“Look who’s talking. You'd bring your gun and badge to dinner and grill him like he's in an interrogation room all night.”
We both laugh because we know it's true.
4
MATVEI
“Evgeny?”
The woman from room service pours coffee from a silver pot into the China cup sitting in front of me while I speak on the phone. As soon as I nod my thanks, she scurries from the room.
“She’s a lawyer who works for a nonprofit that helps women in domestic abuse cases,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly, stereotypical of a mob villain, which he is.
“Fancies herself a protector?”
“I don’t know if ‘fancies’ is the right word, Matvei. She is damn good at her job, from what I understand. She’s gone up against some powerful syndicates a few times and won. Seems to be pretty fearless.”
Except when it comes to turbulence on an airplane,I think to myself as I sip of my coffee.
“Her parents were killed when she was young. A family adopted her who already had a daughter about her age. She’s a cop now.”
“Interesting.”
“You don’t think this is some sort of sting operation, do you?”
“On a first-class flight to Prague? I highly doubt the Chicago PD would pay that kind of money.”
“To get info on you? I’m pretty sure they’d do anything, including paying out the nose.” Evgeny, as my second-in-command, always looks at every angle.
“So would any of the other syndicates in the city. The Irish, the Italians.” I don’t need to go on.
“Well, that brings up an interesting point. Sonya Wallace is Samson’s fiancée. At least she was, until three weeks ago.”
I sit up straight. “Samson’s fiancée?”
Evgeny chuckles. “Thought that would get your attention.”
He was the one texting her those horrible things?I read more of the text conversation than I let on to Sonya. I saw the way her face fell, the way her head dropped. I saw the way those words affected her before she stuffed the phone into her bag, as if she could stuff the words away and forget all about them.
“Well, that figures. My asshole little brother being an absolute dick to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“I hate to say it, Matvei, but do you think she’s working with him? It could be an orchestrated plot by your brother, another attempt to bring you down.”
Evgeny doesn’t couch his words. Most people would hesitate to bring up an idea that suggests I may have made a mistake, but not Evgeny. Not after we’ve been together so long. Not after he’s laid down his life more than once to protect mine. Not when he’s just as determined as I am to keep my worthless, younger half-brother Samson from the Volkov throne to which he thinks he’s entitled.
Is it possible?Absolutely. Evgeny is well aware of the many plots against me. In the last few years alone, we’ve hunted several down, exacting our painful revenge and leaving the message that you do not fuck with the Volkov Bratva—or me.
The fact that Samson and I share a father does not mean I’m above doing the same to him.But he is still blood. Even as reviled as he is within our community, in order for my people to remain behind me, there has to be a well-defined cause before I take him down for good.
This new information could open up new possibilities.
“I may have an idea of how to draw Samson out into the open. To get him to make his move so we can finish this, once and for all.”
Evgeny is quiet. I can’t tell whether it’s because he’s thinking or because he disagrees and is waiting to hear more.
“Based on what I know, Samson seems to have hurt Sonya pretty badly,” I say.
“Being his old charming self, is he?” Evgeny makes a disgusted sound.
