41. Lev
Chapter 41
Lev
F ed Jeweler looks different.
It’s not that it was rebuilt after the fire. Everything about the structure is new, but the neighborhood’s the same. It’s the same old shop in the same old diamond district in the same crusty section of Philadelphia. The same characters, the same problems. Nothing ever changes, not really.
But it’s different now. I can’t figure it out until I push my way in through the front door and greet Dasha. The salesgirl is leaning against the counter on her phone, looking bored.
“You’re back,” she says, perking up. “How was Canada?”
“It was so good I’m going back.”
“Really?” She seems skeptical. “I mean, it’s just Canada .”
“Business. Alex here?”
“In the back.” She waves a hand and sighs as she looks back at her phone. “Did I tell you about my new boyfriend?”
“There’s always a new one.”
“Not true! Sergei’s been around for—” She pauses, thinking. “Weeks. Probably. He’s such a bastard though?—”
“Tell me another time,” I say, breezing past her, and I realize what changed.
It’s me. I changed.
The old Lev would’ve sat there and let her go on and on about some guy that won’t ever matter, mostly just to keep up the facade. Good, charming, happy Lev, always easy to talk with.
But that’s not me anymore.
I’m the head of the Federov family. My father’s old associates are falling into line, one by one. Some via phone, others in person, but they’re bending the knee now that Valentin’s spreading the good word.
Lev Federov is back from the dead.
“How many people did you have to kill to make this happen?” Alex asks me, grinning huge.
“Just one. How’s the shop?”
“Profitable. Despite your best efforts.”
“Bastard.”
“Idiot.”
I shake his hand and dip forward into a tight hug. It’s good to see my best friend again. “How’s my sister treating you?”
“You know Natalya. She’s always perfect.”
“That’s not the girl I remember.”
“Then you clearly don’t know her like I do.” Alex stretches and smirks at me, and if I didn’t know any better, he was being disrespectful. Except he really is as obsessively in love with Natalya as he pretends to be, and now I finally get it.
I feel the same way about Carmie.
I tell him about the trip, about Simon and Olivier, about my solution for the problem and about the honeymoon afterward. As I talk, I realize how it happened. How I fell in love with Carmie a while back, maybe on that very first night, and struggled to learn how to deal with it.
The monster inside of me has always been a dealbreaker. I’ve never let myself get close to anyone, mostly because I’m afraid of what might happen if they ever get to see the real me.
Except it didn’t scare Carmie. If anything, she kind of likes the darkness. Maybe just the watered-down, safe version, but still. She doesn’t look at me like I’m a terror.
It feels fucking incredible.
“Months in Canada,” Alex muses as he tries on one of our latest Rolexes. “That’s going to be a pain in the ass.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“What’s there to do in Canada?”
“Same shit down here, only more problems.”
“And Carmie’s going with you?”
“That’s what she says.”
He grunts and nods to himself. “You got a good one.”
“I know I do.”
We make more small talk. I don’t want to get to why I’m really here. All I want is to sit around with my friend and pretend like shit’s the way it’s always been, like Stepan’s going to walk in through the door any second now and everything will be okay. But my brother’s dead, my father’s dead, and Natalya and I are all that’s left.
“Listen, I need to talk to you about something.” I lean back in my chair. Alex looks up from where he’s polishing a bracelet. “It’s about the store.”
“It’ll be fine without you. Might be better, honestly.”
I throw an empty box at him and he slaps it aside. “You’re making this hard.”
“Making what hard?”
“I want you to be co-owner of this place with me.”
His eyebrows raise. When my dad died, control of Fed passed into my hands, and Fed is basically the centerpiece of the Federov power. Making him co-owner is like sharing the entire criminal organization with him.
“That’s big,” he says at last.
“You deserve it. No, listen, you know you do. You’ve been holding this family together for a lot longer than I like to admit, and you should formally be in charge.”
“How’s that going to work?”
“You’ll get a forty percent stake to my sixty. That makes you minority owner.”
“And your second-in-command?”
“If you’ll accept it, that’s the idea.”
He tilts his head to the side, cracking his neck. “Is there a pay raise?”
I bark a laugh at him. “If you can earn more, you can keep more, you greedy prick.”
“Just making sure.” He grins at me. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but I accept.”
“I figured you would, you fucking bastard.”
He pulls a bottle of whiskey from a drawer along with two glasses. He pours out shots. We toast each other and the alcohol fills my throat and guts with a pleasant warmth.
This is what I’ve been missing. Family and friends. Power shouldn’t flow from hate and violence—although that helps.
Real strength is in the bonds we build together.
Alex and I were like brothers. Then he married my sister, and now we are brothers.
This is only deepening a connection we’ve been fostering together for years.
“You’re the local liaison. I’ll make sure Valentin knows.”
“Whatever our pakhan needs, I’ll handle it.”
“And hey, don’t fuck things up for me too much here, okay?”
“If by that you mean run things so efficiently nobody is going to want you to come back home, then I’ll do my best.”
“Something like that.”
We lapse into comfortable silence until a customer enters the front shop and I get up to help out, not because I have to, but because it’s good to be useful sometimes. Especially when you’re home.