The man gives a slight shake of his head, looking at me like I’m not worth oxygen. As if I’m not offering him this meeting, an opportunity to save his family, instead of destroying everything he is. I don’t let it get to me.
“Know what I really like about New York? The women. Your daughter’s beautiful, Maksim. Smart, too. I couldn’tstop laughing when she told that bastard where he could stick it.”
I tut my tongue. “Passing secrets to the mafia? That’s bad stuff. Do you want to send him to Siberia, too? Without a trial?”
Maksim’s face darkens with rage.“Release me and allow me to go back to my daughter’s wedding.”
“I don’t think there is a wedding anymore,” I point out. In fact, I’d be surprised if the Romanovs weren’t pulling guns on each other by now.
Maksim falls silent, so I take it upon myself to continue the conversation. “It didn’t seem like she was too keen on that guy. Felt more like a slave auction.”
He shakes his head, looking irritated at the reminder. “She doesn’t understand how important this is. You know what women are like. Or actually, I suppose you don’t.”
“Don’t worry, old man. There were women in Siberia. Just not the kind who look like your daughter with her golden hair and green eyes.”
Maksim is shaking now.
“You’ll never touch her.”
I shake my head, laughing. “You really don’t understand the stakes that we’ve got going here, Maksim. Iknowsomething.”
“What couldyouknow?” he spits at me. “Make your point, Zhukov, or I’d very much like to get back to my daughter’s nuptials.”
“The thing about Siberia? No one was supposed to make it out alive.”
“Precisely. You’re an aberration.”
“An aberration who’s spent years living with the Bratva’s biggest secrets. With inside knowledge of what’s going on in this house and at the docks, old man.”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me my business.”
I don’t have to tell him a thing.
I lay out the files on the desk, one by one.
Then I take Maksim by the shoulders — he tries to fight me off, to no effect — and sit him in the chair so he can look at it.
All the information I have that could bring him down.
Information that shows the core of his business is crumbling right before his eyes.
“Right now, Yuri is in a cab driving across town to give this information to Viktor Zakharov. He’ll stop if I tell him to, and only then. And there’s only one way that I’ll make that call.”
Maksim shakes his head in disbelief as he shuffles through the papers.
Maybe it’s unthinkable that someone like me could have noticed what was going wrong.
“I estimate that half of the paintings you’re holding as collateral right now are forged, old man. Someone’s been screwing you this whole time, profiting off your weakness.” I grab his hair, yank his head back, and hold a knife to his throat to make my point.
“Zhukov. What do you want?” He lets out a choked gasp. It wasn’t even hard to storm his daughter’s wedding and take him. Maybe the old man has lost that rabid-dog cruelty and paranoia he used to have. It’s a shame for him, because those are the survival instincts you need to survive in the Bratva.
Even if I hadn’t escaped the Ivanov Center, Maksim would have been a sitting duck. Yuri had his own plans going. Now that we’ve joined forces, Maksim would have better odds of winning the lottery than holding onto his Bratva Council seat until the end of the year.
I release his head. Better to let him read and see there’s no way out of this.
“This empire is built on nothing. There’s no value to it. If anyone found out about this, the whole house of cards would come crumbling down.”
Fragile alliances. Uneasy peaces. Lines of territory.
