7. Konstantin
SEVEN
Konstantin
I sit across from Matvey Petrov, glaring at him. He glares right back. Under the table, my hands are balled into fists.
The lawyer is sitting with Petrov, which is probably the sole reason I haven’t launched into a tirade about where, exactly, Petrov can shove his fucking criticisms.
Petrov shakes his head. “First the Winters completely humiliate us?—”
“ You, ” I mutter. “They humiliated you . I told you they couldn’t be trusted.”
I had, too. After Yura had been arrested, I’d told Petrov to keep his guard up around the Winters. But Petrov hadn’t liked Yura anyway, and he’d dismissed my concerns.
If your men can’t keep themselves out of jail, that speaks to the quality of your leadership.
Petrov isn’t pleased with my interruption, but the lawyer coughs pointedly.
We might be speaking in Russian, but we can’t trust the room to be unmonitored even if, theoretically, the presence of the lawyer should mean we have complete privacy.
“I’ve been talking to the men here.” Petrov motions around the room, like that’s going to tell me who he’s been talking to. “I hear things about what’s going on outside. And so far, it’s that the Crescis are dominating the city. That there are Albanians setting up shop.”
“The Crescis aren’t—” I make a frustrated sound. “It’s still Pavone at the top. And the Albanians arrived before you were arrested. Which I told you about.”
“They were nothing before,” Petrov argues.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Of course they took advantage of all the chaos to make inroads. And of course they are bigger now than when they first entered the black markets here.
“Why have you called me here?” I ask Petrov, because I’m tired of listening to this shit.
Petrov glances at the lawyer, then makes another disappointed sound. “You have not made contact with Andronov.”
Andronov. I grimace and shake my head. “Because it’s a bad idea. I don’t want to partner with him.”
Andronov, one of our contacts in Europe, has a knack for finding young, impressionable women who want to come to America and make it big. Of course, they end up as whores or worse. It’s a business I’ve never been fond of, but beyond that, it’d be stupid to start it here, in New Bristol.
The Pavones deal in the flesh trade, and I don’t want to encroach on Pavone territory. I’ve heard how stupid it is to piss them off.
“So instead, you twiddle your thumbs and allow all the work your father and I put into the business to crumble,” Petrov growls. “If you cannot do anything with our current assets, then take the business leads I offer and fucking do something about it. I’m tired of hearing what a joke we’ve become!”
And I’m tired of being forced to listen to an out-of-touch old man. I’ve been on his case for years about business opportunities that he refused to take.
I’m not going to let him get a rise out of me, though.
“Fine. I will talk to him. But when things go south, I’ll know who to blame.” I get up and stride to the door.
“Your father will hear of this insolence,” Petrov shouts at me. “You should respect your fucking elders, boy.”
I bark out a laugh. “When I see somebody worth respecting, I’ll let you know.”
I leave, ignoring his curses.
That did not go well.
I’m going to feel the aftermath of all this, because while it would be easy to dismiss Petrov as a powerless old man in jail, I know he still has many friends. Like the lawyer, who doubles as a spy for my father.
Half the men in the organization are waiting for Petrov to get out of prison, never mind that he’s looking at a long federal sentence unless the Russian embassy gets involved—and I doubt they want to deal with the international fallout of protecting a known criminal.
As I leave the prison, I wonder about where to go from here. As much as it rankled, Petrov was right about one thing: our organization is in shambles.
The whole issue with Don Marino didn’t make things better.
We have the most tenuous of truces with the Crescis, the Pavones can hardly be counted on as an ally, the Albanians would be more than happy to steal our business, and last I heard, there was another Russian family setting up in New Bristol.
It’s a mess.
I leave the prison without any concrete ideas, and the drive back home doesn’t help much either.
I make my way up to Sierra’s room and open the door, not bothering to knock.
She’s on the bed with the laptop on her lap. She’s so focused that it takes her a second to even acknowledge that I’m there. She starts to smile, but when she sees the look on my face, it falters.
“Oookay,” she says. “I take it you didn’t have a good day.”
“I did not,” I agree. I go to the bed and sit down next to her, glancing at the laptop screen.
I’m surprised when I see information about Silvano Cresci. Age, birthdate, known associates, general business dealings…
“What’s this?” I ask.
“I’m putting together a dossier,” she says vaguely. “I figured I had to start somewhere.”
“I can see that,” I tell her. “Why?”
Sierra fidgets, tapping her fingers against the side of the laptop. “He has to have a weakness, right?”
I nod thoughtfully. “He must. But why are you doing this?”
She takes a deep breath, then slowly lets it out. “I… There are a few things I haven’t told you,” she admits.
“A few?” I ask skeptically. “I am sure you have not told me many things, Sierrochka.”
Her smile is crooked, and it doesn’t last long. “I found something out the night of the party.” She doesn’t elaborate, so I beckon for her to continue. “I thought it was your men who killed Pa,” she says steadily. “It wasn’t.”
I have to think about the order of events to place the timeline. “Your father… he wasn’t there when the FBI raided the meeting. It was Petrov, a few of our men, your brother Sean, and some of his men.”
“I don’t understand where or how or anything,” she says, and her voice is surprisingly steady as she continues, “but somewhere along the way, Silvano Cresci killed my father that day.”
I nod, because it makes sense. “He had the most to gain with your father’s death. I don’t know the exact details; Petrov was never keen to share when he was making big business deals. We were in talks with both of them, but your father was the one who reached out to us first. We didn’t care either way who we were trading with.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be telling her these things. It is better if she doesn’t know, and now more than ever, I should be keeping her safe.
My eyes fall to her belly, where my future child is. An emotion I don’t recognize threatens to overwhelm me.
More information can’t hurt her, though. She is a smart woman. The more she knows, the better chances she has of escaping bad situations.
“But you were sure Pa was hiding weapons from you,” she says slowly. “That was how I ended up in…” She grimaces. “This whole mess.”
I bark out a laugh. “Yes. Because the weapons seized at the meeting didn’t match what we expected. And it was your family’s fucking terrible security that brought the feds down on us. We need compensation for that.”
“Compensation,” she repeats, her lip twisting, but she only shakes her head. “So why was Silvano Cresci even there?”
“Why was he where? ” I ask. “He wasn’t at the meeting between your brother and Petrov.”
“He was, though,” she insists. “He had to have been there. Then Kyran called and said Pa was… gone. But Silvano and Kyran weren’t…” She makes a frustrated sound. “Something’s missing.”
I nod in agreement, reaching out to stroke the back of her neck. “I don’t know either, Sierrochka. But maybe we can start by getting your father’s, or Don Marino’s, weapons cache.”
“I was supposed to get Pa’s phone and crack into the files,” she says, shifting uncomfortably. “Silvano and Kyran were going to give it to me. With the drive and the phone, I would’ve been able to find the weapons. But I don’t have the phone. I still can’t get into the files you need.”
“Let’s see what we can get for now.” I settle into the bed next to Sierra while she pulls up the files she’d downloaded from Don Marino’s computer.
It’s strange how long ago that feels, when it hasn’t been more than a few weeks since the party.
It’s been enough time for somebody else to have made headway with it, though.
I scowl, thinking of Victor Corvi and Lucia Bellini getting their hands on the weapons that should rightly be mine.
If I can’t turn all of this around, my father really will find somebody to replace me here.
“We can probably forget anything that’s in Benton City proper,” Sierra says, tabbing around the files. “The mob families there would have swooped in almost instantly, right?”
“Yes,” I agree. “But he had that warehouse space right outside of New Bristol. Don Marino was working closer with your father than any of us knew.”
Her brows furrow, and she goes back to a spreadsheet. It’s been neatly done, with rows and columns I assume consist of all of the information she’s put together. “I have a few more locations we can check out, I think,” she says. “From Don Marino’s files. Those weren’t as hard to crack.”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll take whatever we can from Marino.” I put an arm around Sierra’s shoulders. “His family will rue having crossed us.”
“Are there many left?” she asks. “After… I mean, I assume cops got involved somehow since I went to the hospital with a gunshot wound.” She reaches up to touch it. “Unless you paid them off?”
I laugh and press a kiss to the top of her head. “I killed Don Marino, Sierrochka. We cleared out many of his followers that night. But if anybody stills claims association to him, I will gladly grind them to dust too.”
The memory of how Sierra had looked, bleeding out on the floor, threatens to make the rage overcome me.
She squirms, but she doesn’t say anything at first. Instead, she scrolls through the spreadsheet, where she has a few addresses highlighted. “I looked on a maps app to see what they look like. One standard warehouse, two regular houses.” She pauses. “An apartment complex? But I doubt they’d have stored anything there. Getting them in and out would’ve been a pain.”
“You’d be surprised.” I listen to Sierra tell me what she’s been able to glean from the information. Part of me is surprised at how enthusiastic she gets, but I should have known.
She’s always been curious. She likes to be in the know.
I lean down to kiss her jaw, and she tenses up.
“I was so scared, Sierrochka,” I murmur. “I’m so lucky that you’re here, with me.”
Sierra looks up at me, and I can read the skepticism in her expression. “You’re only worried about the baby,” she says.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant when you were bleeding out,” I point out.
She inhales slowly, then nods. “Yeah. I guess not.” She taps her fingers on the laptop again, next to the track pad. “I don’t know what I’d have done if Yuri had shot my brother instead of me.”
“You wouldn’t have to worry about Silvano Cresci anymore,” I point out.
“I think we’d have to worry about him even more,” she says with a shake of her head. “He’d be hell-bent on revenge.” Her lips twist into a bitter smile. “He’d have started a war for Kyran. For all his faults, I think he really does love my brother. And that… That makes everything ten times more difficult.”
Love .
I don’t understand how Silvano Cresci can love Kyran Winters, or vice versa. I can’t imagine falling in love with a man at all. Kyran is nothing like his sister, who is beautiful, clever, fierce, stubborn…
But I also don’t understand liking family members. I sigh and stroke my beard. “You were close with your brother? Before all this?”
Sierra nods. “He’s rough around the edges, but he tries. He’s the only one who really seemed to give a fuck about how I was holding up after Neil…” She waves a hand, giving me a fake smile. “You know.”
I remember. I pet her hair gently, trying to figure out how to be what she needs right now. “I was fourteen when my father made me kill somebody for the first time.”
She bites her bottom lip. “What was it like? I mean… Not that I ever want to kill someone,” she’s quick to add, “but I know every man in my family has done it. I don’t know if I can even imagine what it’s like to take someone’s life.”
“It was the worst day of my life,” I admit. “I could barely hold the weapon. And the first time I pulled the trigger, I missed, so my father made me hold the gun directly against the man’s head.”
I chuckle darkly, remembering how heavy the gun had felt in my hand. I hadn’t thought I could do it—but I’d known I had to do it, because failure was not allowed.
“My brother Roman was there too. He kept calling me a… a… coward, a pussy, all sorts of insults I can’t translate.”
She scowls. “He sounds like a real prize,” she replies. “He probably pissed his pants the first time he had to kill someone.”
I laugh, thankful for Sierra’s attempts to comfort me. “I wouldn’t know. But Roman has always been quick to remind me that he’s the real heir to our father’s legacy. That I am on this earth solely to support him. That my father would never allow any of my children to get even a scrap of his wealth.”
“It doesn’t seem like you need it?” she asks more than says. Her hand goes to her stomach, and she grimaces. “I mean, you seem pretty confident you can take care of me. Us.”
She doesn’t know how tenuous my leadership is. She doesn’t know that everybody around me expects me to step down as soon as somebody better comes along. My father never trusted me with this operation to begin with.
“I can,” I promise her. “You will be safe, and live in luxury.”
I won’t let Sierra fall through my grasp. I won’t allow anybody to destroy this small family I’m building.
If Sierra can be strong, if she can defy her father and brothers to be independent—so can I.
I’m going to show them that I’m not merely an interim leader. This American branch of the Voronkov Bratva is mine .