Chapter 3 – Rafayel
“Not on board.”
The door closed with a click, and Tikhon’s steps toward me were energetic. A scowl on his face followed after he dropped a thin file on my desk and collapsed on the chair facing mine. He cocked his head to the side, spread an arm above the rim of the twin chair beside his, and kicked a leg out.
I should have known what he was talking about the minute he walked into this office. Honestly, I did know. The problem was, negative reports and I didn’t connect. We couldn’t exist in the same space. If I wanted something taken care of, then it had to be taken care of. There were no ‘buts’ or ‘ifs’ or ‘hows’— just what Rafayel wanted, he got.
So, Tikhon pouncing in here with that frustrated, dejected look and strained soulless eyes to deliver that message was a courageous move. A very costly one, but it meant he’d tried and was pissed that he was going to have to tell me he failed.
I folded my arms on the desk, instinctively knotting my fingers to keep my hands busy. Something to distract myself while Tikhon tapped his feet because—to stress the point—I didn’t accept failures.
“You didn’t meet with him?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” he said sharply and gave me a look, asking if I suddenly doubted his capabilities.
I didn’t. For ten long years, he’d been by my side, knew how to get the job done thoroughly, and served me with fervent loyalty I’d found nowhere else. I never doubted Tikhon. Before he came along, I didn’t have a second-in-command, and after him…. He became mine for a reason. The man was as dangerous and as ruthless as they came, could off a man in a dozen ways with his hands and a knife, and to me, he was just fine. Maybe nearly perfect.
Trust wasn’t one of those things that came with the job description of being a Yezhov. Watching our backs was more a habit than a chore. But Tikhon was one of the few that I could trust in this world without an iota of doubt, and we’d grown to be as close as brothers as two men could be.
In short, his competence wasn’t at stake. It was that damn negative report that said the job couldn’t be done.
“You met him. Then, what’s the fucking matter?”
“Seeing him wasn’t the problem. Getting him to switch sides was.”
An uncomfortable lump restricted the airflow to my chest. That report didn’t correlate, making it difficult to process. My fingers tightened.
“What?”
Tikhon rubbed his fist over his head. He was stressed out and, as always, didn’t give a fuck about masking it. But I didn’t care, and he knew it. I wasn’t letting this go until I had it go my way.
“Rafa, coercion can’t be the only thing Enzo has over Jabril. There must be something else because he’s refusing to bend.”
Still not processing.
“He’s refusing to bend.”
Tikhon kept on talking anyway. Lost in his own thoughts, he leaned forward, brows drawn and lips tight. “Colombo might have some dirt on him, something filthy hanging over his head. Fuck, if Lev was here, maybe we’d have clarity.”
“Why did he have to fucking die after being shot, right?”
The sarcasm was loud enough to get his attention. His head snapped up, and when our eyes met, he started to press further. “Rafa, the only way we’re Jabril back is if Colombo lets him—”
“Save it. I’m not hearing anything positive.”
Contrary to general opinion, there weren’t that many fish in the sea. Or fish like Jabril Enterprises, to be precise. Even if it was going to take months to win, I wasn’t losing any clients to the Italians. It was just not happening under my watch.
“Are you going to make me motivate you now? Tikhon, there’s a way; you’ve not broken the damn walls hard enough to fucking see it. If Colombo has something filthy hanging over his head, that means there’ll be more dirt wherever that came from. Do what you do best. Threaten whoever you should, and maybe make a few examples of those who aren’t cooperating. Get some sense knocked into Jabril’s head. If you have to do that literally, fine.”
There was a rapt knock on the door, but whoever it was did not wait for an acknowledgment. He entered without a word.
When he sat on the twin chair beside Tikhon’s, I ran a suspicious gaze from his blue-and-black leather jacket to his tousled hair and finally settled on the crazed but sullen look in his eyes. That daze in his eyes had always been there, a funny mix of depressed, carefree, and egoistic, but often, his presence was nothing to celebrate.
Tikhon smiled at him and nudged a shoulder as a subtle greeting.
“What’s up, kid?”
Ivan groaned, his shoulders slouched backward, and his fingers made more messy tracks through his hair.
As expected.
From the minute he walked through that door, my gut told me trouble. Maybe I’d been gifted in the womb, but my instincts failed zero to one percent of the time. Rafayel Yezhov was always right.
That groan of his meant more trouble to deal with.
Already riled up and fucking irritated with the Jabril and Italian mafia shit going on, it was a battle suppressing the urge to whack my dumb cousin across the head with the butt of my gun.
If it wasn’t already clear, I didn’t like the kid very much. When he turned eighteen, he nixed his formal initiation as a Yezhov into the Bratva to pursue his passion for racing.
Racing.
What I thought started out as a raving madness of youthful exuberance turned out to be more than just a fucking joke, and to worsen the matter, ruining his reputation and dragging his name through the fucking soil, his progress chart recorded more losses than wins.
For years, he maintained his distance, focused on his cars and failures, and only came running when there were rough edges to smoothen out.
“What the fuck is it now?”
My anger was direct, like a missile locked in. Before it landed on the target, the entire room felt the catastrophic quake of the explosion.
“I, um….” He shifted under my stare, biting down hard on his lips, and the fear in his eyes gleamed sharper. Knowing he got on my nerves was making it worse for him. “I think now’s a bad time to talk about my shit. I should just go. I should…. I might come back another time, maybe?”
Luckily for him, Tikhon intercepted before I had a chance to throw something across the table with every intention of causing bodily injury to the kid . “Take it from me. Now’s not the best time to play. If you have something to say, say it.”
“Or don’t, and maybe risk losing a finger for wasting three hundred seconds of my fucking time.”
Averting my gaze, Ivan swallowed, gripping the armrest of his chair, and his spine stiffened on the chair. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. His nerves were all over the place, visible enough for me to watch his fingers tremble as he stuck them into the pocket of his jacket.
And when he opened his mouth, my expectations were low. I expected something else, anything dumb, to come out of that mouth of his. Anything but what he said.
“There’s this girl—”
“Son of a bitch.”
Tikhon hid a grin before I glared at him.
The kid had managed to run into all sorts of problems on good and bad days, but he’d never come into my office to chat about women, drop-dead gorgeous or nutty as they might have been. I’d never seen him majorly stressed out about one either, so this one had to be special.
Still, the unnecessary suspense was giving me a headache.
My fingers found a ballpen on the desk, and I fondled it, clicking and clicking, while I decided whether or not to wait to hear him finish.
“She’s actually Enzo Colombo’s daughter—Leonora. I’m sure you know her. Bitch enjoys making a name for herself, and apparently, she did a solid round today.”
Tikhon lifted a brow at my finger when the pen stopped clicking, but Ivan kept talking, barely noticing that I wasn’t listening to him.
Apparently , Leonora Colombo had beaten my cousin in one of their racing sprees, victoriously cementing her name in the records of history while wiping his ass in more dirt.
I battled a smile.
Always managing to leave her mark wherever she went. Like she did years ago when she tried to rain on Timur’s parade. That night, her superciliousness fascinated me and, more so, left me highly impressed after she broke her father from Timur’s jail cell.
The audacious brunette with the sharp tongue and daring hazel eyes—of course, I knew her. If she had her way, the whole world probably would, too. She was eager to prove her capabilities of handling her own business, and yet, everything she did showed more evidence that Colombo’s blood ran through her veins—more specifically, his ego and stubbornness.
“…kidnapped her.”
Ivan’s voice shattered whatever bubble I was in, and the smirk melted off my face faster than heated candle wax. I blinked away the confusion, frowned, and sat up a little straighter. If I thought I’d heard part of his statement correctly, it meant—
“You kidnapped Leonora Colombo ?”
Tersely, he nodded.
Even Tikhon couldn’t believe it. He looked from Ivan to me and back again.
“ Podzemnaya Tyur’ma” Underground prison. Ivan leaned forward, eyes sober and guard down. “That’s where she is. And I swear, Rafayel, that’s why I came here—to seek your permission. I don’t want to go about messing shit up or stirring trouble with the Italians and the Bratva.”
“You kidnapped Enzo’s daughter,” Tikhon cut in. There was no other way to make it clearer. “You’ve already stirred shit up, kid.”
Ivan wasn’t looking at me, but the indication of his fear was the constant clenching of his fingers on the desk.
“I meant no disrespect, but I needed to teach her a lesson. She won, fine. I’ll admit, she’s a badass driver, knows her way around the track. Maybe if she was humble, I could learn a few things from her, but she’s just so…so full of shit.”
He was breathing harshly, still battling his inner rage at the feisty Italian princess. Quite the contrary, to her credit, and in my opinion, maybe not exactly full of shit. But I got his communication loud and clear.
The kid had more than enough stings of the Leonora venom. He’d been humiliated, embarrassed, and for the first time in his life, did what a true Yezhov would have done if confronted with the same sassy bitch: retaliate.
Colombo had something that belonged to me, and currently, my genius cousin had helped me even the score.
Now, why the fuck would that upset me?
The gravity of the current situation forced me up from the chair and propelled me toward him. I shoved one hand into my pocket and stretched one out to his shoulder.
I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but….
“Good job, kid.”
The light in the room caught the shock in his eyes as his head flew back. “What?”
I withdrew my hand. If he didn’t hear it, then maybe he was better off fucking one of his cars. I wasn’t repeating it. That compliment already cost me more than a shred of pride.
But I was smirking, and Tikhon kissed his teeth and dashed me a stink eye because he knew this revenge felt better than a trip to the Obsidian in more ways than one.
Fate, perhaps?
Or maybe Ivan just proved that he wasn’t the spineless dick we all thought he was.
Whatever it was, it yielded the same result.
As for me and the Italian princess, our paths were going to cross once again.