4. Lev
The man sitting opposite me doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to die.
Aleks Baracoff. Vor to the Zarkov Bratva.
My bratva.
Up until four days ago, he was one of my most trusted men. Just as he was to my father before me. Someone who would die for me. For the bratva. That is why I put him in charge of the operations in Chicago and why he is one of the very few people I trust with sensitive information.
That was until I received an anonymous email showing me some interesting CCTV footage of a murder.
A murder I’m now being blackmailed for because the blackmailer believes it could hurt the bratva if it got leaked to the press, and he wants money to ensure it doesn’t.
But I could care less about the murder the blackmailer thought would make him rich. In my world, murder is hardly an eye-opener. No, it was what else I saw on that footage that made me see red. The mere presence of Angelo Draconi, new don to the Draconi family, shaking Aleks’ hand and partying with him like they were fucking brothers.
The Draconi are our rivals. And our biggest threat.
The footage is a headache. Because now I have two messes to clean up. The betrayal of my most trusted vor, and a bottom-feeder wannabe who thought he could blackmail me.
Across the table from me, Aleks gives me a smile that once used to mean something to me.
But now I know the truth—that behind it is a man whose word means nothing. Whose loyalty can be bought by my rivals. Whose betrayal I feel right down to my very core.
We’re in the restaurant he owns near the riverwalk, an expensive place that sells some of the best Russian cuisine in the Midwest. A few yards behind me, my cousin Feliks stands with Aleks’ bodyguard, a seven-foot giant called Thor.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Aleks says. “I would’ve made arrangements to make your stay more enjoyable. Would you like something to eat? I’ll have Elina fix you a plate. The restaurant doesn’t open for another four hours, but there is plenty of food in the refrigerators.”
I shake my head. “Not necessary.”
“You sure? As you know, Elina makes the best pirozhki in America.”
“I’m not here to eat, Aleks,” I growl.
His smile slips. “Of course.”
I pull my gun from my breast pocket and rest it on the table between us, and he immediately pales.
“Why did you do it?” I ask calmly.
He straightens in his chair and swallows thickly. He’s gone a sickly shade of grey. “What do you mean, Pakhan?”
“I think you know exactly what I am talking about, Aleks. Your night at Soulless.” Still, he pretends to look confused, so I prompt him. “The club in Lincoln Park.”
I can see in his eyes he knows precisely what I am talking about. The fear is fucking with him now. He’s wondering if he should come clean or continue the lie.
He decides to go with a half-truth.
“You know about the girl?” he asks.
“Everybody knows about the girl, Aleks. She’s all over the fucking news. Every news station has her face splashed across their channel. The Chicago Sea Angel, they’re calling her. Found beat up and dumped in the harbor.”
I think back to the CCTV footage and the murder. How Aleks had gotten rough with an escort in the VIP section of the club. How he had choked the life out of her and then dumped her in the harbor, naked and very dead. How someone now thinks they can use that footage to goddamn blackmail me.
Fury prickles at the nape of my neck.
“The girl was a mistake. I realize that now.” Aleks shifts nervously in his chair. “But she liked it that way. She was a whore who wanted it rough. Said she liked the pain. I didn’t think she would fucking die on me.”
I don’t believe him. I saw the look on his face as he was killing her. Saw the delight on his face as he watched the life drain from her eyes. He found pleasure in her fear, and the small part of me that is still human wants to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the life out of him for what he did to her. The media says she was barely five feet tall. A tiny thing. Young. Her whole life ahead of her to live. And he took it from her without conscience.
But that’s not why I am here.
“I’m not talking about the girl,” I say with an edge to my voice.
He goes very still. Because he knows the girl is the least of his worries. He’s wondering if I know what else he did that night. Who he was with. What they planned together. His eyes flick to the gun on the table in front of me, and a small part of me wants him to go for the Ruger he keeps in his breast pocket just so I can put an end to this situation with a bullet between his eyes.
He tries to smile, but it’s full of fear. “I don’t understand.”
I pick up the gun and point it at him. “Tell me you don’t understand one more fucking time, and I will shoot you.”
He throws his hands up. “Okay, okay. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you met with Don Draconi.”
“I didn’t—”
I stand up so quickly my chair falls backward. “Lie to me again, mudak. I fucking dare you.”
“Alright!” he yells. He knows I have him cornered. “Yes, I met with him. But it’s not what you think.”
“It’s never what I think. Why did you meet with the don of our biggest rival?”
“He wanted to talk.”
“And?” I demand impatiently.
Fear is rampant on his face. By now, he’s figured it out. That I know about his little plan to sell my secrets to the fucking Draconi, our biggest rivals in the Midwest and on the East Coast, in order to line his pockets. After viewing the CCTV footage, I looked deeper into what Aleks has been up to since then, and it wasn’t hard to find out what I needed to know. After all, I am Lev Zarkov. I have eyes and ears all over this country. And I have the very best people who gather and collate any information I need into a nice tidy package for me so I know exactly what is going on.
So I know this mudak has been leaking information to the Draconi. Information that has put me and my bratva in danger. Information that has cost me millions of dollars in lost revenue. Information that is going to take Aleks’ last breath from him.
“You sold me out to the Draconi.”
Aleks’ hands begin to shake.
But then his demeanor changes because he knows it’s too late. I guess the old fuck figures he might as well go out with a bang.
“Your father would see my death as a dishonor,” he says with disgust.
“My father would’ve pulled the trigger by now.”
His eyes sharpen. “This wouldn’t be happening if your father were still pakhan.”
The sentiment grinds against my last nerve. I should shoot him for implying I am a weak pakhan.
But retribution for the disrespect will have to wait. I will not honor his betrayal with a quick death. I want to toy with him a little longer. Make him sweat. Make him wish he’d never betrayed me. Make him feel the regret deep into his very core.
“You know, I’m feeling generous today, so I’m going to give you a chance to live.” I pick up the chair from the floor and sit down, placing the gun on the table. He doesn’t say anything, but I see the fear in his eyes. “All you need to do is answer this next question honestly.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who is responsible for the murder of my parents?”
Almost twelve months ago, my mother and father died in a car bombing, and we haven’t found the person responsible. For months now, I’ve suspected it was an inside job. Someone in the Zarkov Bratva. Namely, my Uncle Vadim. He was supposed to ride to the restaurant with my father and mother the night they died but came down with a mysterious illness and canceled.
Which is a bit too fucking convenient for my liking.
Vadim had the most to benefit from my father’s death. He thought he would become pakhan. The boss. Unfortunately for him, my father had already made it implicitly clear that I should succeed him, and when it came to the vote of the bratva’s inner circle, all the old vory agreed, and I was named pakhan.
Much to my uncle’s anger.
Aleks shifts in his chair. He wants to earn himself a second chance to live. But he’s afraid to answer incorrectly.
“The night my mother and father died, Vadim was meant to be with them. But he canceled because he said he was unwell after spending the afternoon with you. Is that true? Was he really with you that afternoon? You have always backed up his story, but now as you face your moment of truth where your life is on the line, I want to know if there is something more to the story. Did Vadim kill my father?”
“If I tell you what you want to hear, I would be lying. If I tell you the truth, you will shoot me.”
I’m going to shoot him anyway.
“I don’t want you to tell me what it is you think I want to hear. I want the goddamn truth. Did my uncle conspire against my father and organize the hit?”
“It was pure chance that he wasn’t in that car that night. If we hadn’t overindulged at the luncheon we attended that afternoon, he would’ve been in that car with your parents, and we would’ve lost him too.”
I don’t believe him, but that’s not why I’m gonna kill him. He already earned that when he betrayed me to the Draconi.
Our eyes meet, and he knows. He’s seen his last sunrise.
“The girl.” I pick up the gun. “She was only a child, Aleks.”
He sneers. “Fuck you and that whore bitch—”
The first bullet gets him between the eyes. The second in the center of his chest. I put a third in his face for The Chicago Sea Angel. Because damn, what he did to her just isn’t right, and I won’t tolerate it in my bratva.
I swing around when I hear a gunshot behind me. Feliks has taken down Thor with a shot to the chest, killing him instantly.
“I told you not to kill him,” I say to my cousin. “He didn’t need to die. We could’ve put him back into rotation.”
“When a seven-foot Neanderthal points his gun at me, I’m going to fucking point back and shoot the fucker,” Feliks declares indignantly.
Fair enough.
The doors to the restaurant kitchen burst open, and an older woman comes running out. She sees Aleks dead in the chair where I left him and comes to an abrupt halt.
I’m ready for waterworks. For screaming. For a string of violent curses to come out of the fiery grandmother’s mouth. But I know Elina has family living it rough back home in Russia, and I know I will be able to buy her silence.
I watch her walk over to him and spit on him. “Murdering pizda.”
Feliks and I share a look, then turn back to her.
“You knew?” I ask.
“I suspected. Seemed proud of himself too.” She looks at me. “All the time I worked for him, I knew there was a very bad man inside of him. But he pays me good, and I keep out of it.”
While I talk to Elina, Feliks takes a call outside. When I’ve finished securing her silence with an attractive retirement payout, I join him in the car.
“Where to, Pakhan?” the driver asks me.
I want to head back to the hotel and shower. Killing men might be a part of my role as pakhan, but it doesn’t excite me. It’s just another nail in my coffin as far as I’m concerned. I need a shower and a couple of Beluga vodkas to take the edge off. Not to mention to get the taste of blood out of my mouth.
Feliks leans over. “That other matter you wanted to take care of while you’re in town has taken an interesting turn.”
I look at my cousin sitting across from me in the limousine.
“Tell me all the details. And don’t leave anything out.”