I glance back long enough to see him touching his brow, checking for blood. There isn’t any, but he’s going to have a hell of a goose egg in the morning. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” Pavel says.
My gut tells me it’s a bad idea to release him. This son of a whore is going to run the second he sees an opening. This is Pavel’s job, though, so I do it anyway. I take my arm off his neck and step back. Kozlov slides off the wall, gasping for air.
“Meet me outside,” Pavel tells me.
“Pavel,” I start, but he gives me a look. One that sayslet me handle this.
Yeah, this is a bad move and truthfully, I only came to watch Pavel’s back. And Kozlov is in deep with our father, deep enough to do just about anything to escape this moment.
But this isn’t about any of that. Pavel is trying to show me, and maybe our father as well, that he is capable of doing this job on his own.
I don’t say a word. I leave the VIP area.
Out in the club, I decide to get a drink from the bar while I wait. My brother is a man who has longed for his father’s attention his entire life, a notion that has always felt futile to me. We can’t help the direction that my father gives. He’s thePakhan, after all. What he says goes for all of us, regardless of where we lie in our birth order. I get to be my father’s right hand and one day, I will be the one to run our family and all the territories that come with it. It’s not a role I ever strived for. It just is.
Pavel, on the other hand, has been working to prove his value since we were children. Now that he’s been deemed akrysha,the same role Father had in his youth, he truly wants to live up to that title.
I can’t blame him. How can he be an enforcer if his big brother is fighting his battles?
As soon as the bartender hands me my drink, there’s a commotion behind me. I turn just in time to see Kozlov knocking over one of the waitresses. The tray of glasses she was holding goes smashing to the floor as he darts out the emergency exit.
“Shit.” I get to my feet and rush through the throng of nosy customers to chase after him. I get to the VIP door and Pavel comes running out. His nose is bloodied and swollen. He joins me as we both hit the emergency exit and into the alley.
By the time we both get outside, we hear tires screeching away in the distance. We both see a car’s taillights as it pulls out of the driveway and to the street. Bastard just got away.
“Goddammit!” Pavel shouts, kicking the side of the dumpster near the door. “Fuck!”
I sigh and cross my arms. This is fucked. He’s got every right to be pissed. Father is going to shit when he hears Kozlov got away.
“It happens,” I say to Pavel. “Sometimes they get the jump on you. That’s why you never do these types of things alone. You know that.”
“I know. I just…” He pauses and shakes his head. “I thought it would look better if I did this without my big brother’s help, you know? Why the hell did he send you with me, anyway? Isn’t this below your pay grade?”
“Helping you is never beneath me, Pavie.”
He regards me silently. The bridge of his nose has swollen significantly in the last couple of minutes. He sniffles and goes to wipe the blood away, but flinches the second his hand touches his nose. “Shit.” He winces. “I think he broke my nose.”
I take his head in my hands. “Let me look at it.” I tilt his head back, observing the obvious break. “It’s definitely broken.”
“Fuck,” he swears again. He pulls his head away and gingerly touches the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to kill that slimy sack of shit when I see him again.”
I nod. If Kozlov has a brain in his head, he’d better be on his way out of town. I don’t know if Father will greenlight taking him out, but Pavel definitely meant what he just said.
He spits blood onto the pavement and grumbles another expletive before I see him visibly letting the matter go. He leans up against the wall and pulls out his cigarettes. He offers me one, but I decline. I’m trying to quit.
“You know,” he says as he lights his, “I found out what that whole thing was about with Damon Pecora’s funeral. With Pop meeting up with Pecora, I mean.”
I tilt my head at him. We haven’t really talked about that since the day of, and while I’ve been wondering what was said between them when they went into the parlor, I didn’t bother myself with trying to find out.
“How’d you find out?” I ask.
Pavel shrugs. “Overheard some things. A conversation he had over the phone.”
I sigh. “You know how I feel about spreading gossip.”
“It’s not gossip and it involves you.”
