage, running enhancement filters, then discarding the image just as quickly.
He works with the focus of a sniper, calm, deliberate, and absolutely patient.
I lean down on my hands next to him, wrapping my fingers around the edge of his desk, and focus on the screen too. “Find anything?”
“If I did,Pakhan,” he replies without looking up, “I would’ve told you by now.”
My lip twitches.
Most men would be sweating under the weight of my shadow this close to them, but Matvey isn’t most men. Outside of Lev, he’s the only other person in my inner circle who can speak to me this casually and live to do so. It’s not defiance. It’s simply the fact that his value far outweighs the need for ceremony.
I rely on him too much to waste time on intimidation games, anyway.
