"Aye. Get used to it."
“What the hell amI supposed to do with you three?” Nikita tapped his pen against his desk and eyed the three of us sitting across from him.
I was sitting in the middle in my new suit, which fit like a fucking glove. Fin was right. The old tailor had been ripping me off. The suit had arrived the morning after Fin put a bullet in Kastelani, along with a summons from Nikita.
Apparently, Niko and EJ had received a similar summons because Niko was currently seated on the windowsill, lipping an unlit cigarette, and EJ was sitting stiffly in the seat next to me. The poor kid looked like he’d swallowed a toad and expected to be beaten for it.
Nikita scanned our faces. He didn’t look much happier to be here than EJ, which I didn’t understand. Sure, the operation had gone tits up, but it all worked out in the end.
"You’re sitting there feeling proud of yourself," Nikita said.
I shrugged. "K's dead. The stones are ours. The Greeks are square. Sure, sounds like a win to me."
"Except for all the bodies you left in your wake.”
I lowered my head. “Dev. Tomas. Leonid. Dmitri.” I'd been saying the names all morning so I wouldn't flinch on them now. “I'll notify the families myself. And Dmitri goes into the ground with full honors. You have my word on all of it.”
“And you.” Nikita’s attention moved to EJ, whose spine went straight so suddenly I heard it crack. EJ swallowed.
"Evander Renko," Nikita said. "You walked onto my operation as a cleaner and now you’re claiming a name that means something to me. To this organization. Do you understand the weight of the name Laskin? The blood you’re claiming flows in your veins?"
"It's mine," EJ said.
I closed my eyes.Here we fucking go.
"Sir," he added.
Nikita looked over at Yuri.
My uncle hadn't said a word since I walked in. He sat in the chair by the wall with his hands folded, and let the room come to him. If the blood was real, it was his to claim or deny, and everybody in the room knew it but the kid.
"Evander," Yuri said softly. "Where was your mother working when she knew Sacha?"
"The Foxhole, sir." EJ's jaw was tight. "She was one of Bowen's girls. She said he came around for a while, back before I was born, and then he stopped coming, and then there was me. She said he was Russian. Big in the organization. Name of Laskin." He lifted his chin. "That's all she left me. The name. I'm not giving it back."
Yuri studied him for a long moment. “How old are you, son?”
“Twenty. And a half.”
Nikita sighed and cursed under his breath.
Yuri thought for a long moment while watching my face. “My brother, bless him, was always chasing women. That’s no secret. We all know how he was.”
Niko hummed and nodded. “Casanova, my mum called him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Pop was a fucking manwhore. Just say it.”
"He was," Yuri agreed, mild as ever. "And a man who lives like that leaves pieces of himself all over the world. Some of them grow up." He looked back at EJ. "You have his trouble in you. I watched you walk in here ready to fight a room you couldn't win." A pause. "That's a Laskin, whether the blood is or not."
Nikita turned to me, because he and I both knew where this went next. Niko couldn't vouch for the kid; he'd run another man's organization in another country, and that bought him nothing here. Yuri wasn't vory and never had been. That left one man in the room with the standing to put his name on a Laskin.
"He's untested," Nikita said. "If he's yours, he's yours all the way. His mistakes are your mistakes. You understand what I'm asking."
I looked at the kid. Half my age and twice as stupid, and he'd taken a pair of pliers to the hand rather than give me up to a man who'd have killed us both anyway. "I'll stand for him."
"Then he's yours," Nikita said. "But he doesn't wear anything he hasn't earned, and he doesn't earn it at twenty. He works. Under you. You watch him, you answer for him, and when he's old enough, and he's proven, we talk about the rest." He picked the pen back up, which meant we were nearly done. "Until then he's a Laskin in name. The ink waits."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." EJ was nodding too much. "I won't let you down. Either of you. I swear it. I'll be the best Laskin you ever—"
